Page 6 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

Your Fairy Godmother wasnota real place. It was probably a virtual assistant company. Because fairy godmothers?Please.

Pulling myself together, I collected my phone, thankful for the extra sturdy case I kept it in, and let myself out into the foyer.

I squeaked as Randy, our landlord, popped into view, two feet away. How was it he always magically appeared beside me like a poltergeist, no matter what time I came or went from the upstairs apartment?

“Hello, Char. Heading out already?”

I gave a quick smile. “Yup.”

“Did you drop your phone? I heard something take a tumble. Hope it’s all right.”

Ugh. Randy.

I waved my phone. “Yup. Fine. Thanks.”

Everyone in the building collected their mail from the entry and used the front door. Naturally, we all bumped into each other here and there. Although, do the math on this one—we ran into Randy about eight times more often than the cutie Irishman Caleb, who had the apartment below our living room, despite our best efforts to avoid Randy and to bump into McHotStuff.

Almost a year ago, when Tamara had taken Caleb a slice of homemade cake on Samantha’s behalf, in an effort to find out if he was single, she’d run into Randy twice. Twice.

Sadly, those statistics were not an anomaly. They were also the reason I often contemplated the scary, wobbly fire escape that clung to the back of the building. And it wasn’t because I wanted my smart watch to stop nagging me to fit more steps into my day and to increase my heart rate.

“Ah, to be young again. Friday nights!” Randy smiled like I might invite him to join me.

The man had inherited the building, collected our rent, and fixed things with a startling level of incompetence, as well as borderline stalked us. Why he thought we were all pals was beyond me.

“Have a nice night,” I said, continuing to move to the front door like I had a ride waiting for me, and therefore couldn’t stop.

“How’s your sink draining?”

“My what?”

“Your kitchen sink?” He’d hurried his pace to catch up, stopping alongside me where I stood frozen, my immediate thoughts about our forbidden pet gopher. If faulty old plumbing called Randy into our apartment when we weren’t home he’d surely get busted. Sometimes I wished I didn’t have to deal with Randy any longer.

He smoothed the bits of his waving comb-over to cover his shiny, flying saucer of a scalp and waited expectantly. If he embraced his middle-aged bod rather than fighting it, he might stand a chance with the ladies. I mean, he wasn’t a bad person. He was just trying way too hard. Like, Olympics level of trying too hard—and was wearing figure skates at the sailing event.

“It’s fine,” I said, assuming our sink truly was. No problems had been mentioned in our group chat, and it surely would have if dirty water had stopped doing what it was supposed to.

“Good, good. There was a clog in Caleb’s—just below you. The young Irish fellow? Coffee grounds. You don’t put coffee grounds down the sink, do you?”

Hm. I may have seen Samantha trying to wash her fancy new latte machine and running a few more grounds down the drain than usual lately.

I shrugged.

“What do you do with your grounds?”

I shrugged again. I wasn’t the one who made the coffee.

“But you’re a coffee drinker,” he pressed. “I’ve seen you with Timmie’s cups.”

Everyone with a Canadian passport went to Tim Horton’s at one point or another in their lives. That was hardly a marker of my caffeine intake habits.

“My roommates make the coffee. I’ll ask them to be careful.”

“Okay, good, good.”

I turned the doorknob. Just a few more steps and I would be free.

“The girls are all gone for the May-long, are they?”

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