LOVE TO HATE YOU

Mr. I'm to sexy for my shirt...

Two pairs of wide eyes looked up at me over coffee cups.

"Okay," he said, sounding like he was thinking. "Let's rewind a little more. Yesterday at the office, when you walked out, he said he was in love with you, too."

"He's not being serious, guys!" I said. "This is obviously some line that he thinks works on women or something, I don't know what to think."

Bruce nodded. "And rewinding some more to the night that you met-"

JJ smacked his hand down on the table and looked at me with dramatic shock. 

"Stop rewinding; I'm still on the part where you walk in and he's half-naked up a ladder. Can we go back to that part please?"

I rolled my eyes. "JJ you are such-"

"I don't care...so he was up a ladder. With a hammer and a drill...?"

I nodded at JJ-I'd already been over this.

"Was he holding the drill? Or did he have a big tool belt strapped to his sweaty body?"

Bruce and I burst out laughing.

"I'm just trying to get an accurate picture if you don't mind."

Bruce slapped his partner of twenty years on the arm. "In your dreams he had a tool belt!" he said.

"Well a guy can dream then."

"Can we get back to the important facts here?" I said while topping up my coffee-this was our morning ritual-"A pervy sex God is living next-door, only inches from where I sleep, and he's strange and very weird and playing some kind of mind trick on me by asking me out. He's teasing me and I don't like it."

"And he does home renovations in his underwear," JJ added, "an important fact to consider when weighing such things."

"What things?" I asked.

"Well, going out with him, silly."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm not going out with him, besides he's not being serious. It's all part of his Mr. I'm too sexy for my shirt act. He's probably asked half the girls in the office out and told them the same."

A knock on the door interrupted us and we all turned.

You could almost hear the horror movie sound track swelling, as the tension built up and our eyes widened in horror.

"It couldn't be?" JJ whispered.

I shook my head. Please don't let it be, please don't -

"Hello? Sera?" His voice confirmed my nightmare.

Before I could stop him, JJ was already halfway across the room.

"I'm not here. I'm not here!" I hissed.

"It's six in the morning. Where else would you be?" Bruce asked getting up.

"Jogging," I said, moving to hide behind a pillar on the balcony.

"You don't jog."

"I do now," I whispered. Bruce rolled his eyes and walked inside.

"Oh. Hello neighbor," JJ said, answering the door in all his glory. I could picture it quite clearly. JJ was probably fawning and drooling, and Bruce was probably not far behind.

"Hi, I'm Ben. I just moved in last night."

"Oh we know who you are, sweetie," JJ said-I almost died.

I heard Ben chuckle slightly. "Yeah. I guess you do by now."

"So what brings you to our neck of the woods?"

"I came to apologize, I hope I didn't wake you up with the noise?"

"Nooo, Nooooo, not at allll!" the chorus of JJ and Bruce rang out.

"Good. I would hate to make a bad impression on my first night here."

"Not at all." I heard JJ say in a very loaded tone.

"Is Sera here?" I cringed when I heard my name-Why was he looking for me?

"Um..." JJ faltered, he was terrible at lying. "She's gone jogging."

"Really." Ben sounded unconvinced.

Bruce jumped in, "Oh she's a HUGE jogger. Loves it"-Oh God, he was hamming it up now. "Very fit and athletic, our little Sera is. Such a jogger."

I heard a tiny chuckle from Ben, as if the perv was thinking about my athleticism.

"What time does she leave? To jog?"

"Around five? Hey, JJ?"

"Mmm hmm," JJ helped "Usually five-ish."

"Good to know. Well, nice meeting you guys." He must have started walking away because I heard the door start closing before JJ really pushed it too far. "So what did you want with our Sera this morning?" he asked.

"I came to see if she wanted to drive to work together."

I heard the door close and within two seconds they were both next to me again.

"Oh God, he's gorgeous!" JJ exclaimed.

"That suit," Bruce added. "He looks like he's from the fifties or something-"

"Except for those tattoos," JJ corrected.

"And hair cut," Bruce added again.

"WOW!" JJ and Bruce said together.

JJ sat down and fanned himself dramatically. "And he wanted to drive you to work."

"I have no idea why?" I was genuinely puzzled.

"It's because you're a hottie," Bruce said putting his arm around me. "And we are going to live vicariously through you."

"I'm so not his type, though," I said-and I meant it. His interest in me, even if it was all some kind of joke, was rather disconcerting. "I'm not some cool creative advertising chick."

"I don't know," JJ said. "He looked genuinely disappointed when we said you weren't here."

I shot JJ an incredulous look before I left to get ready for another awkward day at work.