She reaches an apartment and opens the door, never even looking back to see if I’m following her. Once I reach the top of the stairs, I pause outside the apartment and look down at the fern sitting unaffected by the heat in a planter outside the door. Its leaves are lush and green as if they’re giving summer the middle finger with their refusal to succumb to the heat. I smile at the plant, somewhat proud of it. Then I frown with the realization that I’m envious of the resilience of a plant.
I shake my head, look away, then take a hesitant step inside the unfamiliar apartment. The layout is similar to my own apartment, only this one is a double split bedroom with four total bedrooms. My and Tori’s apartment only had two bedrooms, but the living rooms are the same size.
The only other noticeable difference is that I don’t see any lying, backstabbing, bloody-nosed whores standing in this one. Nor do I see any of Tori’s dirty dishes or laundry lying around.
The girl sets my suitcase down beside the door, then steps aside and waits for me to . . . well, I don’t know what she’s waiting for me to do.
She rolls her eyes and grabs my arm, pulling me out of the doorway and further into the apartment. “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you even speak?” She begins to close the door behind her but pauses and turns around, wide-eyed. She holds her finger up in the air. “Wait,” she says. “You’re not . . .” She rolls her eyes and smacks herself in the forehead. “Oh, my God, you’re deaf.”
Huh? What the hell is wrong with this girl? I shake my head and start to answer her, but she interrupts me.
“God, Bridgette,” she mumbles to herself. She rubs her hands down her face and groans, completely ignoring the fact that I’m shaking my head. “You’re such an insensitive bitch sometimes.”
Wow. This girl has some serious issues in the people-skills department. She’s sort of a bitch, even though she’s making an effort not to be one. Now that she thinks I’m deaf. I don’t even know how to respond. She shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in herself, then looks straight at me.
“I . . . HAVE . . . TO . . . GO . . . TO . . . WORK . . . NOW!” she yells very loudly and painfully slowly. I grimace and step back, which should be a huge clue that I can hear her practically yelling, but she doesn’t notice. She points to a door at the end of the hallway. “RIDGE . . . IS . . . IN . . . HIS . . . ROOM!”
Before I have a chance to tell her she can stop yelling, she leaves the apartment and closes the door behind her.
I have no idea what to think. Or what to do now. I’m standing, soaking wet, in the middle of an unfamiliar apartment, and the only person besides Hunter and Tori whom I feel like punching is now just a few feet away in another room. And speaking of Ridge, why the hell did he send his psycho Hooters girlfriend to get me? I take out my phone and have begun to text him when his bedroom door opens.
He walks out into the hallway with an armful of blankets and a pillow. As soon as he makes eye contact with me, I gasp. I hope it’s not a noticeable gasp. It’s just that I’ve never actually seen him up close before, and he’s even better-looking from just a few feet away than he is from across an apartment courtyard.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen eyes that can actually speak. I’m not sure what I mean by that. It just seems as if he could shoot me the tiniest glance with those dark eyes of his, and I’d know exactly what they needed me to do. They’re piercing and intense and—oh, my God, I’m staring.
The corner of his mouth tilts up in a knowing smile as he passes me and heads straight for the couch.
Despite his appealing and slightly innocent-looking face, I want to yell at him for being so deceitful. He shouldn’t have waited more than two weeks to tell me. I would have had a chance to plan all this out a little better. I don’t understand how we could have had two weeks’ worth of conversations without his feeling the need to tell me that my boyfriend and my best friend were screwing.