Page 41 of The Problem with Dating

Ihated the grump next door.

I wasn’t one to use the word hate often, but it was there, and it was strong. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to avoid being in his presence.

The number of times I left my apartment building to avoid him was unreasonable. Yet, still, I always bumped into him in the lobby of the apartment building, the mailroom, or the elevator.

Late one afternoon, after coming home from dinner with my sisters, he stepped into the elevator at the same time as me, and a large group of people followed, shoving Alex and me into the elevator corner, beside one another. Alex called out his floor number for the group to hit, and I did the same. His arm brushed slightly against mine, and I grumbled under my breath at the feeling of his touch. He grumbled back because I was almost certain that was the only sound his stupid mouth could make.

Grumble, grumble, grumpy annoyingly attractive man, grumble, grumble.

I hated that he smelled so good all the time, too. Mean people should smell like a sewer and dirty diapers, but his scents resembled cocoa butter, honey, and oak trees. I loved cocoa butter. I loved honey. I loved, loved, loved oak trees.These are a few of my favorite things.If I were a wild woman—which I wasn’t—I’d want to snuggle closer to him in the elevator to breathe him in. I’d want to press my nose to his neck and take a ridiculous inhalation, moan against his moisturized skin, and ask him what kind of soap he showered with. I’d want to wrap myself within the fabrics of his clothing, ask about his fabric softener choices, and mark him the same way Cocoa marked all my clothes as her territory.

That was if I were wild.

Which I wasn’t.

I was simply Sane Jane. Nothing was weird about me at all.Totallynormal. Sometimes I had bizarre thoughts, was all.

The sane part of me didn’t want to smell him at all. Whenever I saw his permanent scowl, I’d want to punch him in his gut.

His rock-hard gut.

I noticed his abs the other day when he ran shirtless around the neighborhood. No evil person should’ve looked that fit. It was a pain in my behind how good-looking that man had been. I bet his abs smelled like cocoa butter, too. I bet he lapped handfuls of lotion across every crease of his body in the morning and night. His skin looked too glimmery for him not to have a solid routine.

Stupid Alex and his stupid body.

As he pressed up against me in the elevator, his biceps brushed against my skin, sending tingles down to places in my body that shouldn’t tingle from his touch.

“Stop touching me, Goldie,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“I’m not touching you,” I replied. Alex glanced down at my arm, resting against his, then back at me. I rolled my eyes. “You’re touching me!” I whisper-shouted.

“You’re making out with my forearm,” he argued.

I ripped my touch away from his and turned slightly to tuck deeper into the elevator corner. “I would never make out with a forearm like your stupid forearm!” I replied, disgusted by the idea of it. “You have awful forearms.”

“My forearms are fine.”

“Your forearms are hairy! And ugly. And stupid.”

“Forearms can’t be stupid.”

“I thought the same until I saw yours.”

He arched an eyebrow. “You’re very immature.”

“Only to people I hate. And I hate you, Alex Ramírez.”

“That’s not very nice of you,” he sarcastically muttered.

Oh, this man made my skin boil. “Yeah, my niceness leaves the building when my water dish shatters into a million pieces.”

“It was just a water di—”

“It was not just a water dish!” I shouted, making everyone turn to look my way. I cleared my throat as my nerves hit the pit of my stomach. I smoothed my hands over the fabric of my shirt as the elevator opened to the fourth floor. Everyone hurried out except for Alex and me.

He moved to the left side of the elevator. I stayed on the right.

The elevator opened to the sixteenth floor.

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