Manic Attack

III. Gucci Gucci Boo

"Come on, baby," I whispered to my network signal. "Stay strong."

The elevator dinged as it passed each floor up to the tenth where my condo was situated. I had pretty much superb network up in my place, but not in the painfully slow elevator that took me there. From the moment my phone died in Mel's office, I had put it back on charge in my car but it only lit up when I reached the residential parking lot. Which meant that I had yet to see what dishevel the news had caused on social media.

With one arm hugging a jumbo packet of organic dog food and the other holding my phone out in a painfully awkward angle, I stepped out of the elevator.

I almost dropped the dog food. Almost. I didn't because Billy hated crumbs in her bowl. That was some quick thinking considering how I wanted to retrace my steps back into that elevator even if it meant having a lousy network.

He stood against my apartment door, tapping a foot and staring at his phone, his face taut with anger and looking as sexy as a Calvin Klein model. Oh, wait, he was a Calvin Klein model.

Dan.

"When did you get back from Spain?" I asked. Clearly, I being the ideal girlfriend, thought that the best way to welcome your long-gone boyfriend was by interrogating him about his time of arrival. No kisses, no hugs- too mainstream.

His olive eyes flicked towards me, sleepy like they always were. Only this time they were sleepy and mad. "Where's your phone?" He asked. Even he thought kisses and hugs were mainstream.

Weren't we a match made in heaven?

I raised my hand to show him. "It's right here I just couldn't find network--" A crazy chain of pings sounded from the iPhone, cutting me off mid-sentence. It had finally connected to the network

Dan eyed my phone with hateful intensity. "You read--"

Pingping

"You read my--"

Pingpingpingping

"Put that shit on silent!" he snapped. His voice bounced off the walls in the hallway. The way he glared at the device, I was half expecting it blow up in my hand.

I obediently tucked it into my back pocket. "Babe--"

"Have I seen you somewhere?" An unfamiliar voice broke in from somewhere behind me. Dan's eyes flicked to something over my shoulder, his brows furrowed.

I turned around to find a little girl- around eight or nine- standing with a hand on her hip, staring at Dan. In this bare hallway, I wondered how we didn't hear her footsteps approach.

She was literally covered in a pink- pink frilly frock that reached her thighs, pink boots, pink shiny purse, and a pink bubble-gum popping on her pink glossy lips. She was, hands down, the #ThrowbackTuesday version of Paris Hilton.

"You talkin' to me?" Dan asked, his expressions not softening the slightest bit.

Her eyes narrowed like she was trying to put a name to his face. A short while passed before they flickered in recognition. "You're the guy from the billboard outside my window."

"Yeah, I am." Dan nodded like it was obvious and then turned to face me, wordlessly ending his conversation with Peppa Princess. "Open the door--"

"Mommy has pictures of you in her underwear drawer."

Our heads creaked towards her, unable to form a suitable reply. Dan's face didn't hold that hard expression anymore, it just looked mortified to the point that his ears had tinted rosy.