Page 20 of Bad Seed
“Columns for fucking or columns of people fucking?” Lucy asks, her voice light as if I can’t hear a twinge of jealousy.
“Balconies, a freaking statue!” Who the hell has a statue on their front lawn that isn’t a flamingo or gnome?
Aubry’s truck takes a left turn and we pass under the house. It’s so big, they built it over the driveway. As you do.
“You’re kidding. Very funny, Sadie. Where are you really?”
I glance down at my phone. “Brookhollow.”
His truck swerves and I start to follow toward a five-car garage. Then I look up.
“Holy pizza rolls!” I cry out. The view is beyond anything I expected. We’re perched high on a hill giving us a view of the endless valley below. Trees rustle in the breeze. Far in the distance are the mountain peaks, blue blending into the darkening sky. But as I stare across the manicured lawn, my brain fizzles out. “There’s a moat.”
“A moat? Like alligators and shit? Are they gonna throw boiling oil on you?”
“A river, there’s a river circling the house right on the edge. Oh my god, it’s so pretty.”
“Hmph.”
This is impossible. A hot guy who saves my life lives in a house so beautiful I’m tearing up? Not in a million years did I think that could happen.
“Well, aren’t you lucky. All cause you can’t remember what’s in baba ganoush,” Lucy harrumphs.
I finally tear my eyes away from the view to find an even better one sliding out of his truck. Aubry waves me on.“You can park over there.” He points to the garage next to him. I do as he asks and sit in silence for a second trying to collect myself. There isn’t much time as Aubry saunters into the open garage.
“I’ve got to go,” I tell my friend. “Talk to you later.”
“There better be pics,” she shouts as I end the call. This time I remember my seat belt and leap out of my car. He stands right outside, arms crossed. “What do you think?”
That you’re trying way too hard to get me into bed. It doesn’t even have to be a bed.
“It’s…incredible.” This house has to cost millions. How can he afford it? “They must pay bouncers really well in Vegas.”
His little pride smile dips. “Not many can do what I did. Come on, kitchen’s this way.”
Instead of heading inside, he loops back around through the backyard oasis. There’s a TV outside. A couch that costs more than my whole bedroom rims the half room. I spy a grill and a pizza oven built into brick just next to a kitchenette. Ceiling high windows stream light as if they were anticipating the arrival of their master.
Aubry tests the door handle of one of the french doors, then opens it up for me. I brace myself for some baroque opulence, a chandelier here, a suit of armor there, but I’m met with…white. Flat. And a whole lot of space.
“Wow,” I say, wincing as my voice bounds back to me a hundred fold. “It’s very spacious.”
He shuts the door. “I’m in the process of filling it.”
Staring around the empty room with a ceiling that stretches into the stars, I ask, “How long does that take?”
“Depends on if we have dessert.”
The innuendo hits me the moment he walks past. In all the panicking about the restaurant I didn’t take the time to properly smell him. I expect a man like him to be all dark noir with edgy base notes likewolverine growlorbare-knuckle brawl.But I lean closer and get a whiff of green. Like a fresh garden in the sunlight, or a salad from one of those places that charges forty bucks.
“Kitchen’s this way,” he says before I can grab his arm and give a deeper sniff.
“Do you do a lot of gardening?” I ask as he flips on the light.
Ah, here’s what I was expecting. Enough kitchen islands to form their own nation. All in granite, of course. One of them has a farmhouse sink built in. The other counters are empty save a box of cereal and a tin of cat food. Aubry approaches the fridge with glass doors to display everything inside that’s already neatly tucked into more dividers.
“I haven’t in a long while,” he answers me, then begins to pull out ingredients. “What about you? Do you like plants?”
“They’re nice to look at, but every time I try to grow anything in my place, it withers. Or it gets moldy then withers. Or it falls off my desk, then gets moldy, then withers.”
