Just when he’d thought this whole Last Man Standing bet couldn’t get worse. Emotions? Feelings? Small talk? Doing nothing? LOVE?!? This was pure nightmare fuel. Were they trying to sabotage the bet in his favor? There was no way this would fly. He was not that guy. He’d never be that guy.
NASH: I was ready to go another direction, but Morgan convinced me that this would be your downfall. Get ready to fall for the yin to your yang.
GRIFF: Not gonna happen.
DIXON: Morgan says this is the kind of woman you need in your life.
Yeah. No. This was how to send him over the edge.
He liked his life. He had his job. He had his million and one hobbies. He had his family. He didn’t need anything or anyone else. Additional variables would just complicate things. Griff was a simple man—not simple in the head like his father had always told him, but content. That was enough. He didn’t need anything—or anyone—else.
GRIFF: My little sister doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
NASH: Wow. More than four words at a time? You’re getting chattier by the moment.
GRIFF: Dickheads.
DIXON: Back to one-word answers, huh?
He was going to kill Dixon for putting him in the position where Nash got to write his bio as well as plan all his dates.
NASH: Like it or not, this is your dating bio. You have to post it.
GRIFF: I’m at the gym.
DIXON: So?
He checked the time on the digital clock above the locker room door. It never had the right time, but it was the only clock his corner man Eggsy would use—and according to it, Griff had seventy-five seconds to get out to the ring.
GRIFF: Hard to text and box at the same time.
NASH: And yet you’re texting right now.
GRIFF: eBay auction. Just won.
He got up from the bench and opened the locker that had been his at Vera’s Gym for the past ten years. It didn’t have a lock or personal photos—only his name written in black Sharpie on a piece of beige masking tape stuck to the front of the door. His phone buzzed again.
NASH: Post the Bramble bio.
GRIFF: Gotta go.
He put both phones and the iPad in his locker and grabbed his boxing gloves. Avoidance was not a solution but, at the moment, it was the only one he had.
He’d figure out the answer to winning the bet without talking about his feelings for six dates; he always did. And nothing was going to change that.
Chapter Two
Kinsey
Kinsey Dalton was going to puke.
Not literally, but the uncomfortable rumble in her belly was definitely there.
“There is no way you can live here,” her formerly-online-and-now-in-real-life-too friend Morgan said for the tenth time—not coincidentally the exact same number of apartments available to rent at outrageous prices that they’d toured so far today. “The toilet is in the kitchen!”
Kinsey’s whole body clenched with revulsion as she tried to keep the sweet-as-pie smile on her face from crumbling like dry pastry crust.
She sneaked a peek at the landlord standing in the doorway to see if he’d caught Morgan’s true-but-better-kept-to-herself statement. Lucky for them, his attention was fully focused on his phone screen and the soccer match playing on it. If he’d heard, he didn’t seem to care—unlike his thoughts about how Manchester United was doing.
Still, the fact that he hadn’t noticed didn’t matter. Her home training alert system had kicked in. Meemaw had drilled manners into her with the strenuousness that could only come from a seventy-year-old who still mowed her own lawn, canned her fruits and veggies the old-fashioned way, and had taken in her wayward daughter’s three kids when the law caught up to her—again. Talking shit about an apartment with the landlord right there definitely would have landed on the do-not-do side of the ledger.
“But look at the window. It’s south facing, so the light will be great,” she said, focusing on the first possible positive thing she spotted in the otherwise very questionable apartment. It only took a few steps from the toilet of infamy to look through the pane and onto the trash-strewn plot of weeds surrounded by a chain-link fence bearing a No Trespassing sign. “It’s practically a park.”
“Yeah, maybe if the light is just right and you’ve been hit in the head with a brick,” the other woman said.
Rounding her eyes, she sent Morgan a pointed hey-shut-your-mouth look as she tilted her head toward the landlord. Morgan just pointed at the toilet, which was literally right next to the fridge without even a half wall between them. On the other side of the toilet was the glass wall of the shower. Yes. That was right. One entire wall of the studio apartment was kitchen cabinets, the sink, the world’s skinniest fridge, the toilet, and finally the shower—all of which looked out onto the living room/bedroom and the window overlooking the very much not a park.
“Okay, it’s not ideal,” Kinsey said with a shoulder-drooping sigh, already eyeballing the space in front of the toilet and shower for a ceiling-to-floor curtain that could give a little privacy and slow down the free flow of airborne bacteria. “But I start my new job on Monday, and I want to live within walking distance, since I don’t have a car and don’t want to waste work time on multiple trains—which means living in Harbor City’s expensive downtown area. Sadly, this is all I can afford.” She spun in place, taking in the full majesty of exactly how little a dollar went in the city, and shrugged. “Besides, I’ll be spending so much time at work, I’ll hardly even be here.”
Maybe she could make it the entire term of her lease without using the bathroom.
Probably not, but a woman had to have dreams in addition to working her way up from her current job of entry-level skin-care scientist to someday becoming head of research and development at Archambeau Cosmetics.
Morgan lifted an eyebrow and slid her gaze over to the toilet. “Honey,” she said, settling her gaze on Kinsey again. “This is almost as bad as the five-floor walk-up with the mysterious goo on every window ledge.”
Yeah, that place had been scary. Meemaw definitely would have pulled on her bright-yellow plastic cleaning gloves and broken out the small emergency bottle of bleach she carried in her purse—in a Ziploc bag stuffed with dryer sheets, of course, so neither the liquid nor smell would leak on the Baggie of peanuts sprinkled in Old Bay seasoning or the extra tube of watermelon-pink-colored lipstick she always had on her as well.
The kitchen-slash-bathroom was nasty as well, but Kinsey’s options were limited. Finding an apartment in Harbor City was a total and complete racket.
Morgan strutted over in her mile-high heels and slung an arm across Kinsey’s shoulders like she were her kid sister even though they were both twenty-five. “We can do this the long way or the short way,” she said. “But either way, by the end of this conversation, you’re coming to live with me until you can find something that isn’t this.”