Page 18 of Double Shot

Not because I was attracted to him, or even wanted to spend time with him. But… he was interested in me. Which was nice. Flattering.

And yes, fine, I was desperate. I just wanted someone. I wanted romance. I wanted to be loved, for fuck’s sake.

Could I see myself loving Clarence? Eh. Maybe I could… grow to desire him. Somehow.

Maybe I’d eventually stop cringing every time he spoke. Maybe I’d end up loving the feel of his long billy goat beard tickling my nipples.

Sexual attraction and chemistry weren’t everything. I mean, to me personally, yes, they were pretty important. But… other things were important too. Like common interests.

Did Clarence and I have any common interests?

Honestly, I couldn’t even remember if he’d told me about his hobbies or whatever last night. All I remembered was him saying his favourite woodland creature was a duck. After I’d watched him enthusiastically wolf down duck legs for his dinner.

And had there been something about tickling? I swore he’d mentioned tickling. Did that count as a pastime?

With a sigh, I opened my message thread with Nat, deciding to text Clarence back at some point during my shift. Once I’d worked out exactly what I wanted to say.

Pulling out my first snack of the evening, I typed a message to Nat.

Me: Just got to work. Already bored. Legs ache from our jog this morning.

He replied thirty seconds later.

Nat: Me too babes. I’m in the bath. I decided to have an espresso martini instead of ice cream to soothe my muscles.

Me: I wish I could have baths. And keep vodka in the apartment without it getting stolen by my d-bag roommates.

Competing with my disastrous love life, my home life was pretty crappy too. I lived in a rundown, shitty apartment with two roommates who just sucked, so bad, and our landlord was completely uninterested in making the place actually, you know, liveable.

For example, our bathtub had a big crack at one end, which meant if any of us tried to take a bath, the water would just pour through the kitchen ceiling. We had to angle the showerhead toward the opposite wall to try and minimise the amount of water that did seep through. There was a permanent water ring on the kitchen ceiling despite our efforts, and I could’ve sworn I saw tiny mushrooms growing out of it last time I dared to look up.

I rarely dared to look up while I was in the kitchen, just in case I witnessed the ceiling sagging under the weight of a giant water blob, about to split open and drown me. If I went out in a tiny, shitty kitchen with mushrooms growing from the ceiling and two decades’ worth of grease coating the extractor fan above the stove, I’d rather not know about it before it in advance. At least then I’d retain a tiny, tiny scrap of dignity on my descent to my Hellish afterlife.

My two roommates, Simon and Ruth—a unicorn and gargoyle, respectively—considered ‘cleaning up’ to be placing their dirty dishes in the sink, not just on the counter. Or, if one of them spilled food on the carpet, rubbing it in with a foot so it kind of blended in and added to the years of stains.

Nat and I had been making plans to get a place together for years, but it’d just never worked out. He’d been fired from his previous job in a clothing store just before we were about to sign the lease on a place, so it fell through. And I’d needed somewhere desperately, so I snapped up the room in my current shithole of an apartment while Nat stayed with his parents until he found a new job. Which meant I’d been locked into my lease for a year when he eventually found the cutest little studio apartment.

He let me crash there all the time, but it wasn’t fair to invade his space too often, so I tried to keep my sleepovers to a minimum.

Sighing, I looked down and reread the text I’d just sent Nat. A flush crept up my neck. Geez, I was being such a downer today, especially considering the fact that I’d taken the edge off my hunger last night by giving a handie to someone in Gargy’s restroom. I should’ve been feeling relatively good.

But it was just one of those days, you know? Where you could only focus on everything going wrong in your life.

I hated where I lived. I didn’t have a boyfriend, just a guy with a billy goat beard who called me Niko. And that hot possibly werewolf guy I’d seen in the bar last night had stared at me with a blank expression like I wasn’t even a blip on his radar. Which, yeah, had put a little dent in my ego, if I was being honest.

I’d looked fucking good last night. That shirt was sexy; it made me look all alluring and mysterious and ethereal.

Can’t believe I wasted my sex shirt on Clarence.

Nat replied, pulling my attention back to my phone.

Nat: Aw, babe. Not long until your lease is up, at least. And if you can hold out for a few months after that, we can FINALLY get a place together.

Me: Yes, thank Lucifer. Just one more month in that shithole. Greta said I can crash in a room here until your lease is up too and we can find somewhere.

Nat: Thank the gods. So at least this time you don’t have to rush into anything and end up in a shitty situation again. I’m still so sorry about that, mouse.

Me: Hey, you didn’t ask to get fired. Wasn’t your fault bb xxx