Adam
Slouched on my couch,feet kicked up on my coffee table, I had my guitar on my belly and an open beer on the table next to me. The sun was setting outside my window. Music was floating around in my head. Music I wanted to get out and down on paper.
Kate—my not-quite girlfriend, but not quite just fuck buddy—stopped at the other end of the couch as she slipped her earring into her lobe.
“If we don’t make reservations now, we’re screwed,” she said.
“We can order in,” I replied.
She sighed, tilting her head. Her brown waves spilled over her round shoulders sweetly. Everything about Kate was sweet, at least on the outside. Plump and soft, short and delicate, she’d caught my eye immediately when she’d been working backstage at one of our shows. Kate was the girl next door with a city attitude. No strings was fine with her.
It had been fine with me too. We were a couple months in now, only seeing each other, and it was getting to the point she wanted more. She wanted dinners out, plays, clubs, hanging with friends. I was into those things, just…not always with her.
“We ordered in last night, Adam. I’d like to leave your apartment.”
I started to say she was welcome to leave, but I bit my tongue. Yeah, I was an asshole, but I tried not to be to women I was seeing. Too bad I always ended up that way. It seemed inevitable.
“Then make a reservation. I don’t care,” I said.
Kate huffed. “You don’t care? So, when the paparazzi take pictures of you through the window, you aren’t going to complain?”
I lifted my eyes to her. She wasn’t being very sweet right now. “Do I ever complain?”
“No.” She perched beside me, running her fingers over my bare abdomen. That felt nice. Nicer than her irritation. “You’re laid back to a fault, honey.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa.Honey?
“To a fault? Surely being relaxed isn’t a character flaw, Kate.”
Her button nose scrunched. “It is when we’re trying to make plans and you have nothing to contribute.”
I raised my brows. “You’re trying to make plans. I’m good here with my guitar, the sunset, and a cold beer.”
She huffed again. “And what am I supposed to do? I didn’t hear anything about me mentioned in there.”
A month ago, I would have put her on my face and gone to town until she was happy with me again. But—and this was the raw, honest truth—I didn’t really give a shit if she was happy with me. I liked Kate, but she could walk out the door, never come back, and I’d be okay.
“I don’t know what to say. You’re a big girl. I don’t have to entertain you all the time.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Adam.”
Before I could figure out how to get out of this conversation, there was a knock on my door. Not just any knock. The peppy, rhythmic knock that signaled sunshine was waiting on the other side.
Kate groaned. “Really?”
Setting her annoyance aside to deal with later, I was up, guitar on the coffee table, striding to the door, grin stretching across my face before I even noticed it happening.
I pulled it open, and there was my neighbor holding a blue measuring cup, her doe eyes filled with innocence she did not possess. Flour struck uneven white lines across the amber skin on her nose and cheeks. Even more was sprinkled through the ebony curls piled on top of her head.
Holding on to the door, I leaned my shoulder on the frame, looking her over. She was almost as tall as me, which meant we were basically eye to eye. Hers were alight with something that looked like trouble. White teeth captured her full, dark-pink bottom lip, but she couldn’t hold back the grin tugging at the corners of her wide mouth.
“What are you up to, Baddie?”
Since her birthday a month ago, we’d hung out a handful of times. Nothing major. If I was getting coffee or going for a run, I’d ask her to tag along. She had an active social life, so she wasn’t always free, but the times she was, she made mundane activities ten times more fun.
She batted her lashes. “I’m baking cookies, but I seem to have run out of sugar. As cliché as it sounds, I’m here to see if you have any.”
That made me chuckle. “You want to borrow sugar?”