Translation: you'll get AIDS if you hook up with some dude on Tinder.Which was probably accurate. Besides, Chastity had used an app to set me up on the blind date from hell with Matthew Caldwell. So yeah…I didn’t want to use any dating apps. They were dead to me. Which meant my two options were to be alone forever or play along with Frankie's little real estate game. If I didn’t do this, Chastity would never let me live it down. And…I was really curious. What could a few more places hurt? As horrifying as tonight had been, it had also made me laugh. I was having fun. I took a deep breath. I was living. And if I figured out Frankie’s lingo, I might be able to order up the perfect man.
So what was my ideal man?My stalker.But I couldn't have him. Mainly because if I ever saw him again, I'd be so embarrassed about the pie incident that I'd probably scream and hide. Or just laugh in his face again. I didn't think he'd seen me, but there was a slim possibility. And that was enough to make me never want to show my face near One57 again. Damn, I was really going to miss seeing him twice a week. But not as much as he was going to miss seeing me…since he was the stalker in this scenario.
"Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what you want until you see it," said Frankie. "But that's where I come in. Just trust me and I promise I'll find you the perfect place."
"Okay, let's do it." It was better that way. When I’d tried to describe my stalker with man-house metaphors, I’d almost ended up being some gym bro's sidepiece.
Her first try was okay. He was handsome. He was friendly. He had a nice smile. But I just didn't get the right vibes from him. And he was like seven feet tall.
"All these high ceilings are making me dizzy," I said. "Can we go a little shorter?"
"How short?"
"Surprise me."
And she did. Because the realtor at the next place was a dwarf. The ceilings in the apartment may have been short, but the realtor assured me that the shower washuge.
No thanks.
Frankie tried a few more times. One realtor was an earthy cowboy playing a guitar, but the excessive taxidermy on the walls was a pretty big turn-off. The next was a polished wall street type with slicked-back hair and a five o'clock shadow. He was like Joe, only a million times better looking. But he was still like Joe.Hard pass.
The more apartments we visited, the more I wondered about the Society. How did they have such a wide variety of men sitting around waiting for me? And how did they afford all these apartments?
"I think I might not be ready for a new apartment yet," I said after I had rejected five more men. Or rather, after I rejected four men and got kicked out of the fifth's apartment for making a particularly distasteful comment comparing the smell of Indian food to a cow's rear-end. In my defense, I hadn't seen that the realtor was Indian when I made the comment. "I'm gonna get going."
"I just have one more," she said. "And I think it might be everything you're looking for."
"Oh yeah?" That was hard to believe. I’d decided that Frankie was terrible at her job. She had no idea what she was doing. She was an idiot person.
"Yeah. It's a gorgeous place that just recently went on the market. The molding is all custom. There's a gourmet kitchen. The ceilings are nice and tall. The realtor will probably even be baking something to make it feel homey."
Hmm. "Sounds perfect."
"As your realtor, though, I feel compelled to advise you against making an offer. It may look beautiful on the outside, but it's all just a façade. Behind all the paint and granite and trim, the foundation is a mess. Bad wiring, rusty pipes. It wouldn't surprise me if there's even asbestos or some lead paint."
It sounded like this guy was a hot mess. Which if I was being honest with myself was actually right up my alley. I was pretty sure my foundation was a mess too. And I didn’t really have anything to lose. “He sounds perfect.”
She stared at me, because she’d literally just said he wasn’t. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
I shrugged. “Something about rusty pipes. Let’s do this.”
Stalker Problems - Chapter 17 - JUMP!
Tuesday – April 11, 2023
The elevator opened directly into the penthouse of the Caldwell Hotel. Anddamnwas it nice.
“Like what you see?” asked Frankie.
I took it back. Frankie wasn’t an idiot person. She was amazing. “Why was this not the very first place you showed me?”
“Have you already forgotten my warning?”
Screw her warning. This was the apartment for me. I just knew it. The only question was…who was the realtor? The walls were white, which meant he had white skin. What did the glass walls mean, though? Did he wear lots of mesh tank tops? Or was he so pale that his skin was practically translucent?
“Come on,” said Frankie with a tug on my arm. “You haven’t even seen the best part.”
She led me towards the kitchen, which was part of a two-story great room. I was kind of obsessed. Not to mention the wall art. In a normal house the bright colors and geometric patterns would have been too much, but against the white walls and paired with the sleek modern furniture, they were kind of perfect. They also meant that the realtor probably wore bright clothing…
