Page 19 of Badd Love
It's my sanctuary. My safe space. My home.
Boys do not come here. Boys do not cross the threshold. Shit, no boy even knows my address. Or, didn't. When I lived with Damian, we lived in an apartment we shared, new to both of us. When we broke up, it just happened to coincide with the end of the lease, so I let him take over the contract and found this place.
Look, it's not a sexy loft in Echo Park or a Brentwood condo with soaring ceilings and acres of natural light. It's a shitty West Hollywood one-bedroom that I can still barely afford on a cocktail waitress's income. But it'smine.
Dane Badd should not be here.
Yet there he was, lying partly over the threshold, staring up at me with those stupid, big, deep, brown eyes in that stupid, angular, rugged, handsome face.
I'm only panicking a little.
Or a lot.
Turning away, I scanned the apartment for anything embarrassing—which was…oh. Oh boy.
Everything.
It's a marker of how fucked up I was that my place was this messy —I'm normally a clean freak. Yet since coming back less than seventy-some hours ago, I've done precisely dick other than DoorDash myself chimichangas and bingeLove Is Blind. Granted, my version of messy is most people’s version of spotless. But, there were dirty panties on the floor of my bathroom, literally all my bras were hanging off the doorknob of my bedroom, and a Styrofoam clamshell full of day-old tortilla chips was on the kitchen counter.
I think that's all.
Guess we'll find out, because if I know anything about Dane Badd, if there's something embarrassing, he'll find it.
With a grunt, he went from lying down to standing up without using his hands, which is harder than it sounds. He stepped inside and shut the door, and then scanned the place.
Thrift store couch, a tan fake suede thing that sagged in the middle in such a way as to suck you in and never let you go. Mismatched thrift store recliner and love seat. A sweet 72" flat screen that was a Christmas gift to me from Mom and Dad Rigby last year. A truly, shockingly shitty coffee table, a 90s relic of that ugly oak they made literally everything out of—on which was a clutter of clamshells, empty Spindrift cans, and a partially empty box of wine.
Yes, I said box. It's cheap, plentiful, and not half bad. And I'm sad and lonely and desperately fighting off a real, actual emotional, existential crisis.
"Sweet place," he muttered, settling onto the couch. "Whoa. Okay. Guess I'm sitting in the middle." This last was because the couch sucked him down, as it does.
"Sorry about the couch, it has a mind of its own," I said. "And you don't have to pretend. I know it's a shithole."
He picked up a juice glass that had an inch or so of wine in the bottom, sniffed it, sniffed it again, and then shrugged. "Fuck it." He tossed back the dregs and refilled the glass a little more than halfway, and then sat back, kicked his feet up, and grinned at me. "It's a sweet place. Wasn't lying."
"Okay, buddy," I said in a deep, mocking voice.
He frowned at me. "What? It is. It's yours. It's clean, dry, and seems to be free of mice, rats, and roaches." He gestured at my little cluster of succulents on the windowsill across the room. "You've even got some greenery."
"Oh. Uh. Thanks I guess?"
"I still live with Mommy and Daddy, so." He shrugged.
I stood with my back to the door, wondering if he was really that oblivious to my inner turmoil at having him in my space. My hands were clammy, my chest felt tight, my eyes burned, and I wanted to curl up in a ball at the bottom of my bathtub.
Instead, I just sort of stood there like an awkward ditz, staring at the gorgeous male on my couch, who was currently sipping my cheap box wine and inspecting the contents of a bag of Doritos with his hands.
"Make yourself at home," I muttered. "No problem."
He grinned at me, the cocky dingdong. And yes, despite my tumultuous, trauma-addled state of mind, that grin still moistened my panties. "You know what we're gonna do?"
"I shudder to ask," I said, deadpan.
He grabbed my remote, turned on my TV, pulled up Netflix, and turned on a cheesy, early-aughts rom-com. He tossed the remote aside, stuffed my bag of Cool Ranch Doritos in the V of his manspreaded thighs, rested my juice glass full of my wine on his big, hard, beefy thigh, and settled in to watch a movie—on my couch, in my apartment.
What the fuck?
"Um, Dane?"
