Amused, I reached out and hugged her. “You’re the best and I’m very, very happy to have met you and spent years living in this shithole with you.” I hooked my arm through hers and gave her another side hug. “Let’s go out with style.”
“Burn it down?” she asked.
“God, no! I have fifty thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise in here.” I grinned at her. “Oh, and Javi still lives here, remember?”
“Damn it, that’s right.”
“I was thinking something a little simpler.” I moved out of the bedroom and down the hall. “Like this.” I flipped off the apartment numbers hanging crookedly on the metal door. “Bye, 204. It’s been real.”
Leah raised her middle finger next to mine. “It really has been real. A little too real. Here’s to never sleeping in a twin bed again.”
I could get behind that. Which was why I had to figure out how to both be so real with Michael that he fell in love with me. Yet not so real that he thought I was a genuine idiot.
All without falling in love with him so I wasn’t disappointed if he tossed me out.
It was a regular big old mess and I had no idea what was going to happen.
Like an online auction, I couldn’t predict the outcome.
I just didn’t want to be returned as “not what I was picturing.”
Ten
When I got home and pushed open the door of my apartment, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Lots of boxes and a frazzled Felicia, was what I was mostly anticipating. Or Felicia busily unpacking toiletries.
What I didn’t expect was to step into the Christmas display at Macy’s. “What the…”
For a second I glanced back at the hallway to make sure I was in the right apartment.
Because I had left a very minimalist apartment that morning and had returned to find it had been transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with what had to be an eight-foot tree. There were empty boxes strewn around, but they were the kind that holiday decorations came in, not moving boxes. Wreaths adorned the walls of the living room and the kitchen island had some kind of glass bowl with snow inside it and reindeer. It was all classy and cheerful, but what the hell?
Felicia’s head popped out from behind the back of the tree. Way higher than she was in reality, so I had to assume she was on a stepladder. “Hi!” she said brightly. ?
??How was surgery?”
In one day I’d gone from a bachelor to a man who came home to a new décor and questions about my day. It was a hell of a shift and I didn’t hate it. I was just taken aback. It was definitely intense though.
I took a cautious step forward and shut the door behind me. Had I fallen into one of her photo shoots? “Surgery went well. No issues.” I kicked my snow-covered shoes off and peeled off my coat. “What… are you doing exactly?”
“Putting up the tree, of course.” Her head disappeared again.
Of course. “Are you all moved in, then? I expected more boxes and a higher level of stress.”
“Moving in was short work. The men you hired had it all done in two hours.”
It was as I walked across my living room I realized that in addition to wreaths she had hung artwork on my wall. Art I’d never seen before. I didn’t dislike it, it was just startling. There was a glass bowl on the coffee table that was new as well. I did a three-sixty and realized the whole place was like that. She had just made additions here and there. A little bit of Felicia scattered about, some holiday, some just… stuff.
All in one afternoon.
The woman was a hurricane. I was terrified to see what the hell had happened to my bathroom. She’d probably wallpapered it in a floral pattern in the course of ten minutes.
Putting my hands in my pockets I moved to the tree and searched for her among the giant branches. “Where did you get this tree?” I fingered a silver bulb. “And all these decorations?”
She glanced over at me, wrestling with some kind of ribbon. “I ordered them,” she said, as if that were obvious. “They were delivered this afternoon.”
“Did this need to happen today?” I asked.
Felicia looked at me like I was a complete and utter fool. “We have thirty-five days, Michael. That is it. We have to convince people we’re a couple and host an engagement party. There isn’t one single day to waste. In fact, you should probably help me so we can get this done faster.”