Feeling even more cautious than before, I headed inside—walking on tiptoe as I pushed open the threshold and crossed the door.
That’s when I stopped cold.
That’s when I blinked around in absolute shock.
That’s when I realized I didn’t live there anymore...
“NICK!”
I started screaming even before I got off the elevator. Even before I realized that it was seven in the morning, and everyone else who lived in his building was almost undoubtedly asleep. At the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care. At the moment, I was officially homeless.
“NICK—GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE!”
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d done it. That he was the one responsible. I’d seen him do it before. Not while moving in girlfriends, but while moving out competitors. Nosy neighbors. Rivals. People with whom he swore he could never get along.
It was one of his favorite things to do to pass the time. Play god.
It was the reason that he had a New York moving company on speed dial. The reason that the city’s police chief was safely in his pocket. Coincidentally, it was also the same reason that I had tried to do the same thing with Ella just a few weeks before.
I appreciated the irony. Nick did not.
But whether this was payback for that or simply him messing around, I didn’t appreciate it now. In fact, I had never been more pissed off.
“NICK!”
“In here!” he called back.
He sounded neither perturbed nor surprised that I had come calling, despite the early hour. But a part of him had to have been expecting it. Otherwise, why would he already be up?
I rounded the corner with my hands clenched up into little fists—ready to give him a piece of my mind—only to stop cold for the second time that morning.
Nick was there alright.
Sitting in a hot tub. In the middle of the living room floor.
My mouth fell wide open as all my pre-rehearsed responses flew right out the window.
I had just been here the other day—no hot tub then. On top of that, I was fairly sure that a living room hot tub was the kind of thing it was impossible to get a permit for. On top of that, I had no idea how he’d possibly managed to fit the thing through the elevator door.
“You...you have a...”
He blinked patiently back at me, up to his neck in warm, bubbling jets.
“Right in the middle of the...why is there...”
He nodded encouragingly, waving me onward with his hand.
“That’s it,” he coaxed, “use your feeling-words.”
I snapped out of my shock in a hurry, planting my feet firmly on the floor.
“Why the hell is there a hot tub in the middle of your apartment?”
He glanced down at the water in surprise, as if he had only just realized it was there. “It’s winter,” he said simply. When I gazed back at him in astonishment, he elaborated. “I got cold.”
I closed my eyes for a second, but decided to let it go. There were other things that needed my attention at the moment. There were bigger fish to fry.
“So guess what?” I declared, “I’m homeless!”