I’m an idiot.
Willow says, “I just thought that since I left after we had sex, you were upset about it.”
“Fuck no,” I say strongly. “Willow, that was the best night of my life. I put the broken heart because we’re in this shitty long distance thing and I just miss you.”
She lets out a giant sigh of relief. “That makes more sense.”
“Good.” I pause and sniff the air. I smell something…burning.
Shit fuck shit. I forgot to take the pizza out of the oven. My joints unglue and I race to the oven. As soon as I pull down the oven door, dark gray smoke floods out at my face. I cough into my arm, and seconds later, the smoke detector lets out an angry wail.
“Garrison?” Willow sounds panicked.
“Burnt the pizza!” I yell over the alarm. “Call you later?”
“Yeah, go. I love you,” she says quickly.
“Love you, too.”
She hangs up, and I switch the oven off and try wafting the smoke away from the alarm with a dish towel. It’s not working. I have to find…something that will reach the alarm. Fuck you, eight-foot ceilings.
Seriously.
A knock sounds on my door. “Garrison!” my neighbor yells. “Everything okay?!”
Jared and I haven’t bumped into each other since his girlfriend’s birthday, but the fact that I haven’t deterred him either means he’s a good guy or he just really wants my connections to Loren Hale so he can score points with Ana.
I can’t tell which.
But I do open my door for him.
He glances past my shoulder.
“No problems here, man,” I tell him. “Just burnt a pizza. You can go home.” I’m about to close the door, but he puts his hand on it, stopping me with unwanted force.
I glare.
He’s still looking past me at the oven. “Shit, that looks bad. Hold on a minute and I’ll grab my broom.” He leaves quickly, and I rub at my eyes. Against better judgment—or maybe worse judgment—I don’t shut my door on him.
Jared is back in a flash and instead of passing me the broom, he walks right on into my apartment. I tense considerably. My space is my space, and I don’t remember giving him an invitation. Oh wait, that’s because I didn’t.
I cross my arms over my chest and stay near the doorway, watching as Jared jams the end of the broom up at the alarm. It takes two whacks before it stops wailing.
“These smoke detectors are ridiculously sensitive in the building,” Jared says. “Just a heads up.”
“Good to know.” I try not to sound pissed off or sarcastic or both.
Jared looks around my place like he’s on an apartment tour. “Wow, you’ve got a sweet setup.” He eyes the back wall with the desk and four monitors. Two servers. All the chords are neatly bundled and tucked at the floorboard. It took me days to put everything together and not have it look like a mess.
“You a gamer?” Jared wonders.
Probably not the kind he’s thinking of. I don’t play Call of Duty or Halo or even League of Legends. My true love is the classics on consoles like Sega and N64. But that’s not why I have the computers.
“No,” I tell him. “I’m a software engineer at Cobalt Inc.”
Jared raises his brows. “Damn.” He sounds impressed. “But I thought you said you were at Penn.”
Never said that. He assumed it. Because I look my age—twenty. And this building is affordable and a short distance to campus. It adds up, I guess.
I shake my head. “I didn’t go to college.” I’m not ashamed about that. It’s not for everyone. Definitely not for me.
Jared looks me up and down. “So you’re like one of those geniuses from The Social Network?”
I almost laugh. I’m so far from a genius. I’m just good at what I do.
“Not really.” I’m about to make up some excuse about work. Anything to get him out of my apartment, but he’s already talking again.
“About the other night with Ana,” he says into a cringe. “Sorry if she came on strong. She’s just a huge fan of your family’s.”
“They’re not my family,” I correct him. They’re Willow’s. I’m just…adjacent to them.
He scratches the back of his neck. “Right, sorry.”
“I have to work,” I tell him.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll get out of your hair.” He picks up his broom. “If you have issues with your smoke detector again, you know where to find me.” He leaves quickly. A weird feeling crawls under my skin, and I know it’s from his sudden saccharine neighborly friendliness. It seems fake, but I really don’t want to judge him.
I lock my door and then assess the kitchen. The smoke is almost all cleared out. Checking the pizza, my stomach grumbles and I let out an irritated breath.
Crispy and inedible. Pizza should be neither of those things.
I end up grabbing a Lightning Bolt! energy drink from the fridge and sink onto my desk chair. My computer is one of the few places I can just get completely lost in. Right now, that’s all I want.