Page 148 of You're so Bad

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Chapter One

Danny

My safe space has been commandeered by a hungover pirate.

If that sounds overly dramatic, then let me assure you: it’s mostly true.

It’s Monday, and my new roommate, Mira, rolled up in her moving truck at around noon, still dressed in her Halloween costume from last night and smelling like the bar she owns. She overslept, and her movers were on a tight schedule, so they couldn’t wait for her to get changed.

She didn’t have to hire movers. I work from home as often as not, so I could have helped her. I know my friend Lucas Burke would have stepped in too. Burke is marrying her sister, Delia, which is why Mira is joining me in my nepotism apartment. She needed a place to live after a messy breakup with her ex, and he’d already planned on moving out of the apartment we’d shared for over a decade. He owns this place, and he’s been letting me live here rent free for years because he knows I came from nothing and will probably die in debt. Sure, I got groceries and cooked and helped him with tech support, but those favors were nothing in comparison to what he was doing for me. So I couldn’t exactly complain when he asked if Mira could move in. Instead, I put my foot down and insisted that if he wasn’t here to benefit from my cooking and tech expertise, I would be paying him a fair rent or I would be moving out.

He agreed, but he set the rent.

It’s not fair—to him, to be clear. The apartment is a loft in downtown Asheville, and if he sold it, he’d be adding more millions to his trust fund.

Then again, I have to live withher.

I haven’t spent much time with Mira, but she’s loud and outspoken and has every mark of a person who’s going to destroy my peace.

She’s already started, in fact. She turned down our offers of moving help, saying she’s Mira a woman who takes care of her own business. My little sister Ruthie’s the same way, so I wasn't thrown by it, but I felt like one lazy asshole while I watched the movers lug her stuff upstairs and into Burke’s empty room. There wasn’t much of it, just some boxes and a few suitcases.

It’s funny how a person’s life can be condensed to so little.

If I had to move out of this apartment tomorrow, and maybe I will, I wouldn’t even have that much. It’s enough to humble a man.

Now, she’s in her room, unpacking at a guess, and I’m sitting at my desk in the corner of the living room. Staring at my computer without actually working on anything, my headphones over my ears.

A throat clears. I stare at my computer screen for a second, hoping she just has allergies. But it happens again. Sighing, I turn to look at her.

She changed out of her pirate costume and is wearing animal-print leggings and an oversized shirt a shade of pink that makes my eyes want to close. Her hair is black, her eyes the color of a glass of whiskey, and she wears eye makeup that reminds me of my sister’s cat. She’s hot, which doesn’t make her presence more welcome. If anything, the opposite is true.

It’s been long enough that it doesn't take much to make me feel sexually frustrated, and the way those leggings curve over her thighs and ass is making me…uncomfortable.

“It’s a little dark out here, don’t you think?” she asks. “Can I put my SAD lamp over there?”

She points to the corner where my favorite armchair sits. It doesn’t know what indignities lie in store for it.

“What’s a SAD lamp?” More importantly, does this mean she plans on claiming the armchair?

“It’s for Seasonal Affective Disorder.” She lowers into my armchair with a loud oomph, as if she can’t even sit quietly. I try not to flinch. Now my chair’s going to smell like her. “The light’s already starting to change. I can’t take it when it’s only bright for five hours of the day.” She waves at one of the large plate glass windows overlooking Asheville as if it offended her. “Makes me go nuts.”

“You wake up late,” I tell her, feeling compelled to speak the obvious. “If you want it to stay bright for longer, try getting up in the morning.”

She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Where’s the fun in that?”

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