Since I spent last night tossing and turning, I’m mostly tired and cranky.
And I really don’t have the patience for any of the customers. By the time I get home, I just want to soak in the bath for the next hour and forget everything that’s happened to me. I’ve already got Henry’s Christmas gifts stashed away in the closet, so I don’t need to worry about that. Although I’m sure the stuff I got for him isn’t going to be nearly as cool as whatever Greg bought.
I can’t believe I don’t even get to spend Christmas Day with my son.
And the cherry on the top? When I get to the mailroom, Jeremy is there.
I’ve lived here two months and never once run into the guy. And now, when he’s about the last person I want to see, he’s standing in the mailroom, easing a stack of letters from his box. His aqua eyes widen behind his glasses when he sees me, then he quickly looks away, like he’s never seen anything so fascinating as his mailbox.
I consider coming back later, but I haven’t checked my mail in about a week, and I don’t want my electricity to get shut off. Besides, I have a right to be here. He’s the child-hating Grinch who should be embarrassed by his behavior.
Although admittedly, he might have been telling the truth about Henry flipping him off. And I could see how that might not have endeared the boy to him.
Jeremy’s got his mail in a stack on the marble table in the center of the room, and he’s sifting through the letters. He pauses and frowns at one catalogue. “How do you think J. Jill got me on their mailing list?”
For a moment, a laugh bubbles in my throat at the idea of the fashionable women’s apparel shop sending their catalogues to Jeremy, of all people. But I push it back down.
“Good thing they didn’t send you any Christmas catalogues,” I say, “since you hate Christmas.”
He looks up sharply. “I don’t… hate… Christmas.”
He can barely get out the lie.
“You made them get rid of the Christmas tree in the lobby,” I point out.
His ears turn pink. “I didn’t make them get rid of it. But… well, the cord was a tripping hazard.”
“Oh, really?”
The red in his ears spreads into his neck. “Well, I tripped on it. So I’d say yes.”
He tripped on it? Oh. I didn’t know that.
“But they didn’t have to get rid of the tree entirely,” I say. “Joe said you went on this whole rant about how if they had the tree, they had to celebrate every holiday.”
“I don’t remember what I said.” He lifts his head, no trace of apology in his voice. “But that tree was ridiculous. It was gigantic and had all these flashing lights. It was… ostentatious.”
“Ostentatious?”
He nods firmly. “If you love Christmas, go to church or something. What does a giant tree have to do with Christmas anyway?”
“It was a beautiful tree.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Whatever you say.”
We glare at each other for a moment. I think it’s safe to say we are never going to go out on a date together. Ever.
I pull out my mail, which I can already tell is mostly bills. I feel sick at the thought of it. I wanted to keep Henry at the same school, but Manhattan is so damn expensive. I don’t know how much longer I can afford to live here.
Jeremy tries to close his mailbox, but someone has hung a wreath on the wall above the boxes, and it’s just slightly in the way of his box. He makes an attempt to close the box, but the wreath blocks him. He slides it over with his left hand, but before he can close the box, it slides back into place. After trying this two times, he reaches out, yanks the wreath off the wall, and throws it in the trash with a resounding thump.
“That’s not yours to throw away,” I point out to him.
“It was blocking my mailbox.”
“You could have put it on the table.”
He shrugs and slams his mailbox closed.
I retrieve the wreath from the garbage. It’s not as beautiful as the tree, but it’s nice. It has a big red bow and is decorated with an assortment of flowers, leaves, and berries. I happen to notice a piece of mistletoe hanging off the edge of the wreath and almost laugh. Mistletoe is a sad reminder of the fact that I haven’t kissed a man since Greg and I were separated.
I look up at Jeremy, who is gathering his mail into a cloth bag so he can carry it back to his apartment. I notice his lips, surrounded by a day’s growth of a beard. A few days ago, all I could think about was what it would be like to kiss those lips. In spite of everything, if he crossed the room and pressed them onto mine, I would let him. I would welcome it.
He’s still very, very sexy.
He grabs the bag with his mail, picks up his crutch, and limps in my direction. My heart speeds up as he gets closer to me. Close enough that I could reach out and put my hand on his chest. Which, for a moment, I’m incredibly tempted to do.
He looks at me with those blue-green eyes. “Noelle?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
“You’re blocking my path.” He glances down at the crutch he’s holding. “You think you could give me a little room or something?”
“Oh.” My cheeks burn as he rolls his eyes. “Right. Sorry.”
I step aside for him. And then he pushes past me to leave the mailroom without saying goodbye.
Chapter 39: Jeremy
I almost break my neck on the way to throwing out my garbage.
The incinerator is just a short walk from my door—right next to the elevators. I try to take out the trash as frequently as I can so the bags are relatively small. I don’t think I’d do well hauling a huge bag of trash down the hallway. I’ve never attempted it, but some things you just know what will happen without doing it. Like I know eating an uncooked turnip would taste bad. And before I tossed that wreath in the trash, I knew Noelle would be livid about it.
But I did it anyway.
Or maybe that’s why I did it. Who knows? It’s not like I spent a lot of time analyzing it.
In exchange, Noelle has instructed her son to kill me. Or that’s what I’ve deduced, based on the array of toy cars abandoned right outside my door. If I stepped on any one of them, I’d lose my balance and fall on my ass. I’m decent at falling, but one of these days, I’m going to fall the wrong way.
Lucky me—I spot the cars before I go flying. And I forget all about taking out my trash in a timely fashion and march on over to Noelle’s apartment to give her and that kid of hers a piece of my mind. They can’t deny anything this time—I’ve got evidence.
I bang on the door a few times, half-expecting Noelle not to answer. If she didn’t, I would have left another note. And complained to the building manager.
Well, I’m not sure about that last part. I don’t want to get her kicked out. I mean, she’s a single mom. She doesn’t need that.
In any case, the door swings open, and Noelle is standing there, a laptop tucked under her right arm. I’ve always seen her at work or coming back from work and once dressed up for our would-be date, so this is the first time I’ve seen her in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans cling to her butt and her thighs, and the T-shirt perfectly outlines her breasts. She’s not wearing any makeup at all, as far as I can tell. And she looks so fucking sexy, I almost forget to breathe.
“What is it this time?” she snaps at me.
Christ, she looks really sexy when she’s angry.
“Your kid left his toy cars in front of my door,” I shoot back at her. “I could have broken my neck.”
She rolls her eyes. “No, he didn’t.”
“Oh yeah? You want me to show you?”
“The cars aren’t Henry’s.” She glances behind her at the empty apartment. “He’s still at his father’s house. He hasn’t been home since Saturday night.”
“Oh.” The toys don’t belong to Henry? Does that mean a second kid is trying to kill me? Great. “Well, just make sure he doesn’t mess around in front of my door.”
“Belie
ve me,” Noelle snorts. “The last thing either of us wants is to piss off Mr. Grinch.”
Mr. Grinch. Ouch. Maybe I deserve it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.
“Anyway.” She reaches out to yank her sleek black coat from the rack next to the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go to the Apple store, and they’re closing in…” She looks down at her watch. “Five minutes. Shit.”
That explains why she’s holding a Mac. “Computer problems?”
“Gosh, you’re smart.” She looks at her watch again and sighs. “Forget it. Anyway, goodbye, Jeremy. At least until you find something else to complain about.”
“Hey, wait.” I lift my hand from the handle of my crutch to keep her from shutting the door in my face. “What’s wrong with your computer?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “It does this weird thing whenever I try to boot it up.”
“Do you want me to take a look at it?”
The words are out of my mouth before I’ve fully vetted them by my brain. I probably shouldn’t have offered—she hates me and I’m sure she doesn’t want me in her apartment. But I can’t help it. I know computers better than anything. Like I said to her, they’re my superpower.
“Do you know how to fix a Mac?”
“Is that a serious question?”
She has that wary look in her brown eyes but she steps aside to let me enter. And naturally, I almost trip and fall on my goddamn face within two seconds, because her apartment is a mess. If the hallway outside my apartment is a hazard, this place should be condemned.
Noelle notices me struggling and bends down to pick up some things from the floor. I can’t entirely fault her, because she’s a working single mom and I’m sure she doesn’t have a ton of free time to clean up, but I’m going to break my neck walking through her living room. It’s a relief when I plop myself down on her sofa without incident.
She wrings her hands together as I attempt to boot up her computer. “You really think you can fix it?”
“Relax. I’ll fix it.”
“You’re awfully confident.”
“If the guys at the genius bar at Apple can fix it, then I can fix it, okay?” I look up at Noelle, who is hovering over me. “Go do something else. I’ll take care of it.”
She blinks her brown eyes at me a few times then shrugs. “Fine.”
She stands there an extra few seconds, like she’s got something else to say, but she doesn’t. Instead, she stalks out of the living room, and I hear the door to her bedroom slam shut.
Chapter 40: Noelle
I’m embarrassed to admit the first thing I do when I go to my bedroom is check myself out in the full length mirror I’ve got in there.
Jeremy caught me on my way out, or else I never would have opened the door for him. When I see myself in the mirror, I grimace. My hair is an absolute fright, I don’t have on a stitch of makeup, and I’m wearing some ratty jeans and a T-shirt. Even though it’s never going to happen between me and him, that doesn’t mean I want him to see me like this.
But then again, I can’t change at this point. He’ll know I changed for his benefit.
Why am I obsessing over this? I am such a loser.
I can’t say I’m not grateful he’s having a go at my laptop. I’ve been trying to boot it up for the last hour and I kept getting an error message. I have zero computer skills, so I didn’t even try to fix it myself. Greg was always the same way—he was confident about a lot of things, but always very intimidated by the computer.
Jeremy seems so sure he can fix it. I hate to admit how sexy that confidence is.
But as I think about it, I don’t feel great about him having full, unfettered access to my hard drive. My whole life is on there. I mean, I’m not going to say I have porn in my internet browser history, but I’m not going to say I don’t have porn. I’m only human!
And what if he finds out I’ve been semi-stalking my ex-husband’s girlfriend on Facebook?
Oh God, what if he finds out that I Googled “Jeremy Grieder”?
“Fixed it!” Jeremy yells.
I race into the living room, where Jeremy is using his left hand to lower the laptop onto the coffee table. He fumbles for the crutch he leaned against the couch.
“That was quick,” I say.
His blue-green eyes briefly meet mine before he looks away. “Yeah, well…”
I sit down in front of my laptop to verify he has, in fact, repaired it. I see the icons on the screen, indicating he managed to boot it up, which is more than I’ve been able to do in the last hour. I try the mouse, which doesn’t seem to be frozen anymore. It looks like he really did fix it.
“Thanks,” I say. “I guess.”
I don’t know why I felt a need to add the “I guess.” The guy helped me out. He saved me a trip to the Apple store, which would have probably been closed before I even got there. But he also hates Christmas and called my son a brat.
“You’re welcome,” he says. “I guess.”
It’s so much easier when he’s a dick.
“Anyway,” I mumble, “I’ll see you around. In the elevator. The mailroom. Incinerator room.”
He’s back to glaring at me. “Yeah. Sounds great.”
I can almost feel the resentment emanating from him. I probably should have thanked him more nicely for helping me, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. Not because I’m not grateful—I am. I really am. But because every time I look at his blue-green eyes and tousled hair and the sexy scar over his left eyebrow, I can’t think straight. On top of that, he’s got two days’ worth of stubble that’s driving me a little nuts. All I want to do is fling my body at him and press my lips against his. I desperately want to feel the burn of his beard against my skin, but I know that would be an awful mistake.
Besides, he’s not looking at me like he wants to kiss me. He’s looking at me like he wants to slam a door in my face.
God, he’s hot when he’s pissed off.
He limps over to the door, which I hold open for him to walk through. He turns back to look at me one last time, and I catch something in his eyes. Something that makes me want to invite him back inside.
But then it passes.
“Hope you figure out who the inconsiderate brat is who left the cars in the hallway,” I tell him.
“Yeah…”
“You should put up a sign on your door. ‘No fun within fifteen feet of this apartment.’”
“Or inside the apartment,” he adds.
I snort. “Well, whose fault is that?”
Jeremy stares at me, shaking his head like he doesn’t know what to say. “Goodbye, Noelle.”
“Bye, Jeremy.”
“Merry Christmas,” I throw in, because I know it will bug him.
His eyes meet mine for a split second before he looks away. “Merry Christmas to you too.”
Chapter 41: Jeremy
It’s around four in the afternoon that I hear the pounding on my door.
It takes me a few moments to figure out what day it is. I haven’t left my building since Saturday night when I got the whiskey. (I dumped the remainder of the bottle down the sink.) The days are already starting to blend together like they do when I don’t leave my building for long chunks of time. But it hasn’t been that long. Maybe… three days? So that makes it…
Tuesday. It must be Tuesday.
I consider ignoring the knocking, but I ordered some groceries, which I desperately need now that I am trapped by the snow. I grab my crutch, haul myself to my feet, and limp over to the door. I check the peephole and see nobody.
What the hell? Am I now being subjected to a game of ding dong ditch? Is there a flaming bag of shit outside my door?
I yank the door open, not entirely sure what I’m going to find. I’m a little taken aback when I see Henry Moore standing there, looking…
Well, not contrite, exactly. But not like he’s about to flip me off. Or leave a bag of dog shit outside my door.
“Hi,”
I say. I bet he wants his ball back. “What is it?”
Henry looks up at me with his big brown eyes. I suddenly realize how much his eyes look like Noelle’s. Actually, he looks a lot like her. If she were thirty years younger and a boy.
He squeezes his little fists together. “I was just wondering…”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“If maybe you could ask my mom out on a date again?”
My mouth falls open. It’s the last thing I expected the kid to say.
“You…” I shake my head, trying to parse this one out. “You want me to ask your mother out on a date?”
“Uh huh.”
“But… you hate me.”
He doesn’t deny it. “Yeah, but she was really happy when you were going to go out on that date. She’s never happy anymore. And made herself look all pretty and smell good.”
Your mother is always pretty and always smells good. I don’t say that though. I also don’t tell him that my impending date with Noelle made me the happiest I’d been in a long time too. Even though I was having a shitty day, it was all okay because I had that to look forward to. And then I didn’t.
But I think that ship has sailed.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea, Henry,” I explain patiently. “I’m not sure your mom and I are right for each other.”
“Why not?” His brow scrunches up. “You both like each other.”
“Well, she’s mad at me.”
“Why is she mad at you?”
“Because…” I don’t want to tell the kid that most of it has to do with him, even if it’s true. “Because I took your ball.”
“I’m sorry I threw the ball at you.” He hangs his head. “I’ll pay for the thing I broke with my saved up allowance.”
Wow, an apology. I can’t believe it. “That’s okay.”
“I can pay for it,” he insists. “I’ve got a lot of money saved up.”
“Oh yeah? How much?”
“Six dollars!”
How the Grinch Stole My Heart Page 17