A Slave to Broken Hearts (A Slave to Love Sequel)

Chapter 57: Dinosaur

I was locking my apartment door and heading off to work when Todd's door opened and a woman stepped out, and though I had never seen her before, her voice was unfortunately familiar to me. Fidgeting with my lock to give them a moment to kiss goodbye, I waited till she had turned and walked away before finally following behind her in the direction of the elevator. On my way, though I kept my eyes averted in the guise of clueless and ignorant neighbor who was struggling to put her keys away, Todd waved through his still open door to catch my attention, standing there barefoot and shirtless in a pair of boxers.

"Goodmorning," he said cheerfully, leaning against his doorframe, completely unbothered by his own nakedness.

"G'morning," I replied, meeting his eyes for as long as was polite before I focused on the dingy carpet, knowing full well why it was such a good morning. It was very difficult to be able to look him in the eyes these days and it had become a bit of a game for Katie and I to keep a tally of how many girls were in and out of his apartment.

I much preferred when he kept his trysts for the afternoon because that meant I was usually out, but the majority happened during the evening or mornings, which unfortunately meant I got a front row seat while trying to sleep. At least to the sounds of it anyway, not that that made it any better.

And after having the misfortune of hearing one too many of his escapades, yeah, it was enough to make me want to never look him in the eye again, because I was trying my damnedest to forget everything I'd heard. It wasn't anything particularly weird or concerning, but it was very difficult to be a friendly neighbor when you knew their most intimate moments and what they liked in bed, particularly by accident and without the other persons knowledge.

I walked slow down the hall, hoping to give today's lady a head start so we wouldn't get stuck in the elevator together, but no such luck. She was a slow walker, probably because she was much shorter than me, and held the elevator for me even though I was still a ways away. We nodded a greeting to each other and all I could think was that she was the fifteenth woman in the last three weeks and how the hell was he finding so many women? 

Though these frequent guests of his had the singular upside of cementing the fact that Katie had clearly dodged a bullet, as the one thing Todd seemed to want was the one thing she struggled with and wouldn't have gone for anyway, so any guilt she was feeling over rejecting him had dissipated.

Work was long, but dull, Mike was out sick which left me with Shauna, who was perfectly nice but I was so used to working with Mike most shifts that it wasn't quite as fun. By the time I got home from work, Katie was sitting curled up on the couch, hair in a wreck of a bun, scrunched down as far as she could be on the couch, flicking through channel after channel, though her eyes were glazed and it seemed like she was going through the motion of clicking more than actually looking for something to watch.

"You're not going out tonight?" I asked. She had the night off work from the restaurant and last I heard she was maybe going to hang out with Noah, but it didn't look like she was moving from the couch any time soon.

"No," she said, snapping out of her daze. 

"Are you alright? You seem...not yourself," I asked. Which was an understatement. She looked like the poster girl for teenage depression.

"Just a bit tired, that's all, didn't sleep much," she said, smiling up at me but she still looked sad, eyes a bit puffy like she hadn't slept well.

"Nah, come on. I'm the queen of pretending I'm alright when I'm not, you'll have to do better than that," I said, sitting down next to her. "What's going on?"

"It's nothing," she insisted.

"If something is on your mind, you can talk to me about it. We're friends and I'm here for you if you need it."

She hesitated, one finger coming up to her mouth, chewing her nail. "It's...boy stuff."

"I happen to be experienced in that area. What kind of stuff?"