Page 2 of Clean Out of Luck

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not the one climbing up a bookshelf. This is the kind of safety thing people warn parents with toddlers about. It’s safe to say you have the ridiculous part covered.”

“Did you come over here to annoy me?”

He grins fully at that. “You caught me. How did you know?”

“Because it’s your life’s mission to annoy me,” I shoot back as I attempt to climb down the next shelf height.

“Well, how am I doing?” He asks as he places a steadying hand on the bookshelf and one on my leg.

“You’re a smashing success,” I grunt as I let go of the top of the shelf, expecting to fall to the ground in a graceless heap.

Except Wade doesn’t let that happen to me. He catches me around the waist and holds me close to him as he rests his other hand against the shelf to stop it from wobbling back and forth.

My arms flail around in the air for a moment before he slides me down to the ground in front of him. Somehow, I manage to hang on to the lightbulb. I turn around and point a finger at his incredibly firm chest with my free hand. “I didn’t mean for you to lift me down, silly goose.”

Wade holds up a hand in surrender, and my eyes land on the ring he’s wearing on his right hand. It looks good on him. “First of all, I think I’d be a silly gander, not a goose.”

I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“Second, I didn’t mean to offend you by being nice. I’d hate for something like that to happen,” he says drily.

I laugh and rest a hand against his arm. “Being nice doesn’t come naturally to you. That’s why I get suspicious.”

He chuckles at that and shakes his head. “Heard anything from Phoenix lately?”

I frown as I nod. “Only a couple of texts. I think he’s busy at his new job.”

My brother is a lawyer. And a good one at that. He was offered a job in Boston to train under the DA. Since he’s wanting to become the assistant district attorney here in Serendipity Springs, he didn’t even sleep on the job offer. He simply packed his bags, moved to Boston, and deserted me—and Wade—a week ago. I knew Wade would be sad when Phoenix left, but I didn’t expect him to show up this soon to ask about him. Phoenix is only a train ride away. It’s not like he’s halfway around the world.

I don’t know what happened when my brother told him he was leaving, but I’m fairly certain they had some kind of fight. Phoenix made an offhand comment to me that he “wished Wade would get over himself” but refused to explain what their disagreement was about.

They’re both adult men with cell phones, although maybe they don’t realize they’re capable of using them. I’ve talked to my brother once in the week he’s been gone, and Wade didn’t bother to text me a warning that he was stopping by.

“Want something to eat?” I ask as I stare up at Wade. All of a sudden, I realize I still have a hand resting on his very firm bicep. I jerk away as if burned and give a brittle smile.

He raises his eyebrows as if I just did something weird. But doing weird stuff is the story of my life.

He glances curiously around the apartment. “So this is your home?”

I shrug, walk to the small kitchen, and open one of the three cupboard doors. I pull out a box of peanut butter cereal and then reach into my fridge to grab some sliced cheese and deli meat for Wade.

“Isn’t it cute?” I say as I wash my hands, then pour my bowl of cereal and make a plate for Wade.

“It’s in the basement…”

I ignore him as I arrange some of the deli meat and cheese on a plate and slide it across the small island toward him.

My apartment might be in the basement of The Serendipity, an old apartment building, but I happen to think it’s quite charming.

When I was a kid, my mom would drive me by The Serendipity on the way to piano lessons, and it always seemed like a place with so much personality. I have one of those core memories of my eight-year-old self telling my mom I would live there someday.

It might seem silly to some people, but I’ve been absolutely thrilled to get to live here. There’s just something special about this place. It feels like home to me—even if it’s a home in the basement. The ceilings are lower down here, but with higher windows, I still get quite a bit of natural light. The windows look out toward a small park adjacent to the building, so I even get to see some pretty foliage andblooming flowers now that it’s spring.

“I like it,” I say firmly as I pour the milk over the cereal. The Serendipity used to be an old college dorm that was eventually converted into regular apartments. It has quite the history, and local lore runs rampant about it. My favorite stories are the ones that talk about the building as though it’s capable of magic.

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with your apartment,” Wade says as he pulls out the bar stool with a loud scrape. He sinks down, and it creaks beneath his weight. He’s tall and broad and lifts weights heavier than him. He makes my apartment seem much smaller than it really is. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

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