Page 3 of Betting on the Boy Next Door
I text her.
JOSH:It’s manly enough.
REAGAN:You’re welcome.
She follows that with an eyeroll emoji.
I cruise through the rest of the small first floor, poking my head into the half bath which Reagan has supplied with hand towels and soap, the kitchen where she’s put white dishes in sets of four, and the tiny pantry, which only has three unopened boxes of Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch sitting on a shelf.
I smile and text my sister again, this time with a cereal bowl emoji and a thank you.
She didn’t have to do that. She didn’t have to do any of this. I was grateful to her for finding good deals on furniture, but she said it was fun scouring warehouses for model home furniture sell-offs. And I know the only reason she got the dishes is because she was afraid I’d bring over a couple of mismatched plates and cups from my apartment.
She’d be right. But having matching dishes makes me feel as mature as holding the key to my own place does.
I go upstairs, stopping at the smaller bedroom first. I’d asked the movers to put all my office furniture in it so I can work at home when I need to. It’s there. I’ll need to rearrange it some, but it’s good enough for now.
In the larger bedroom, my bed is set up but bare, so I take a few minutes to open the box marked “linens” and make up the mattress before collapsing on it and staring at the ceiling.
“This is mine.” A small smile forms on my face.
Damn, that sounds good.
I sit up and say it louder, catching my reflection in the mirror of the closet door. “This ismine. This ismyhouse.”
I grin. Still sounds good, so I stand up and shadowbox at my reflection. “Mine, mine, mine. I did this.” Pretty soon I’m jumping on the mattress, the slightly vaulted ceiling giving my six-foot frame plenty of clearance.
I want to do all the homeowner things. I jump down from the bed and go in search of the thermostat so I can change it, no matter what it’s on already. I find it and bump it down a degree just because.
I close all the blinds and strip naked, then walk back through every room of the house. These are the things you get to do in your own house that you can’t do with roommates. Or at least, you can’t if you want to stay on good terms.
I get dressed again because changing the temperature actually made it kind of chilly, then sit on my new leather sofa—which proves to be comfortable—and try to think of other “it’s my house now” things I can do.
Mail. I can check mail. There won’t be any yet, although it’s set up to forward from my old apartment. But I should find out where the mailboxes are.
I dig my keys from my pocket and make a guess that the mailboxes are probably at either end of the complex. I pick the end closest to me to try, and I’m standing there studying the unit numbers on the boxes when an older woman joins me.
She has a parrot on her shoulder.
“Hello.” She has a raspy smoker’s voice.
“Hello,” the parrot echoes.
“I’m Enid Lipsky. You must be new here. I don’t recognize you. Did you just move into number twenty-two?”
“I did. I’m Josh Brower. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You live next to the girls,” she informs me. “Four of them. Couple of them are too sassy, but every one of them is prettier than the last. Are you single?”
“Married to my work,” I say. She has strong matchmaker energy.
“Well, we guessed older when we watched your stuff come in this morning. You’re young.”
“Twenty-nine,” I offer.
“Are you the new neighbor?” another female voice asks.
I turn to see a girl my age—maybe a little younger—walking toward the mailboxes. She’s pretty. Dark hair, olive skin that could be selling face lotion on billboards.
