Baggage

Prologue

 

Groaning, Violet Weaver turned over onto her stomach, her hands attempting to grab the closest pillow near her. Instead of feeling a fuzzy fabric underneath her dainty fingers, she felt the hard contours of muscles.

Whose muscles?!, she thought. Because of her uneventful dating life (she hadn’t had a single date in three months), Violet still lived by herself in a one-bedroom apartment with her six cats.

She definitely knew that her hand wasn’t gliding on a cat’s back—cats had soft coats, certainly not skin!

Violet's eyes immediately snapped open, and after a few more blinks, a clear picture of a face became visible. A man, probably around her age, with tousled blonde hair was sleeping right beside her body. Although he had strong, masculine features—a large jaw, rugged complexion, and firm, slim lips—he still had an infant-like look to him as he slept. The only flaw, she noted, was that he had a slightly crooked nose.

Her facial features scrunched up as she tried thinking through the fuzzy haze of intoxication. Who was this guy? After a few minutes of searching, Violet realized that this was Noah from the bar last night. He liked the color red, hated reading, and enjoyed playing basketball with friends. That was all she knew about him, and somehow, they ended up together in his lumpy, dirty bed.

Grimacing at her predicament, she could hear her mother's high-pitched, annoying voice suddenly ring through her head.

"Oh, your sister, Shannon, would never, ever have a one night stand. She has too much self-respect for that."

Shaking her head as if to shake her mother’s disapproving comments from her mind, she decided that it would probably be smart of her to leave as quietly and quickly as possible. While leaning over to grab her deathtraps, a pair of Fraud-a pumps she bought from a street vendor last month for twenty dollars, a booming snort came from Noah; the blonde-haired girl nearly fell off the bed from laughing. Gripping the edge of the chestnut nightstand for support, she pulled herself off of the mattress and into a standing position. Luckily for her, all her clothes were thrown in an accessible pile right in the corner of the room; she was able to maneuver her way towards her belongings without making much noise. Once she retrieved her unmentionables, her abdomen was quickly shoved through her black, bondage dress that stuck to her body as tight as the skin of a sausage.

“Oh God, this is a mess,” she groaned as she grabbed her last belonging from the pile, her keys to her precious 1998 Honda Civic DX. The car was a nauseating puke-yellow, and there was a huge dent in the back from the time that she rammed it into her parent’s neighbor’s mailbox, but other than that, it worked perfectly fine.

Chucking the keys into her black, seashell shaped clutch, she began inching towards the door in order to limit the noise created. As she neared the door, a chortling voice caused her to stop dead in her tracks.

“Going somewhere?”

 “Dammit!” she cursed silently to herself before pivoting around on her heels. Because of the sudden motion, one of her heels caught onto a minute hole in the floorboard, and she nearly fell headfirst onto the ground. Fortunately, her hand was able to grip onto a nearby coat rack to prevent her from plummeting completely.

Another booming laugh left the attractive man’s mouth. While Violet was looking extremely disheveled and shameful, Noah appeared to be extremely carefree. With two hands crossed behind his head and a cocky smile on his face, he looked like it was absolutely common for him to find a strange girl in his apartment on a Saturday afternoon.