The Boss (The Boss 1)

I chewed my lip as I surveyed my apartment. It looked like twenty people had been crammed in the small space, drinking and hanging out.

“At your own risk,” I warned him. “We did just have a party.”

“I understand completely. I’ll see you in about an hour then? If it isn’t too late?”

I hadn’t heard him so hopeful and flustered since the night he had come to my apartment drunk and looking for a booty call. It was adorable. “No, that isn’t too late.” It would put me at twenty-two hours awake, but I could sleep when I was dead. I just wanted to see him. As I puttered around the house for an hour, constantly checking the clock, I refused to examine the anxiety that had my stomach all twisted up in knots. I missed him, so what? I was allowed to miss him, right?

At some point, I stopped pouring out half-empty cups and sat down with a drink of my own. I don’t know when it was that I’d nodded off, but the intercom startled me awake. I sloshed rum and Coke from the cup onto my sequined, white tank top and groaned. “Hang on, I’ll be right there!”

What was I doing? He couldn’t hear me all the way down on the street. I hit the call button and gasped, “Sorry, sorry! I’m buzzing you up right now.”

I dabbed frantically at the stain with a crumpled napkin, until he knocked. When I opened the door, Neil stepped immediately inside, sweeping me into a crushing embrace.

“I missed you so much,” he mumbled against my neck, and I staggered backward, my hands coming up between us to give myself a little space.

“Whoa there, cowboy!” I disentangled myself, laughing. “Did you happen to be drinking on the flight?”

He laughed sheepishly and stepped back. “I’m sorry, it appears the Klonopin isn’t entirely out of my system.”

“You take Klonopin to fly?” I laughed with him and rose on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek, one hand against the front of his sweater to retain my admittedly wobbly balance. “Most people just get hammered.”

“Yes, and it seems that all those people were in your apartment tonight.” His eyes widened as he took in the wasteland of cups and paper plates before him. “Your living room smells like a still.”

“No, that... might be me.” I looked down and brushed at the stain on my shirt. “Let me go change out of this... unless I’m not going to be wearing it for long?”

He grinned at me and shut the door behind him. I held out my hand to him to lead him to my bedroom.

It’s strange when you’re showing someone the place where you live for the first time. Neil had been in the apartment before, but never my bedroom. When I flipped on the light, I saw it the way I assumed he saw it. The white plaster walls, the green shantung duvet cover and what suddenly seemed to be far too many beaded throw pillows. Way too much stuffed crammed into one small space.

He gestured to the dress form beside my sewing machine. “Do you design clothing?”

“No, but I do tailor mine.” I shrugged. “I get a lot of free stuff, not all of it fits. You can hang your coat on that, if you want.”

My closet wasn’t really a closet as much as it was a water pipe I wasn’t supposed to hang stuff on, and a lot of my bedroom window was blocked by an enormous mirror in a chipping gilt frame. I felt kind of embarrassed. My place looked like a hostel compared to his room at the W, and I could only imagine what his apartment was like.

His eyes followed the movements of my hands as I pulled the shirt over my head. I smiled to myself and made a beeline to the bathroom. “Hang on, I need to rinse this before it sets.”

My hands were trembling as I ran cold water over the stain. Why was I so nervous? Just because Neil was in my apartment? It wasn’t like he was going to judge me unworthy because I wasn’t rich; he’d never once given me that impression. And if he did find my room lacking, so fucking what? I wasn’t trying out to be his interior decorator. I was doing a friends-with-benefits kind of thing with him. He probably wasn’t going to turn down sex because my fuzzy socks were on the floor by my bed.

I heard music start playing softly in my bedroom, and I grinned, shaking my head at my own silliness. He felt at home enough to fiddle with my iPod. I could calm down about the worthiness of my place.

I walked back into my bedroom, my arms crossed over my chest. Neil was standing beside my bed, holding the framed picture of me and my mom that I kept on my bedside table. He looked up guiltily and replaced it next to my alarm clock. “I’m sorry; I’m touching all of your things.”