Chapter 6: Ninja Turtle Slippers

“Thanks for giving me a ride home, Ms. Monroe, I owe you. Text me when you get home!” I say as Hannah’s mother gets into the uber I called for her.

“You don’t owe me for a thing. After pushing my Hannah through cosmetology school, we owe you.” The woman still wearing blue nursing scrubs and well-styled short black curly hair smiles and waves.

“Hannah did it all herself!” I point out.

Hannah had some low points of actually committing to the program, especially with the hair portion, hence my mullet, but she got through it and now she has clients on a waitlist.

“She couldn’t do it alone,” she replies, her dark eyes twinkling as she closes the door of her uber.

I watch as her uber drives away and then I walk into my apartment lobby. The rusty, dented mailboxes line the interior wall, and it’s as if fate has struck me with lightning.

Roxy’s mailbox was overflowing with mail, and one letter addressed to her had fallen onto the worn linoleum floor as if placed there on purpose.

I know these envelopes anywhere. Roxy’s new Centerburg Bank and Credit card are inside it.

Taking a second look at her mailbox, I know there’s no way I can shove it in, and it’s too important to just leave it here.

“I can’t believe I'm actually doing this,” I murmur under my breath.

I pick up the envelope and my pulse starts to thunder in my neck. I feel like I could shift from the anxiety alone, but I take a deep breath and push down all my feelings.

It’s just a neighborly thing to do, like the time I helped Mr. Duncan find his lost dog when I was in high school.

With only a slight wobble, I begin to amble my way up the worn wooden stairs to apartment 3a. Deep down I know I should be doing this sober, but there is some truth to liquid courage. I continue until I come to four doors, the furthest being apartment 3a.

I swallow, and with a head swimming in the clouds, I adjust my purse and walk to the green door marked ‘3a’.

And just like in front of ‘Lycantina’ I pause, drumming up the moxie to knock.

I have to know.

I need to make sure that she isn’t a member of LyCan’t. If the first place I move to ends up having a Lycan Hunter living here too, my parents will never let me live it down. They’ll coax me back to live with them. I’d have to do all the chores and have no say in what I eat or when I get the car keys outside of my commute.

I can’t let Roxy take my freedom from me.

In between knocking four times on the door and hearing a ‘Coming!’ I realize that my logic isn’t quite as sound as I’d like it to be.

“I didn’t expect you’d be here so…” Roxy’s voice floods through my ears even more smoothly than it did on the phone as she opens the door.

The air rush and lack of pheromones tell me she’s as human as Hannah.

I can’t help the spike of disappointment from diving deep into my chest like a stake. I can’t believe I let myself think that a nice voice could mean a nice person.

Real adults don’t do this. What am I thinking?!

Then I see her.

Voluminous, wild black hair curls down over tan tattooed shoulders and a Bad Bunny tank top. My mind blanks. I stop functioning as Roxy’s dark almond-shaped eyes widen in surprise. She’s taller than me, and her shoulders are well toned, and I just want to reach out and touch one to see if it’s as smooth, warm, and muscular as it looks.

I pull myself together as I stare at the tattoo of some sort of flower peeking over her shoulder.

“Uh, can I help you? Are you lost or…something?” Roxy asks, voice skeptical, keeping the door open just enough for her upper body to peek out.

Sometimes when people ask this they sound put out, but she sounds like she may actually be concerned for my mental health.

I must look like a lunatic.

“Um, sorry. I live on the first floor, and I found this in the middle of the lobby. Your mailbox is full… so yeah. It looked important,” I ramble and hand her the envelope.

She opens the door more so I can see her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle slippers. Raphael to be exact.

She grabs the envelope and I notice she has a tattoo on her hand.

I wish the envelope was small enough for our fingers to graze. But this is when the spell that the tequila cast over me wanes. It doesn’t matter how fit she is, or how the sound of her voice makes my pulse calm down, if she is a Lycan Hunter, then I’m her target.

And I’m not going to let her figure me out.

“Oh, thanks. I’ll go down there tomorrow and clean out the mailbox. I swear I won’t make any more trouble,” she says, and I notice just how much more closed off she is than she was over the phone.

“Uh, I’m not complaining or anything. I’m not like…the neighborhood snitch,” I reassure her.

Wait, since when am I trying to make her feel better?

“Ha, I guess not. If you were, you’d probably tell the management and I’d wake to a strongly worded letter and a rent increase.” She quirks the corner of her mouth up.

It’s the closest to a smile I’ve seen.

“Ugh no, gross. Sounds like you speak from experience, don’t tell me you’re a snitch,” I banter back.

Why am I bantering? I don’t want to be friends with a member of LyCan’t. Then I remember what Hannah said, ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’

“No, no, the other way around. Don’t ever move to St Morris,” she chuckles a little bit, but it’s still nothing like the laughter I heard from her over the phone.

“I’d love to be able to move. I grew up here and I’m positive that anywhere has got to be better than here,” I say, my mouth twists small and tight on my face.

One day, I’ll save up enough to get out of here.

“Yeah, I can see why you’re itching to get out… oh, this is a bank thing. I had to call this poor girl at the bank a bunch. Thanks for giving it to me. I’m Roxy by the way,” she says and I notice the small smile curl up on her face.

“I’m Mack, and yeah, banks. They’re a pain,” I reply.

I don’t know how to continue the conversation, but I’m also scared she will figure out that I’m ‘Leigh’ from the bank. That’d be crazy because humans don’t have that finely tuned sense of hearing.

“Ah, they’re not so bad all the time,” she smiles a little and shrugs.

I wonder if she’s smiling about me, and our conversations. Probably not because that’s delusional.

“Anyway, I guess I’ll see you around.” Roxy gives me a little handwave, and I notice her short, natural fingernails and the callouses on her hands.

She begins to retreat inside her apartment, and I don’t want her to. If she closes the door now, then I’ll never know anything about her. Like why she has calloused hands, and why she has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles slippers.

And of course, why she hates Lycans, and if she’s planning on hurting any.

“Do you want to hang out sometime? I mean, if you want,” I blurt out.

I feel my ears and cheeks burn bright red as I see Roxy’s dark, long eyebrows hit her hairline.

Now she definitely thinks I’m some sort of creeper. If she wasn’t going to investigate me about being a Lycan, she may now. The back of my neck starts to sweat. Did it get hot in this hallway all of a sudden?

Can the floor just open and swallow me whole?

“Uh…” Roxy pauses then grins, and her eyes sharpen. “Did you just bring this up here to ask me out?”

“What? No. Well, not…’no’ as in you’re not someone to go out with. More like, I didn’t mean it originally. You just needed your mail, and well…I asked. Forget it.” The blood rushes from my face.

My eyes bulge out at my idiocy, ‘well…I asked?’ I can’t even.

My stomach twists itself into a thorny pit of bile. It sounds like I just double-downed on asking her out.

To Roxy’s credit, she tries to hide her laugh.

“Sorry, I’m messing with you. You look like one of those rare good people to do nice things like this, so yeah I’m down,” she says, her genuine smile reaching her ears.

The blood rushes back to my face.

How she misjudged me. A wash of guilt washes over me since I definitely came up here with an ulterior motive and only acted on it because I wasn’t sober.

Sobriety hits me like a punch to the nose.

“Ok…uh…” I don’t know what to do now. “Thursday?”

My pulse races and my stomach slithers and shakes full of snakes and butterflies. Meeting her the day after tomorrow should give me enough time to make up a plan and not throw up on her shoes.

“Thursday night’s perfect, just before I start my new job. What’s your number?” Roxy reaches into the back pocket of her black sweatpants to retrieve her phone. The phone case has some sort of martial artist on it.

Judging by her muscles and phone case, she must do some MMA stuff. I better be careful.

“555-455-3355,” I say, and at least she didn’t ask for my socials because then she’d see all my embarrassing photos.

My phone vibrates deep within my purse on my keys, making a loud buzzing sound in the middle of the quiet hallway.

My phone vibrates again.

“Only one of those texts was me, miss popular. Until again, Mack.” Roxy emphasizes the ‘m’ in my name by pressing her full lips together.

I wave, feeling all of a sudden victorious and like a loser at the same time.

Did I just ask out the enemy?

Oh god… I haven’t asked anyone out on a date in forever. Maybe since I started my job at the bank? The last date I went on was a disaster. Even though she was nice and pretty, our sense of humor didn’t match at all. Her cutting, dry sarcasm made me feel like I was doing something wrong, not that I should be laughing.

I pull out my phone as I walk down to my apartment, stomach still writhing.

The most recent text is from a new number and Roxy. She texted me her name and a fire emoji. Why the fire emoji? Is she saying that she’s ‘fire’? Or is she saying she’s fired up about our date? Does she think I’m hot?

Why am I the only person under the age of fifty-five who can’t decipher emojis?

I expect the other text to be from Hannah’s mother telling me to drink water and take some antacids.

It’s not.

[444-441-1114

|8:46pm

|Hey Mack, this is Donovan

|HR gave me your number. Just checking in.

|Do you want to get lunch sometime?

I pale.

He got my number from HR and is now texting me at almost 9 p.m.? Is this even legal? Well, I guess the CEO can do what he wants.

I save both of their contacts and respond to Donovan.

[Donovan C.

|8:51pm

|Sure. Thursday work?

May as well check ‘having two dates on the same day’ off my bucket list.