The Bad Jokes #1: The Redhead

Chapter 9: Desperate Times

She wouldn't even look at me. 

Not even once. From the minute she opened the stairwell door last night and saw me standing in the hallway with Sherry, she averted her eyes and refused to look up. It was as if she was curling in on herself, trying to make herself as small as possible, maybe even invisible. That wasn't the woman I knew in the first month after she'd moved in here.

Two months ago, she was a bright and shiny penny, smiling, happy, bouncy, full of life and light. 

Then she'd asked me to come into her place for a drink and I'd almost accepted her invitation.

Almost.

Came so damn close that I'd opened my mouth to say yes when my last bit of good sense reasserted itself and reminded me I needed to put a stop to this. My statement to her needed to be clear, unmistakable and so brutal there would be no coming back from it. Steeling myself, I launched into her with a barrage of words that I knew would stop her pursuit. I couldn't let myself go there with her, yet every time I saw her, I was weakening in my resolve. To add one final twist of the knife, I made sure she saw me walk into Sherry's condo right after that. What she didn't see was me walking out five minutes later, leaving behind a furious Sherry.

Even believing that I thought the very worst of her, that I had no interest in her whatsoever, this beautiful girl still had the guts to come up to me the next day and apologize for her actions toward me. She never threw my own behavior in my face, never even implied I should be the one apologizing, just straight up owned her shit, apologized and walked away.

Mission accomplished.

Instead of congratulating myself on a job well and thoroughly done, in the following weeks, I found myself looking around the complex for Rory, but she'd made herself scarce. She was parking in front of the building now, no doubt to avoid me, and in the last two months, I'd only caught three or four glimpses of her from far away.

Not liking the regret I was feeling, not liking the feeling of being pissed at myself, I'd been going to see Wyatt almost every night of the week after his dojo closed. That relieved some of the stress as we beat the shit out of each other, but it was nowhere near enough. Wyatt seemed to be battling his own inner demons based on his ramped-up intensity, but I didn't ask, afraid he'd take that as an invite into my personal life, and I'd already shared more with him about Rory than I'd wanted to.

When the martial arts battles didn't help, I turned to my bike and rode for hours each night, wind in my face, trying to keep my focus on the road instead of on a certain redhead. 

Not having the relief of sex didn't help my mood; I could have gone up to Sherry's condo for a quick fuck whenever I wanted, but that held no appeal whatsoever. She'd been strictly sex for me over the last four years, starting right after she'd moved in. Bold and aggressive as hell, she'd let me know she was down to fuck -- her words, not mine -- pretty damn quick. When she was walking in from the parking lot at the same time I was one night, she'd asked me up to her condo. I'd set out my rules for her: nothing serious, ever, and nothing more than sex. She'd agreed practically before the words were out of my mouth. 

I didn't want anything that even smacked of a relationship, so I never spent the night with her, never spent more than an hour at a time in her condo, and I never let her in my place. We never shared a meal, never talked, never had anything but sex and it was always at my whim. That arrangement had worked out well for me, until Rory came charging into my life in all of her adorable awkwardness and let me know that she was interested in me. Something long dormant in me wanted to wave the flag of surrender and give in to this woman, but I couldn't and I wouldn't.

So for two months after I gutted her, I was left severely alone by my redheaded stalker, and I found myself missing it. Missing her. Missing her smile, missing her bright eyes, missing her popping up wherever I was. Now I was starting to feel like the stalker, trying to catch glimpses of Rory, hanging out in the parking lot near her car, finding myself in her hallway more frequently. But a sighting of Rory was becoming like a sighting of the motherfucking Loch Ness Monster: rare.