Page 44 of Baker

I looked away. “I’m not.”

After a short period of silence, she cleared her throat. “We got off track. You were guessing who was moving in upstairs.”

I wasn’t in the mood any longer. “I’ve got to make my rounds.” I stood and brushed the wrinkles from my jeans. “Just tell me.”

“Me,” she said with a smile. “We’re going to be neighbors!”

Just like that, my biggest fear was one wrong move away from becoming a reality.

SEVENTEEN - Andy

Holly glanced around the apartment. “It seems empty.”

A contemporary red leather couch and a modern oversized blue fabric chair sat across from one another in the otherwise lonely space. Everything else I once owned had been sold to pay rent. Frustrated at what I’d lost, but more grateful for what remained, I waved toward the two pieces of furniture. “It is empty. It’s bigger than your entire house, and it’s got nothing but a couch and a chair in it.”

“You need to go shopping.”

“I’ve got bills to pay first,” I said, more to remind myself than to make her aware of it. “Maybe in a few months.”

She gave the spacious room another quick look. “It’s just you, so I guess it’ll be okay.”

I shrugged. “It’s going to have to be.”

“An upside is that you get to park your bike in the basement. It’ll keep people from messing with you on the nights you have to…” She did the air quote thingy. “Work late.”

“What does that mean?”

“When you and that guy with the arm-sized dick have sex in your office.”

I chuckled. “We do it during the day, not at night.”

“Never late in the day?”

“Nope.”

“Do you think it’s weird?”

“That we don’t bone at five o’clock?”

“That you only do it during the day.”

Him leaving his shirt on was weird. But, I never viewed the time of day we fucked as weird. I guessed he was busy being an eccentric entrepreneur in the evenings. It wasn’t anything I needed to justify to Holly, that was for sure. “We bone when he’s got time. He’s got businesses to run.”

She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. “He has sex during the day and runs his business at night?”

“That’s right.”

“Listen to what you’re saying.”

Now that she’d mentioned it, it seemed slightly odd. Maybe a little more than slightly. I wasn’t going to admit it, though. He didn’t wear a wedding ring and there weren’t any of the telltale signs that he’d taken one off, either. As long as I wasn’t having an affair with a man who was in a committed relationship, I really didn’t care why he chose to fuck me during the day.

“He comes by when his schedule lets him,” I said. “Stop worrying about it.”

“Has he been up here yet? To see your new place?”

I hadn’t seen Baker since the day I told him I was moving in. I suspected he feared having me as a neighbor would create problems with his privacy, but nothing could be further from the truth. I expected him to give me mine. In return, I wouldn’t invade his. Given enough time he’d see I wasn’t a threat to his manner of living life. When he did, he’d return.

I hoped so, anyway. Even though all we shared was sex, I missed out time together.