Colleen Hoover: Maybe Someday

Her voice is a little demanding, as if she’s doing me some sort of favor and I’m being ungrateful. I arch an eyebrow as I look up at her, shielding the rain from my eyes with my hand. I don’t know why she’s complaining about getting wet, when there isn’t much clothing to get wet. She’s wearing next to nothing. I glance at her shirt, which is missing its entire bottom half, and realize she’s in a Hooters outfit.

Could this day get any weirder? I’m sitting on almost everything I own in a torrential downpour, being bossed around by a bitchy Hooters waitress.

I’m still staring at her shirt when she grabs my hand and pulls me up in a huff. “Ridge said you would do this. I’ve got to get to work. Follow me, and I’ll show you where the apartment is.” She grabs one of my suitcases, pops the handle out, and shoves it at me. She takes the other and walks swiftly out of the courtyard. I follow her, for no other reason than the fact that she’s taken one of my suitcases with her and I want it back.

She yells over her shoulder as she begins to ascend the stairwell. “I don’t know how long you plan on staying, but I’ve only got one rule. Stay the hell out of my room.”

She reaches an apartment and opens the door, never even looking back to see if I’m following her. Once I reach the top of the stairs, I pause outside the apartment and look down at the fern sitting unaffected by the heat in a planter outside the door. Its leaves are lush and green as if they’re giving summer the middle finger with their refusal to succumb to the heat. I smile at the plant, somewhat proud of it. Then I frown with the realization that I’m envious of the resilience of a plant.

I shake my head, look away, then take a hesitant step inside the unfamiliar apartment. The layout is similar to my own apartment, only this one is a double split bedroom with four total bedrooms. My and Tori’s apartment only had two bedrooms, but the living rooms are the same size.

The only other noticeable difference is that I don’t see any lying, backstabbing, bloody-nosed whores standing in this one. Nor do I see any of Tori’s dirty dishes or laundry lying around.

The girl sets my suitcase down beside the door, then steps aside and waits for me to . . . well, I don’t know what she’s waiting for me to do.

She rolls her eyes and grabs my arm, pulling me out of the doorway and further into the apartment. “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you even speak?” She begins to close the door behind her but pauses and turns around, wide-eyed. She holds her finger up in the air. “Wait,” she says. “You’re not . . .” She rolls her eyes and smacks herself in the forehead. “Oh, my God, you’re deaf.”

Huh? What the hell is wrong with this girl? I shake my head and start to answer her, but she interrupts me.

“God, Bridgette,” she mumbles to herself. She rubs her hands down her face and groans, completely ignoring the fact that I’m shaking my head. “You’re such an insensitive bitch sometimes.”

Wow. This girl has some serious issues in the people-skills department. She’s sort of a bitch, even though she’s making an effort not to be one. Now that she thinks I’m deaf. I don’t even know how to respond. She shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in herself, then looks straight at me.

“I . . . HAVE . . . TO . . . GO . . . TO . . . WORK . . . NOW!” she yells very loudly and painfully slowly. I grimace and step back, which should be a huge clue that I can hear her practically yelling, but she doesn’t notice. She points to a door at the end of the hallway. “RIDGE . . . IS . . . IN . . . HIS . . . ROOM!”

Before I have a chance to tell her she can stop yelling, she leaves the apartment and closes the door behind her.

I have no idea what to think. Or what to do now. I’m standing, soaking wet, in the middle of an unfamiliar apartment, and the only person besides Hunter and Tori whom I feel like punching is now just a few feet away in another room. And speaking of Ridge, why the hell did he send his psycho Hooters girlfriend to get me? I take out my phone and have begun to text him when his bedroom door opens.

He walks out into the hallway with an armful of blankets and a pillow. As soon as he makes eye contact with me, I gasp. I hope it’s not a noticeable gasp. It’s just that I’ve never actually seen him up close before, and he’s even better-looking from just a few feet away than he is from across an apartment courtyard.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen eyes that can actually speak. I’m not sure what I mean by that. It just seems as if he could shoot me the tiniest glance with those dark eyes of his, and I’d know exactly what they needed me to do. They’re piercing and intense and—oh, my God, I’m staring.

The corner of his mouth tilts up in a knowing smile as he passes me and heads straight for the couch.

Despite his appealing and slightly innocent-looking face, I want to yell at him for being so deceitful. He shouldn’t have waited more than two weeks to tell me. I would have had a chance to plan all this out a little better. I don’t understand how we could have had two weeks’ worth of conversations without his feeling the need to tell me that my boyfriend and my best friend were screwing.

Ridge throws the blankets and the pillow onto the couch.

“I’m not staying here, Ridge,” I say, attempting to stop him from wasting time with his hospitality. I know he feels bad for me, but I hardly know him, and I’d feel a lot more comfortable in a hotel room than sleeping on a strange couch.

Then again, hotel rooms require money.

Something I don’t have on me at the moment.

Something that’s inside my purse, across the courtyard, in an apartment with the only two people in the world I don’t want to see right now.

Maybe a couch isn’t such a bad idea after all.

He gets the couch made up and turns around, dropping his eyes to my soaking-wet clothes. I look down at the puddle of water I’m creating in the middle of his floor.

“Oh, sorry,” I mutter. My hair is matted to my face; my shirt is now a see-through pathetic excuse for a barrier between the outside world and my very pink, very noticeable bra. “Where’s your bathroom?”

He nods his head toward the bathroom door.

I turn around, unzip a suitcase, and begin to rummage through it while Ridge walks back into his bedroom. I’m glad he doesn’t ask me questions about what happened after our conversation earlier. I’m not in the mood to talk about it.

I select a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, then grab my bag of toiletries and head to the bathroom. It disturbs me that everything about this apartment reminds me of my own, with just a few subtle differences. This is the same bathroom with the Jack-and-Jill doors on the left and right, leading to the two bedrooms that adjoin it. One is Ridge’s, obviously. I’m curious about who the other bedroom belongs to but not curious enough to open it. The Hooters girl’s one rule was to stay the hell out of her room, and she doesn’t seem like the type to kid around.

I shut the door that leads to the living room and lock it, then check the locks on both doors to the bedrooms to make sure no one can walk in. I have no idea if anyone lives in this apartment other than Ridge and the Hooters girl, but I don’t want to chance it.

I pull off my sopping clothes and throw them into the sink to avoid soaking the floor. I turn on the shower and wait until the water gets warm, then step in. I stand under the stream of water and close my eyes, thankful that I’m not still sitting outside in the rain. At the same time, I’m not really happy to be where I am, either.

I never expected my twenty-second birthday to end with me showering in a strange apartment and sleeping on a couch that belongs to a guy I’ve barely known for two weeks, all at the hands of the two people I cared about and trusted the most.