Break My Fall •j.b•

7.

Maxine

I settled into a comfortable living routine at the house. On weekdays I got up, went to work, came home and went to bed. On weekends I did pretty much the same thing, except I replaced work with hanging out with Cam and more often than not Derek.
We took turns with the cleaning and cooking dinner, with Derek usually taking over the kitchen and smothering out whichever one of us whose turn it was to cook. He was working in a kitchen for the summer and had decided he was the new Gordon Ramsey. He was the best cook out of the four of us though, so I didn't tease him about it. The man made a mean lasagna and I'd even begun to enjoy his witty retorts and jokes. Cam was fun to live with. We had fallen back into our old friendship easily. But Justin was a jerk.
The man flaunted himself around the place like he was 'king of the hill,' prancing around the kitchen in just his jeans or worse, his boxer shorts. I dutifully ignored him every time he was around-or at least I pretended to. Cam told me Justin's job required him to travel a lot, which explained the sporadic hours of the day and night he came home. But when he was here, he was distracting, a smart-mouth and had zero modesty. He also had no filter on his tongue. The man had a real bad potty mouth.
I decided Justin was tormenting me on purpose. He had to be doing it on purpose. If he wasn't banging on our bathroom door when I was showering, hollering at me to hurry up, he was blocking my way to the kettle, giving me one his 'you want it come and get it' looks. I had gone without coffee most mornings this week because avoiding Justin's half-naked body was much safer than pressing past him. He would love that...to know that he was getting to me.
The sad fact of the matter was that he was getting to me in a big way. I had to pull my thoughts out of the gutter whenever I saw him in his boxer shorts. Never in a million years would I have dreamt Justin had a job that required a suit and tie. It just didn't seem like the usual attire one wore for a summer job. He looked beautiful in a suit, but there was an element of a caged animal about him when he wore one. I had thought up a dozen potential jobs he might do, all of which involved physical work. He didn't have the body of a man stuck in an office. He had the hard, toned build of an athlete. He was all broad shoulders, ribbed muscles and narrow hips.
Another thing I realized about Justin was that he was guarded. He chatted openly about mundane things like college and football and I'd learned he was finishing his degree in Business Management in the fall. But he closed off the minute anything more personal was brought up. I didn't understand why, but was too intimidated by him to ask. He had even started showing up at the hotel. There was a restaurant on the ground floor and in the past three weeks I had seen him in there on no less than three occasions. Thankfully, he hadn't noticed me. I always managed to hide behind a pillar in the lobby before he saw me. On all three occasions he'd been having lunch with a woman-all of them different- which also made it easier for me to escape unnoticed. I had started to skip eating in the restaurant and ate outside at the picnic tables rather than face the obnoxious jerk. It drove me crazy that he ate at the hotel. There were dozens of places he could go to eat, but no, he had to choose the building I worked in.
On a positive note, I had actually made a couple of friends at work, Linda being one. She was fabulous and hilariously funny at times. She'd shown me the ropes in work and had a fantastic sense of humor. She certainly didn't behave like a woman in her fifties.
I also liked talking with Mike. He was one of the bartenders and only a few years older than me. We had met briefly on my first day and I had bumped into him again at the picnic tables out the back. He had invited me to sit with him and I had figured it would be rude to say no. He had been witty and down to earth and I had actually found him easy to talk with. The next day I went to the beer garden, Mike had brought an extra sandwich for me and we fell into to a comfortable lunch pattern. He always seemed to get his break the same time as I did, so we ate together. It was real nice to be friends with a man and not worry about him blowing hot and cold. That was the way it felt being around Mike, real easy. He didn't flirt or make me feel uncomfortable. He was just plain nice. Mike was attractive in an all-American, wholesome kind of way. He was all blonde hair, brown eyes and sun-kissed golden skin, but he didn't hold an ounce of the raw sexual magnetism Justin did. Where Mike was cute, Justin was mind-blowingly attractive.
I had decided it was something to do with the way Justin moved. He didn't just walk, he prowled like a wild animal, cool and confident, but full of raw strength and vibrating intensity. There was an element of danger to him. He was just so...there were no words in my vocabulary extensive enough to describe him. He was rude and obnoxious and breathtakingly beautiful and he seemed to get a real thrill out of baiting me. Plus he kept calling me that stupid nickname. God, he was so infuriating...
I hated that I was so attracted to him. It was purely a physical attraction though. It couldn't be any more than that, not when he was so mean to me. The fluttering in my chest when he was near was just biology. He was beautiful and any girl would feel the same when he spoke or smiled or laughed...
After many sleepless nights thinking about him, I had decided to put my attraction towards Justin Bieber down to two things. The first being the fact that he was my first consensual kiss. And the second, I was not the only woman to feel like this. Justin had plenty of admirers. Women swooned over him. I'd seen enough of his admirers coming out of his bedroom in the mornings-Rachel being one of the most frequent visitors. Though it was clear they were not exclusive, there was definitely something strange going on with them. I watched them when they were together and it was...odd. Apart from the fact that Justin didn't seem to like her, when Rachel said jump he said how high. He did everything she told him to and it really irked me. He was a jerk to me, but it didn't stop me hating the way she spoke to him.
It was degrading.