Excerpt: ALTERCATION

“Three months isn’t a long time to wait for a key, is it?”

“It depends. For most people, no. For you? It probably is.”

“You aren’t helping, Dan.”

“I’m not here to help.”

I sighed. He was right. He wasn’t here to help. I couldn’t even blame him for being a bit surly. It had been three months since Dan had done anything in his field of expertise and that was bound to make someone a bit cranky. Still, it affected my mood when he was like this. You would think that I would eventually learn not to ask those kinds of questions.

That might be unfair of me, but I don’t care. It kept me from having to face the fact that I left my career behind 3 months ago and haven’t been back to it either. Some things are in the blood. I loved my life and my job. Then things went to hell and here I am. Knocking on my boss’s door at dawn, trying to get him to let me in because he won’t give me a damn key to his apartment. Oh, yeah, he’s also sort of my boyfriend. Brother.

“Let me in, Derek,” I said between bouts of pounding my fist on the door to his apartment. His building was sleek and sophisticated. I hoped it was also soundproof, because his neighbors were going to be pissed if he didn’t answer the door soon. Luckily for them, he did. Unluckily for me, he wasn’t finished dressing.

The chain rattled, the deadbolt flicked, and the knob shifted a little bit before the door opened. Derek clearly wasn’t ready to go yet. His dark hair was still wet and tousled from the towel draped around his neck. His skin was flush and radiated heat and he smelled deliciously of soap, shampoo, and aftershave. There was a fleck of shaving cream on his chin, next to the corner of his mouth, and I reached up and rubbed it off as a way of greeting. Do you know how hard it is to stay indignant at your lover when they are groggy, freshly showered and shaven, and leave the top button of their slacks undone? One good tug and we would both be late for work.