Seventeen. High. Not great, but not too awful, either. And the way I’m twitching with a flash of memory of what Aly was doing to herself, I’m going to bring it down another few points, so I should be good. Exercise is good for the body, after all.
When I get back to my building, the elevator doors are open and I end up sprinting to get inside. The doors take their time closing as I lean forward and jab the already lit-up number six just to make sure I get to my destination.
There’s a babe in the corner opposite me. And not a babe as in overdone makeup, orange tan, tits plumped up by fake bras. No. She’s an understated babe that’s most likely a lady on the street but a freak in the sheets. The kind of refinement that’s hidden under jeans, clad in Chuck Taylors and wearing a t-shirt that says ‘My heart belongs to Ponyboy Curtis’.
Who the fuck is Ponyboy Curtis? Some little boy belting out pop songs?
Christ, she has glasses, she has glasses. Not those awful ones that cover half the face and make chicks look like they’re stuck in the eighties. No, just sleek brown ones that fit her face nicely and make me want to see her in a skirt and some heels. To top it all off, she’s reading a book.
Her index finger is halfway to her mouth (great fucking mouth), and her eyebrows are popped up high over the rim of her glasses. With a quick move, the top knuckle of her pointer finger is in her mouth, a flash of teeth biting down on the flesh.
I’m in agony, and I really need to fuck.
And this babe doesn’t even know I exist right now. I’ve taken a backseat to a book – must be some book. It’s thick and looks like she’s two-thirds in. Serious reading, then, not this Fifty Shades shit Aly is always going on about. Although, it is fun when she starts reading scenes out to me and makes me do whatever the guy in the book does. I don’t know much about literature, but I do know people, and that fucker is beyond help.
I clear my throat without thinking better of it. Catching a quick glance at the numbers going up, up, up, I grin when I belatedly realize we live on the same floor. She still hasn’t looked at me, and I frown.
What kind of book is she reading?
We both get off the elevator, me walking ahead so I don’t have to look at her and know what I’m missing. A girl like that, smarter than her own good, well, she deserves someone who’s at a hundred percent. I’m never at a hundred percent.
Diabetes has a tendency of chipping away at you until you’re the ghost of the person you used to be. Ten years after being diagnosed and I feel every single day in those years. Not today, no wallowing in my own stink of what could have been.
First order of business, I’m getting laid – once I shower.
I make my way to the door, fishing my keys from my pocket, only to catch a glimpse of the babe’s backside view on her to way to her door – right next to mine.
Jack. Pot.
I watch, as she doesn’t have her keys out, and see her continue to read. Jesus, this chick has a death wish. What if some asshole decided to force his way into her apartment? He wouldn’t even have to be quiet about stepping closer to her, or saying anything – her mind is somewhere else, completely captured by a few hundred words on a page.
My stomach twists when I think of someone hurting her while her nose is stuck in a book. I’ve spent fucking two whole minutes with her and I’m passing judgements. But shit, she needs to be paying more attention. Fine, the building we live in, not a total shit-hole, but people don’t walk up to you and explain their bad intentions.
I wait for her to fish her keys out of her pocket, never taking her eyes of what she’s reading. I’m going to have to ask her about it sometime, maybe in the elevator. I only step into my apartment when I hear the turning of her key in the lock. Man, the way the sound carries in the hall, I feel like goddamn Superman, enhanced hearing and all.
Erasing the babe from the elevator outta my mind, I head to the shower and fire off a quick text that I’ll be seeing Aly in a few. Towel around my waist, rubbing at my short hair to get the water out, I move about the apartment, picking up shit Matty left all over the fucking floor.
No matter how many times I tell that kid, he just doesn’t wanna listen to me. It’s like his mother’s spirit is haunting me in a four-year-old form. Three years after her death and I’m still pissed off. Rabid with it, saliva-frothing crazy with it.
It sits in my gut like a live fire, burning everything I am, everything I have in me, and taunts me with the image of her face on the little kid she gave birth to. Matty.
Fuck.
Just fuck.
I pick up dirty clothes off the floor, arrange my meagre belongings into a small semblance of order. S’all I have in my apartment – what little my life has brought me to this point. You can’t really tell if I live here, but you know a little kid does, and I’m not okay with that.