Paper cuts, p.6
Paper Cuts, page 6
Charlie laughed. “No you didn’t.”
“I had a feeling. I did. Now he’s your hero.” Throwing her head back, Cara’s hands went to her chest and she went all dramatic. “And you’re going to fall in love. . .”
“Oh God.” Leaning over the table Charlie hit her friend’s leg. “Stop. Just, stop that.”
“Yeah, Cara. A minute ago you said he was acting like a weirdo.” Jas looked across at Charlie, eyebrows low. “I’m glad he sorted those lads out, but just be wary of the guy. Sounds to me like he’s hiding from something.”
“You don’t know that,” Selina chimed in. “He might just be shy.”
Nope. Charlie never got that from him. Broody? Yes. Closed off? Definitely. Especially since last week. Granted, she’d only seen him a few times, well, she’d seen a lot more of him earlier—Christ. Those abs. Until their recent exchange, he’d barely acknowledged her.
“I highly doubt that. Charlie, just watch the guy, ok.”
I intend to, she thought as she smiled at Jas, nodding to appease him.
Thankfully, a change in topic of conversation meant the rest of the evening went by in a flash after they’d got back to having some fun. Another bottle of wine and a few games of Cards Against Humanity and Charlie’s face was aching she’d laughed so hard.
At the door, they were hugging and saying goodbye when Cara suddenly grabbed Charlie’s arm and leaned in, putting her face right in front of hers. “Hot guy alert,” she said through the side of her mouth. And then everyone went quiet. When she followed Cara’s gaze down the hall, Jake was just reaching his door, hood up, helmet in hand, and he stopped and looked up for a second. There was no movement in those rigid features, no hint of a smile like he’d given her earlier. It was like they weren’t even there. He unlocked his door and went inside. The slam that followed made her blink. Honestly, you would think there would be a head nod or some kind of smile between them, an acknowledgement that they did know each other by name now as opposed to complete strangers. Nope. It was like everything in the past week hadn’t happened, which was fine by her. If he wanted to keep to himself that was his choice. She was the one that owed him something not the other way around. He certainly didn’t owe her any conversation and she accepted that. Now he was back to not even acknowledging her.
It was Jas that was scowling now. “Stay away from that one, Char.”
Cara also had a look of concern for a moment until the side of her mouth went up. “You were right. He is gorgeous. All that brooding and mystery I could get on board with.” She leaned in and kissed Charlie’s cheek. “See you tomorrow. Sweet dreams.” That last part was said with a wink.
Charlie nudged her friend.
“Goodnight,” Selina said. “It was fun.”
“It was. Thank you for coming round.”
As her friends wondered down the hall, failing to keep the noise down, Charlie hesitated, glancing at Jake’s and wondering what the hell was up with him. She was pretty sure she hadn’t done anything to upset him while she’d been in her flat all evening.
Whatever, she thought, going back inside.
Right then, Charlie was honestly too tired to care.
CHAPTER TEN
Shit!
Dropping the knife, Charlie brought her bleeding thumb up to her mouth as she went to the sink and ran the cold water tap. Her stomach flipped as she shoved her hand under the water and was afraid to look. In her mind she’d chopped the end off and was about to bleed to death on her kitchen floor. Reality: on proper inspection, a small slice about half a centimetre across the pad of her thumb. Silly cow. That’ll teach her to have the TV on while she was cooking.
Why did she think this was a good idea again?
It was late Saturday afternoon and instead of being out there in the world enjoying her time off—maybe a bit of shopping, a lunch date with Cara—Charlie was covered in potato with pots everywhere, and to top it all off she’d nearly chopped her thumb in half.
She stayed there holding the wound under the cold water until it went numb and appeared to stop bleeding. Now she could see the extent of the damage proper and cursed herself for being such a baby. Wasn’t even bad enough for a stitch, for crying out loud. Rummaging through the drawer under the crime scene where the half chopped onion was, she found a box of plasters and wrapped one around the wound so that if it did start bleeding again, she wouldn’t get any blood in the food.
Leaving the rest of the onion where it was, she scraped what she’d chopped into the pan on the cooker and lit the ring. Cooking wasn’t something she did very often, but she wasn’t that bad at it. Growing up, her mum had always let her help in the kitchen so she did know a thing or two, but it was her first attempt at a shepherd’s pie—a bit ambitious considering microwave meals and instant noodles were regular dietary additions since she’d become a student. Not just because money was limited, but so was her time and she could never be bothered. Today she was fed up with eating crap food. Something had come over her in the supermarket and before she’d realised, Charlie had filled her basket with fresh ingredients. She’d even bought some plums and a punnet of grapes, for Christ’s sake.
Half an hour later and she realised she’d made enough to feed half the building. Instead of one baking dish, she’d had to fill two; both were now in the oven. There was going to be a lot of potato and minced beef for dinner in her future.
Unless. . .
Nope. Bad idea.
An hour later, after the pies had turned out great, and Charlie had stuffed her face while she’d watched a couple of episodes of Friends. Her stomach was full to the brim. That’s not what had given her indigestion though. Nope. It had been caused by the bright idea that she’d tried to talk herself out of umpteen times, yet was still contemplating as she stared down at the other pie that had cooled down on the counter.
Honestly, though, did she really want to eat this for dinner for the next four or five nights when she could give it to somebody else?
You see, this was why she was still staring at it: It made perfect sense in one half of her mind. The other half, though, was telling her it was a crazy idea and she was only setting herself up for another fall. Inclined to agree with the latter, she walked away, sat down on the sofa and un-paused the show she was watching. Definitely a bad idea.
Why then, was she standing outside Jake’s door, shepherd’s pie in hand, twenty minutes later?
Bloody hell, her heart was pounding. Get a grip, Char. You were the one that said it didn’t matter either way it went.
Her mind was on that page, but her body wanted to run back to her flat, lock herself inside and throw the key out of the window so she couldn’t make the same stupid decision again.
Forcing her hand to let go of one side of the dish, Charlie sucked in a breath and held it. Just as she was about to knock she heard that lovely song again inside Jake’s flat. Pausing, she closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the melancholy tune and the soulful voice that sang along with it. That song. That voice. She was going to have to ask Jake who it was so she could get the album on her phone.
Ok. Let’s get this done, she thought, then knocked on the yellow door. She waited, but nothing. So she knocked again, harder this time, and the music cut off. Her ears strained to pick up any sound from inside, any indication that he was on his way, and she prepared herself to look casual.
The door opened and it caught her off guard—like as if she hadn’t expected him to answer after she’d knocked on his bloody door—and she almost dropped the dish.
Jake was standing there in a form-fitting black T-shirt and grey sweat pants holding a blond acoustic guitar down by his side by the neck. Charlie looked at it and then at Jake as she realised the music she’d heard had come from him. That was his gorgeous voice? Oh, wow. She felt herself melt a little inside.
His brow creased, as it always did whenever he saw her. Why did she think his brooding was so sexy? Stop!
“Hey,” he said looking past her a moment.
Thankfully, her brain managed to get back on board and got her mouth moving. “Hi. Sorry. Did I disturb you?” She looked down at the guitar again.
Jake did too, then back at her, brows still pulled down low. “Uh, no.”
Man of many words as always, at least when he wasn’t strumming the guitar. “Okay, I decided to do some cooking today and I overestimated, so I have an extra shepherd’s pie. Thought you might like to have it.” Her hands gripped the dish as she held it out to him.
“Why would you think that?” The sharp tone in his voice surprised her.
Seriously? Shit. Charlie couldn’t keep the heat from her cheeks. She knocks on the guy’s door, doing a friendly neighbourly thing, and he gets annoyed by it? Well, hadn’t she quickly learned from her mistake. Biting back what she really wanted to say, she went with nonchalance. No way was she going to show him how embarrassed she was.
“Look, I’m just going to throw it anyway, so you might as well do what you want with it.” Giving him no choice, she practically rammed it into his chest and he took it from her hands quickly like he’d known what she really wanted to do with it.
Without looking at him again, Charlie walked away, trying to seem casual but really wanting to get the hell away from there as quickly as possible. “You can keep the dish,” she threw at him over her shoulder as she headed back to her place.
Well, that definitely put the top hat on her attempt to befriend her neighbour.
Arsehole.
* * *
You’re a dick!
Before she got too far, Jake called after his neighbour, wanting to make the situation right. Yes, he wanted to deter her from trying to befriend him, but he wasn’t a total prick.
“Hey, Charlie?”
She paused and the way her head straightened before she turned back to him, Jake knew he’d fucked up. You are a total prick.
When she looked at him, her gaze narrowed slightly and she gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah?”
“I apologise for that just now. It was out of order.” He hoped he sounded sincere, but he wasn’t used to this kind of stuff. “I’ve had a shit day and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
After a moment, he expected her to tell him where to go, but he saw her shoulders drop a little, the storm clearing from her expression. “Okay.”
“And thanks. I appreciate the food.” It wasn’t a lie. Jake had been so busy with work lately that he’d been too familiar with his microwave. Not that it was such a bad thing. He’d eaten far worse food than the shitty ready meals he’d lived on for the past couple of years. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a home-cooked meal, but he knew who would have cooked it for him. His stomach sank at the thought. Nope. Not the time to go there right now.
The smell coming from the dish in his hand made his stomach rumble.
“I have some leftover gravy too if you want to come get some.” Charlie walked away and he almost told her it was ok. Then figured he might as well if she was offering. He used to drown his food in his mum’s gravy. The memory made him smile, which was something he rarely did lately. Especially when he thought of her.
Going back inside, he put his guitar on the stand in the hall and took the food to the kitchen, grabbing his key from the dish he kept by the microwave. When he got to Charlie’s flat, he knocked and didn’t have to wait long until she opened the door, holding a jug with foil over the top.
“Here.” When she passed it to him Jake noticed she seemed to be avoiding looking at him. “Put the pie in the oven for half an hour or so.”
He nodded. It was the first time Jake had really looked at her. He’d been so intent on dismissing her, he’d barely glanced at her whenever their paths had crossed, and he’d been so surprised and unsure when she’d appeared at his door that his only thoughts at that time were of how to get rid of her. It was now, as she stood in front of him in her navy leggings, white baggy jumper and beige fluffy slippers, that he realised how pretty she was. Her blonde hair was tied back in a messy bun and he noticed she had a light dusting of freckles across her nose that trickled onto her cheeks. She had one single, more prominent one sitting above her top lip towards the corner.
Look at me, he urged in his mind, wanting to see the colour of her eyes. The awkward silence he’d created seemed to do the trick. She looked up at him and finally, after he’d failed at trying not to wonder about them, the colour of her eyes was revealed as they questioned him—somewhere between blue and green. Unusual.
An unwanted feeling warmed his chest and knocked him off guard. He cleared his throat, like that was the way to get rid of it. Thinking he better say something before he started to look weird just standing there staring at her, he got his mouth moving. “Thank you.” Yeah, that’s all he seemed to have in his vocabulary right then, and the more he tried to expand on it, the more muddled his brain got.
Shit.
“I’ll bring the dish and jug back when I’m done.” So he did know other words?
Charlie nodded, still barely looking at him. “No rush. Just. . . whenever.”
Jake needed to get back to his own place. This was already too much interaction. The effort he’d put in to avoiding her, appearing unapproachable so she would give up on trying to befriend him, didn’t seem to be working. This wasn’t a good idea. It certainly wasn’t what you called keeping her at arm’s length. Christ! He wished he had longer arms.
She had to stay a stranger. No matter what.
Still, it was just some shepherd’s pie.
“Have a good night then,” he said backing away from her door.
“You too.”
When he got back inside his flat, he stood there for a second behind the closed door. It seemed his neighbour had piqued his interest, which wasn’t helping the situation at all. Don’t be stupid, Jake. Just because she was a nice woman, pretty, clearly thoughtful, it still wasn’t going to change anything. Trouble was, she wasn’t easily forgotten. It was bad enough he had to see her at all; it was pretty impossible to avoid her all together when they lived on the same floor down the hall from each other. Now they’d interacted—more than just a passing acknowledgment—he’d made the mistake of taking notice.
Swallowing down his annoyance, Jake figured there was no point letting good food go to waste. He put the jug down on the counter, got a plate from the drainer and pulled the drawer open to get a knife to cut the shepherd’s pie in half. He paused and looked over at the cutlery stand in the drainer beside the sink. No knife there. Then he looked in the sink, but it was empty. In his cutlery drawer there was a section where the sharp knives slotted into the plastic drawer separator. There were only three slots and one knife was missing. Checking around the kitchen, he couldn’t see the missing knife anywhere. He checked the two other drawers underneath. Nothing. It wasn’t like he had a huge amount of kitchen items in the small open-plan space for anything to get lost. Pausing, Jake knew he hadn’t misplaced it. He’d cut up some potatoes with it last night, put his food in the oven—baked potatoes he’d later covered with microwaved tinned steak—then had gone for a shower, leaving the mess in the kitchen until later. Glancing at the drainer again, he searched through last night’s clean pots just in case it had fallen through the basket. No joy there either.
With his brain now kicking into overdrive, he walked around the living room, checking everywhere, under the sofa and chair; pulling the cushions up, even wedging his hand down the edges to see if it had somehow managed to fall down there. It wasn’t anywhere. Jake stood there panting, a tight feeling started to gnaw at his chest as his mind went back to last night, seeing Charlie outside his open flat door.
Fuck!
Had someone been inside his place?
Was it irrational to think someone had come in while he’d been in the shower and stolen a fucking dirty knife from in his kitchen? It was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Nothing else appeared to be missing. He had an almost new iPhone he’d left on the side table in the living room along with his wallet, next to the sofa where he always kept them. Surely some opportunist who had ducked inside his open door would have taken something valuable, not an old kitchen knife.
He had to be way off. It was going to turn up somewhere and he’d laugh about it. Right?
Simple explanation.
Why, then, was he lying in his bed later that night with sleep evading him because he couldn’t stop thinking about the fucking knife? And why had his flat door been wide open when he knew for a fact he’d closed it, just like he always did?
“. . .when I was passing I saw the thing open and wondered if you knew.”
Glancing over at the digital clock on his chest of drawers confirmed it was way too late to knock on Charlie’s door, and also that he’d been lying there stewing over the damn things for over two hours. Two a.m. and he was wide awake.
Throwing the quilt off, he got up out of bed and grabbed the jogging pants he’d left on the laundry basket. Half-dressed with his phone in hand, Jake went out into his hall and switched the light on. He stopped at the front door and opened his phone, scrolling the top menu down and pressing on the torch. Shining the light on the lock, Jake inspected it on the inside first. No sign of anything being tampered with. So he opened the door and did the same on the outside. Just regular scratches caused by his and the many other keys that had been used in it before him. Moving to the edge of the door, he shone the torch all the way down. Nothing that looked suspicious. So he turned to the inside of the door frame.
There. . . right under the keep of the night latch. There were scratches, and some of the paint had rubbed off the frame underneath. He moved his finger over the marks that felt like scrapes. Paint came off on his finger.
Bingo! So some bastard had been in his flat.
The question was, who?
Closing his eyes, he forced his breath to remain steady as dread moved through him like a snake slithering and menacing.
