Chapter 2: The inconvenience

DEXTER ♡

I never agreed to this.

That is the part Ivy conveniently leaves out whenever she makes decisions for the both of us, that I live here too, that my name is also on this lease, and that having someone occupy my space without my consent is not something I particularly enjoy. 

But Ivy has never once asked for my permission when it comes to things she has already decided. She just does them and presents me with the result like a done deal.

And somehow the result is always something I have to live with.

I watched Daisy Brown walk up my staircase and tried to put my finger on what it was about her that got under my skin so quickly. It wasn’t the grief that I understood. Losing both parents at once was the kind of loss that rearranged a person. I wasn’t heartless enough to hold that against her.

It was the mouth.

Sharp, precise, completely unbothered by who was receiving it. Your presence wouldn’t have brought them back. Said to my face, in my living room, within ten minutes of walking through my door. I had offered genuine condolences and she had looked at me like I was performing them.

I turned toward the gym corridor and nearly walked into the gym then Ivy was coming the other way.

“Ivy.” I kept my voice low. “I don’t like this.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like what exactly?”

“Her.” I tilted my head toward the staircase. “She’s rude. She’s always been rude to me and I have no idea what I did to deserve it.”

Ivy stared at me for a moment, then made a sound in her throat that landed somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. She stepped closer, the way she does when she wants me to hear every word clearly.

“This is my house too, Dexter.” Her voice was quiet but there was iron in it. “And I have never ,not once, questioned you about the women you bring here. The ones you sneak out before sunrise. The ones whose names you don’t remember by the following week. I have always let you do your thing.”

I opened my mouth.

“I’m not finished,” she said.

Then I closed it.

“Daisy is my friend. My best friend. And she just buried both her parents two weeks ago.” She held my gaze long enough to make sure it landed. “The best thing you can do ,  for me and for her,  is stay out of her way. Can you do that?”

I held her stare for a moment. Then I looked away first.

“Fine,” I said.

“Thank you.”

She went back upstairs and I stood in the corridor for a moment. She was right and I knew she was right and I hated knowing it. Avoiding Daisy Brown for the duration of her stay was the cleanest solution. She kept to herself. I kept to myself. Nobody’s space got invaded. Simple.

I went back into the gym and picked up where I left off.

Three hours later I was done.

I had pushed through an extra set because I had nothing else to do with the irritation, and by the time I dropped the bar and grabbed my towel my shoulders were burning in the right way. I showered, changed into sweats and came downstairs with one thing in mind,  the cold beer sitting in the back of the fridge that I had been thinking about for the last forty minutes.

The apartment was quiet. I assumed Daisy was asleep.

I was wrong.

I reached the fridge at the same moment she did. My hand closed around the handle and her hand was already there, her fingers brushing the back of mine before either of us knew what was happening. I pulled back. She pulled back. We were close, closer than I had intended, the narrow kitchen not giving either of us much room,  and she smelled like something floral and warm, soft in a way that didn’t match the sharpness of her mouth at all.

She stepped back first.

“I had no idea you were here,” I said.

“I came to get water.” She crossed her arms, her voice carrying that particular Daisy Brown quality, composed, slightly guarded, already building a case. “The fridge is yours. I don’t want it to seem like I’m overstepping in your home.”

There it was again. That mouth. Turning a perfectly ordinary moment into something pointed.

I didn’t bite. I reached past her, pulled my beer from the shelf, and walked out of the kitchen without a word. There was a laptop and a half-finished brief work waiting for me in the study and that was where I needed to be. Away from her cologne and her sharp edges and the particular way she looked at me like I was something she had already assessed 

and found wanting.

I sat at my desk and opened my laptop and stared at the brief for a long time.

I read the same paragraph four times. The words were there but the meaning kept sliding off. Something kept interrupting, not a sound, not a presence. Just a voice in my head that wasn’t mine.

“The fridge is yours. I don’t want it to seem like I’m overshadowing you”.

I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose.

This girl was a thorn. Categorically. And I had three to four weeks of this ahead of me depending on how long Ivy decided the staycation needed to last. I would work late. I would leave early. I would take my meals at different times and use the gym before she woke up and keep every interaction down to the bare minimum.

Avoiding Daisy Brown was a strategy. A clean, sensible, entirely manageable strategy.

I was certain of it.

I closed the brief, leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.

Her cologne was still in my nose.

I opened the brief again.

At two in the morning, just as I was finally closing my laptop, I heard it, soft and muffled, coming through the wall that separated her room from the study. The sound of someone crying very quietly, trying very hard not to be heard.

I sat completely still with my hand on my laptop lid and listened to Daisy Brown fall apart on the other side of the wall, and I felt pity for her.