Page 34 of The Tenant
Whitney is wearing her usual pair of straight-cut blue jeans, although this time she’s wearing a nicer top, which is black and chic and sexy. She looks…well, she looks great. I wonder if she has a date. It’s somehow hard to imagine Whitney on a date though. If she had sex with a guy, she’d probably have to devour him after the mating ritual was over.
“Hello, Blake,” she says.
“Going somewhere?” I ask.
“Maybe.”
She winks at me and pulls a compact out of her purse as well as a tube of lipstick. She pops open the compact and applies a layer of lipstick to her top and bottom lips. As the color glides on, I recognize it immediately.
It’s the same exact color that was on my shirt collar.
“Where did you get that lipstick?” The question is out before I can stop myself.
She puckers her lips and smiles sweetly at me. “And why is that any of your business?”
I imagine her slipping into my bedroom and rubbing the makeup over my shirt collars, just hoping Krista would notice and I would get in trouble. What is wrong with this woman? What on earth did I do to her to make her hate me this much? Why would she try to sabotage my relationship with Krista?
“You’re despicable,” I spit at her.
She drops the compact back into her purse, the smile now having vanished from her blood-red lips. “Excuseme? I’m despicable because I put on some lipstick?”
“Don’t try to deny what you did.”
Whitney slips the tube of lipstick back into her purse and zips it up. “Maybe you should focus less on me and more on not screwing up your new gig.”
I glare at her. “My job is going fine, thank you very much.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Yeah? Hard to imagine. You know, considering what happened at your last company…”
Considering what happened at my last company? What the hell doesthatmean? What does she know?
Whitney glances down at her watch. “Anyway, I better get going. I don’t want to be late.”
“Wait.” I reach for her wrist, but she shakes me off roughly. “What are you talking about? Why did you just say that to me?”
“Oh, Blake,” she sighs. “You should be more worried aboutyourself. You look like shit, you know.”
With those words, she pushes past me and breezes out of the house. God, I wish I had the money to kick her out for good. Better yet, I wish I was never in a position to need her in the first place.
I rub my fingertips over my eyes. Do I really look like shit? I’m half tempted to check out my appearance in the bathroom mirror, but I have a feeling I won’t like what I see. The lack of sleep is really getting to me.
Why did she make that comment about my job? Before she started hating me, Whitney and I had a few nice conversations, but I never told her the reason I got fired. Does she know? Or is she just toying with me? There’s no way she could possibly know the details about my termination. Unless…
My stomach drops. Is it possible that Whitney moving into my house isn’t just a horrible coincidence? Is it possible that she somehow engineered all this from the beginning?
Has she been out to get me from the second she moved in?
21
My head is spinning.Could Whitney have moved here for the explicit purpose of turning my life into a living hell?
Admittedly, I committed a faux pas when I yelled at her for using my soap and cereal, and I regret it. But I haven’t done a damn thing to warrant the way she’s treated me. It does feel suspiciously like she’s had it out for me since day one.
Or maybe evenbeforeday one. Maybe she’s the entire reason I lost my job in the first place and needed to take in a tenant.
But how could that be? How would she even know Wayne Vincent? And even if she did—even if such a thing were possible—why? Why would she set me up that way? Why would she want to worm her way into my house?
Is there a reason Whitney Cross has it out for me that I don’t know about?
