In fairness, I always feel awkward. I just rarely find myself in a situation like this.
“Oh, right,” Cheryl mutters. “The pool. You have your own.”
“What’s that now?” Andrew asks, twisting his neck. I may twist mine too. “My own, you say?”
“Yes. On the roof. That stair there”—she points—“leads to your own private pool just above us. Shall we go down and sign now?” Holy shit, her bedside manner disappeared fast.
“Tell you what. How about,” Andrew says, turning to face Cheryl for the first time since we started this tour, “you go on ahead and I’ll be down in a little bit.” He heads for the stair to the roof. “Eden and I wanna check out this pool.”
“We do?” I ask.
And at the same time Cheryl deflates and says, “You do?”
Andrew nods, taking her by the arm and pulling her towards the open double doors the same way she pulled him away from them a few minutes ago. “Yeah, just go on down and I’ll stop by the leasing office before I head back to work. Then we can talk all about the rodeo.”
“We can?” Cheryl says, hope in her eyes.
“Most def,” Andrew replies, almost pushing her out the doors. “See you in a few.” And then he closes the penthouse doors right as Cheryl opens her mouth to protest, and the matter is settled.
“Jesus Christ,” Andrew says, walking back over to me. “I thought she’d never leave.”
“I didn’t get my key yet,” I say.
“No worries. We can go back down to the leasing office after we check out the pool. Maybe you can show me your place later, huh?” He waggles his eyebrows at me.
I squint at him. “No.”
“Look,” Andrew says, taking my arm and pulling me closer to the windows. “We got off on the wrong foot this morning. I’m sorry, OK? Totally my fault. I wanna make it up to you. K? Let’s go check out the pool. You can use it any time you want. You shouldn’t have to hang out at some crowded, sweaty meat market with creepy guys. Which I’m sure is what’s going on downstairs. So, c’mon. Check out your semi-private pool. There’ll only be one creepy guy hanging out there.” He smiles like he thinks he’s so charming. Which he unfortunately is.
“No,” I say. “No, I just… I wanna go see my apartment, OK? Please?”
This morning has been like getting whiplash. I find out that my stupid little video channel is going unexpectedly viral, then I meet this cute guy in the unlikeliest way, then he steals my charger from me, then I find out that my boss’s boss’s boss is making it his mission to destroy my little video channel because I stole the idea from him, which I didn’t, then I run into the cute guy who hands me back the thing he didn’t actually steal, and then I find out he’s the very person tasked by my boss’s boss’s boss with bringing down the little channel and thereby getting me fired, sued, and tossed out of my adorable studio apartment—which I haven’t even seen yet!—and out onto the street.
Yeah. Whiplash.
“OK, I get it.” Andrew interrupts my thoughts. “But just before you go… which mountain is your favorite?”
“What?”
“Which mountain is your favorite? I climb. I wanna know everything about your favorite mountain.”
“I… I don’t have a favorite mountain. I just like looking at them, that’s all.” I push my glasses up my nose again. “And I like facts. Cheryl was wrong about Pikes Peak, so I just needed to set the record straight. That’s all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go. I have to grab my key and get back to work to manage a big crisis, anyway.”
“Oh… Sexpert?”
“What?”
“The crisis. Is it the Sexpert thing? Or is Pierce having some other crisis too?”
“Oh, no. Yeah. That’s… Yeah,” I say. Jesus. For a second there I thought he was saying he already knows I’m the Sexpert. Which is stupid. No one knows. Not even the inventor of Voice Lift could figure out my secret that fast.
Right? Right?
“Yeah,” he says. Then, “Hey! You wanna see the terrace, though?” He walks forward, completely ignoring everything I just said about my apartment and needing to get back to work, and grabs a handle on the window and pulls it open. The glass slides smoothly aside, folding in on itself. He does this again for the other window, and suddenly we are outside.
“Wow,” I say, kinda gobsmacked.
Andrew looks at me and smiles. “Not terrible, yeah?”
I walk outside with him, in kind of a trance, looking at all of Colorado as we make our way across the massive terrace filled with outdoor furniture, and stop right at the nearly invisible frameless glass railing to take in the unobstructed views.
The wind is hot and dry just like it is down on the ground, but stronger, so that my hair, even though it’s tied back into a ponytail, blows across my face. We can hear the sound of the lapping water from his private pool just above our heads.