Authors: Chris Van Hakes
Lost and Found
Lost and Found
by
Chris Van Hakes
Copyright © 2013 Chris Van Hakes
Cover design copyright
© 2013 Allie Gerlach
Cover photograph copyright
© 2013 Shutterstock
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13:
978-0-98605890-5
CONTENTS
Delaney
I was locking my bike in the basement of my new apartment when I heard a roar from the laundry room. “Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
” I turned to see who was yelling at me, and bumped into the box of lost and found items near my feet.
He stood there in the doorway, one hand in dark Ei
nstein hair, sticking straight up, his face lightly stubbled and with the kind of cheekbones that could cut deli meats. He had a crooked, imperfect nose that could have made him unattractive, but somehow didn’t. His clothes were rumpled and his flannel shirt was missing a few buttons. He didn’t look like Cliff. Cliff had full lips and long eyelashes and a boyish, innocent charm as he smiled.
This guy wasn’t delicate and beautiful. This guy was dangerous. My stomach fluttered as he stared past me. He didn’t see me, or that’s what I told myself when he yelled one last time into his phone. “FUCK.
YOU.” Then he hurled it past my ear where it hit the CatEye headlamp, toppling it to the concrete floor.
My mouth hung open. Emily, standing in the stairwell behind me, spoke.
“Jackass.” He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even meet her eyes, but his cheeks were coloring a bright red. He brushed past her in the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time. She said after he retrieved his phone and disappeared upstairs, “Let’s hope Anger Management over there isn’t a tenant.”
“Whatever. I’ll deal.” I bent down to pick up the broken light. When I rolled my bike wheel bac
kward, a piece lodged into my tire and I sighed. “I’ll deal after I get a new tube for this tire.
“I wonder what that was about,” I said as I threw away the headlamp in the laundry room trashcan and Emily a
nswered, “He’s an asshole, that’s what that’s about.”
“That’s your answer for everything. Cliff is an as
shole. The cabbie that picked me up from the airport was an asshole. The key that didn’t fit the lock is an asshole.”
“What can I say, there are a lot of assholes in the world,” she said. We made our way up the stairs to the top floor. The whole building was an old Victorian ma
nsion painted bright purple and converted into apartments. All the other apartments in this section of Prairie Glen were also converted mansions.
The Soviet-era concrete buildings never made it to the small town, along with every other architectural innov
ation after 1915, keeping it the pristine college town in the middle of a corn field.
I was renting one of the attic spaces, and my little apartment was made up of angles and co
rners and slants, not at all a bland twenty-something apartment with IKEA furniture and drywall painted beige. It had a certain kind of beauty in its built-in bookshelves and glass doorknobs, plaster walls and dark mahogany baseboards and trim.
Just as we were stepping through the threshold of my new apartment, my only neighbor on this floor, in the place across the hall, opened his door and stepped out onto the black and white checked tile landing.
It was Jackass. He didn’t even look at us as he locked his door and went down the stairwell. Emily said, “Jackass!” to his retreating back, and he offered her a single finger in answer.
She asked, “Still glad you got this apartment?”
I stared across the hallway at the closed door for a moment before answering. “It’s cheap. It’s pretty. And I’m sure I’ll never see my neighbor. He seems like the kind of guy who won’t be home a lot.”
She gave a snort and then said, “What now?”
“Now we find the stand mixer. I need to bake some cookies.”
Emily cocked an eyebrow. “You’re sure you’re okay?
Because I can go kick that guy’s ass.”
“Celebratory cookies, not stress cookies,” I said.
“Then I want chocolate chips
and
walnuts.”
“Done.”
I waited until after Emily left to put a plate of celebratory cookies outside my new neighbor’s door.
Michael sat on my sofa eating cookies while I opened the fridge and closed the fridge and opened it again. “What’s your problem?” he said around a mouthful of cookie.
“Nothing,” I said. Then I added, “You. You should go home. I need to sleep.”
“Yeah, that’s why you came to get me in a froth yelling about your family. Have a cookie.” He held out the plate to me.
“You’d be in
a froth if you had to talk to my mother.”
“Anyone would be. Isn’t her nickname the Froth? But you should be used to it.” He took another bite. “I think there’s something salty in here. There’s a slight savory tang, in a good way.”
“I will never get used to the Froth. I swore and yelled and she still acted like nothing happened. She’s invincible. She’s a robot.”
“Robots sometimes grow hearts. I read that in a Vo
nnegut story once.”
“Yeah, robots are warmer. She’s completely anim
atronic.”
“You’re getting close to animatronic yourself. Your face is fixed in a permanent scowl. Aren’t you g
oing to have a cookie?” he said.
“I hate you,” I said. “Go away.”
“No. Where’d you get these cookies? You couldn’t have made them. One of your ladies of the night?”
“The new neighbor left them. She’s probably tr
ying to poison me.”
“Why?”
“I threw a phone at her.”
“Why?”
“Are you a toddler? Are you testing out the word ‘why’?” I said, but Michael kept staring. “My mom wants me to go home for Brad and Mia’s rehearsal dinner.”
“Ah. The Froth got to you.” I nodded. “So, you g
oing?” he asked.
I pulled out a Corona and closed the fridge a little too hard. “I told her no, and then she told me I was a disappointment and a ge
neral loss as a person—”
“And then you threw the phone?”
“Pretty much. There was also some gratuitous swearing, which didn’t faze her at all.” I sat next to him on the battered brown leather sofa I’d gotten off Craigslist. When I picked it up, Mia had laughed and said, “I can’t tell if this is brown because it was made that way or because it became that way, but I think it’s the latter.”
Next to me, Michael took a deep breath. “Listen, I know you’re upset about Mia, and you’re a general pain in the ass since you’ve been on night float, but I think you should go. Not for your mom. That woman is useless.”
I nodded and gripped the longneck. “For Mia.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her, an
yway?”
“Mia?
Just before the engagement.”
Michael chewed a cookie and then reached for anot
her, shoving half of it in his mouth before he spoke again. “These are really good. She’s probably attracted to you.”
I swiveled my head and glared at him. “What?”
He swallowed. “Sorry, I meant the neighbor, not Mia. The neighbor girl probably has a crush on you.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “She was mousy-looking and wore weird clothes.” Michael eyed my ripped jeans and my shirt with a few missing buttons. “
She
had weird clothes?” he said.
“Fuck off.”
“But even so, maybe she was attracted to you.”
“No. She was really young-looking. And I threw a phone at her. Not happening,” I said.
“Yeah, but the young ones love you. Plus, girls love a bad boy,” Michael said.
“You sound like an ad for a teen movie.” I tipped back the beer. “And I’m not a bad boy.”
“Girls seemed to think you were in high school.”
“That was because I didn’t really go to high school.
Unless smoking pot in the parking lot counts for attendance.”
“I was jealous. I couldn’t get
Andi Nichols to look at me, and she slept with you when you didn’t even bathe.”
“Twice.”
“Exactly,” Michael said with disgust.
“It’s not me. In high school and college it was because my parents had money. They all wanted to marry a rich guy, even if I was a loser. Now it’s because I’m not a lo
ser, and not being a loser is rare these days.”
“You’re
just barely not a loser.”
“The medical degree is my only non-loser quality.”
“It’s sure not your charm, or this apartment.”
“Nope.”
I took a sip, and Michael said, “Still, it doesn’t help that you look like you look.”
I shrugged. “It didn’t work on Mia.”
“Mia’s with the right guy,” Michael said without malice.
“Thanks for bringing that one home.
Got it. Don’t worry. I’m done with trying for a relationship. Lesson learned.”
“Sorry,” he said with a wince. “I didn’t mean it like that.” After a pause he asked, “When’s this rehearsal di
nner?”
“Day before the wedding.”
“Yeah, I get that, but
when
?”
“September 29th,” I said as I wiped a bead of perspir
ation off the bottle, and then put it down when my phone buzzed. “Shit, here.” I handed Michael my drink. “I forgot that I’m on backup call. Stupid. Stupid.”
“You really need to sleep more. You’re going to lose it.”
“It’s not the sleep. It’s my mom.” I wiped a hand over my face, aggravated that my mom could make me forget something so vital. “I can’t drink this.” I picked up the phone with its newly shattered screen and hoped they’d ask me to work a very, very long shift, so I wouldn’t have to come home to my empty apartment until I was too exhausted to care about Mia.