Chapter One

 

Life in lock-down is fucking boring. I have no right to complain about it, though, which makes it even more irritating. Even suggesting I have it hard would, I know damn well, draw raised eyebrows and rolled eyes. Poor me. Yeah, yeah, I fucking know! Lots of people are way worse off! There are people in 500 square foot bachelor apartments without balconies!

I live in a high-end condo in the Tribeca area of New York, on the forty-fifth floor in a one-bedroom twelve hundred square foot condo. The views are spectacular, and I have way more room than most people without anyone to share it with and get on my nerves.

I have top-notch cable, along with Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the rest, a massive TV, great computer connection, and work to do. I'm not short of cash, and I have a great, well-paid job which I can do from home. Which means I don't have to try to apply for unemployment or anything.

Thing is, one of the reasons I moved into this place was all the amenities, including a huge pool (closed) and a great exercise room (closed), as well as the rooftop terrace (closed). Also, I can get my groceries over the internet and have them delivered. Which is important since I have no car and there's no grocery stores nearby in south Manhattan.

I just bought the place several months ago after landing this great job right out of college at twenty years of age.

Uh, when I say I bought it I should probably add that my parents paid for the down payment and co-signed the loan...

I mean, the job is great but it's not THAT great. It has the potential to be great in the future, though. I'm an actuary and work for an insurance company. I evaluate risks based on a variety of statistical formulas and methodologies. It's heavily into math and statistics. If you think that's boring - it sure is!

But not to me. I've always loved numbers, and I'm a whiz at statistical analyses. I can get into a project and hours whiz by as my mind zones out to everything else. So in that way, it's not a boring job at all, because all-of-a-sudden the day's over and I'm often startled by it.

I get to work my own hours, by the way, especially now that I'm working from home. Just so I put in enough of them to get the job done. But the job is fairly solitary and doesn't even involve Zoom meetings or anything.

Now I was never a big party-girl, but being alone all the freaking time is really, well... isolating. By definition. There are really only three rooms in this apartment, and that includes the bathroom. So while it's a good size, there's really nowhere to go.

I hit the genetic lottery in a lot of ways. That includes brain-power. The stuff I do is hard for most people, and even harder to do it fast and accurately. I have a very focused mind when I work - almost OCD. That's how I concentrate so easily.

I have a nice body, but then almost any girl who isn't overweight and who keeps in shape does at my age. I'm not bragging - or at least, I'm trying not to brag. I have really nice boobs anyway. They're not huge but they're very firm and round. My belly is flat, my waist trim, and my butt firm.

And I intended to keep it that way. Which was a problem given I no longer had access to any of the gym equipment and couldn't swim. I found some decent exercise videos and started doing more yoga and Pilates on my floor. But that wasn't really getting my heart-rate up enough.

I decided to try some jogging. Now, if you're not a woman, you might not be aware of it, but jogging outside in the city can be an unnerving experience. I get whistled at, cat-called at, leered at. Guys waggle their tongues at me and make kissy sounds, and those are the easy ones.

The others are worse. Those are the guys who proposition me, who ask for my name and phone number, and who don't seem to be very well-socialized. What I mean is they don't take a hint. Then there are the real assholes, who are just very aggressive and unsettling. Those are the ones that try to grope me and say obscene things.

I'm not pretending I'm the world's most beautiful girl here (though I'm kind of pretty) but this sort of thing happens constantly, and not just to me. It happens to all my friends. That's just life in the big city. But I thought, well, there's way less traffic and way less people on the street. So maybe I should give it a try.

I started on Broadway, not committed to a long run yet, just kind of seeing how things went. I was wearing gray sweatpants and a tank top. No cleavage, no belly showing, and the sweatpants weren't tight. I wore a ball cap to shade my eyes from the sun, with my hair in a ponytail behind me.

The sidewalks were definitely emptier, but not empty. I guess a lot of people were bored and out for walks, if not runs. There wasn't much traffic, though. Every time I came near a guy I saw their eyes light on me, but I'm used to that. Again, all girls are. I'm not pretending I'm Miss America.

I studiously ignored it. I had my iPod on my hip and my earphones in, and I could ignore things casually said to me as I went by. That included from the guy in the black Toyota who passed by who yelled something out the window at me, and the one in the blue Chrysler who did the same.

I dodged aside when some Hispanic delivery guy swung his hand out towards my ass and just kept on jogging. He said something but I didn't really get it over the music. It might not even have been in English. Two black guys walking towards me stopped and watched me approach, then one of them said something which the other laughed at.

I didn't hear and didn't want to.

One fool in long black pants started to jog alongside me. He wasn't even dressed for jogging. He kept asking me for my name and I just looked ahead, ignored him, and ran faster. He clearly wasn't a jogger because he couldn't keep up for long. He shouted something after me that sounded like "whore" but I didn't stop.

I don't really get how in their minds guys decide to call us 'whores' or 'sluts' when we clearly DO have high standards which don't include just any old guy - including them.

Another car rolled alongside me with some guy trying to say something. He kept moving at my speed, which he could do since there was little traffic. I turned down a one-way street to lose him. I only went down about twenty yards, though, then turned and went back in case he decided to drive around the corner and meet me.

I returned to Broadway. Some guy sweeping in front of a drug store blew me a kiss. Further ahead was a mini-mart with a socially distanced line of people waiting in front of it to get in. The men watched me as I approached and, I presume, watched me as I ran away.

I turned onto Worth and then back south on Foley. It was more park-like, with fewer people. Hardly anyone seemed to notice me. I went down Park Row alongside city hall, and then back onto Broadway again.

It was a bit warm, but I wasn't really sweating and wasn't really getting my heartbeat up the way I wanted either. I returned to my building and then hesitated. Instead of taking the elevator, I decided to take the stairs.

Yes, forty-five flights of stairs.

I took them a few flights at a time, resting as needed, and even doing stretches on the landings. This, admittedly, was getting my heartbeat going! I took a rest on the twentieth floor and a longer one on the fortieth. I was sweating by then! Which made me quite pleased. I was breathing heavily and had to come out of the stairwell to get my breath, walking up and down the corridor.

I took the other stairwell up, and at my floor, hesitated. I was feeling like I'd really accomplished something. And since it's a sixty story building, I wanted to get all the way to the top. I went to fifty, rested, then continued on.

The stairs ended at fifty-nine, which surprised me, a bit. I stuck my key card in the door and it opened to an elevator lobby rather than a corridor. It was then I realized that the whole floor was just one apartment, with a pair of huge wooden doors and no number on them.

The penthouse, I thought. Cool.

My legs were feeling really rubbery, by then, and I was sweating like a pig so I decided to just take the elevator down the fifteen flights. I pressed the button and waited, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.

I was really looking forward to a shower! With cool water, at least at first.

The elevator pinged and opened and a guy stood there, looking at me in surprise. I flushed, starting to feel like I was an intruder or something. I mean, this was public space, wasn't it? I had a right to be here, sort of. But I understood why he might be surprised if he lived here.

And he looked like the kind of guy who would live in a penthouse, to be honest. He was about forty, and wore a very stylish, very expensive, tailor-made dark gray suit with black and white pinstriped shirt and a wine-colored tie.

He had thick, slightly tousled dark brown hair, a square-jawed face with full lips and very blue eyes. His eyelashes were gorgeous, and he had thick eyebrows and a very short beard and mustache, the kind that just looks like he hadn't shaved in a few days.

"Lost?" he asked, in a soft, baritone voice.

I felt very much like a waif compared to him. He was twice my weight, I guess, and so neat and tidy and precise. I was a sweaty, still slightly out of breath girl with frayed hair and a tank top I had tied up beneath my breasts due to the heat in the stairs.

The sweatpants, not being tight, as I said, had kind of slid down around my hips, baring a lot of abdomen and belly as the cuffs bunched up around my sneakers.

So I looked at him in dismay as his eyes casually raked me. Because this was one fucking hot looking guy! Okay, yeah, way out of my age group and league, sure. But it's one of life's many unfair things that a guy in his forties can look incredibly hot while most women just don't.

"Uh," I said, "I was exercising. I mean... I decided to walk up the stairs as part of my exercise."

"All the way? Sixty flights?" he asked, sounding impressed.

"Well, fifty-nine to be honest. There's no way up to Sixty from the staircase."

He smiled faintly. "Would you like me to let you in so you can use the inner stairs to make it official?"

"Oh, that's okay!" I exclaimed. "I mean, you're all clean and neat and -."

And I didn't know what the fuck I was saying because my mouth ran away while my mind was still processing how hot this guy was. Guy? No, this was a man! And what a man!

"I mean, uhm, I'm all sweaty and shit - excuse me, I mean, like -."

His faint smile was deepening as I babbled and I finally decided to shut the fuck up before I embarrassed myself further.

He held out his hand.

"Alaric," he said.

I blinked.

"Uh... Brianna," I said, reluctantly holding out my hand.

I jerked it back, rubbing it on my sweatpants leg, then thrust it out again, and he smiled and took it in his. His hand was way bigger, of course.

"Charmed. I presume you're a resident."

"Oh yeah. I'm on the Forty-Fifth floor," I said. "I just bought the place six months ago and was going stir crazy so I went jogging, but honestly, guys were a pain in the ass so I decided to take the stairs up but then when I reached my floor I thought well, why not go up all the way since this was really getting my heart going and all and uh... sorry. I'm babbling."

"Charmed," he said.

"I'm an actuary," I said, for no sane reason.

"How nice."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "I've been kind of stuck in a one-bedroom apartment because of all this disease stuff," I said. "So I think my verbal skills have kind of rusted away and left me sounding like a moron. Which reminds me." I shuffled further away from him.

"Gone a bit stir-crazy, have you?"

I held up my thumb and middle finger close together. "Just a bit."

The door to his apartment opened, just then, and a tall, blonde woman stood there. She was somewhere in her thirties, big-busted, with an hourglass figure - the kind of woman you'd expect a man like this to have waiting at home. Her golden hair flowed around a beautiful face with perfect high cheekbones and an aristocratic nose.

"Well hello," she said, her voice rising slightly as if in question, but amused, not jealous.

Her appearance kind of put to rest the incipient fantasy I had begun to have about me meeting this hot, older guy and having a whirlwind affair.

"Regan, my dear, this is Brianna, who lives in the building and exercises by running up all sixty flights of stairs."

"Uhm, more like walked," I said, flushing a little under the gaze of this beautiful woman.

Like I said, I was sweaty and scruffy looking. She, on the other hand, looked like a statue carved in alabaster and ivory. She wore a pink blouse under a white jacket, with a very short pink and white skirt - a mini, in fact, which showed off long gorgeous legs.

"Well, that's considerably more ambitious than I've been, lately," the blonde said with a smile. "And it's wonderful to meet you! We don't know anyone else in the building! Aside from the doormen and security."

"Brianna owns a one-bedroom and is feeling a little cooped up," Alaric said.

"Well, you can just come for a visit any time you want," Regan said, coming forward.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to disturb -."

"Nonsense! I'm feeling a little cooped up, myself," she said, taking my hand. "Come in, come in! I don't get a chance to show the place off very often."

I was thinking this wasn't very socially distanced! But I didn't want to be rude.

"Oh uhm, I'm -!"

Not dressed, I wanted to say. But she was already pulling me through the door, while Alaric simply smiled and followed.

She led me past a large dining room and out into a great room fifty feet long and probably thirty feet wide! It was in the corner of the building, for there were four huge windows running down the wall on one side, and two more on the next. There was a grand piano in front of one of the windows and past it huge white sofas facing each other across a black table.

There were also two big, upholstered white chairs on the far side of the two sofas, and two more long white benches on the near side. With a lot of plants and small potted trees scattered around.

On the wall to the left was a massive blue and white painting, and next to that an even more massive floor to ceiling mirror made up of square tiles that must have been ten feet wide. The ceiling, meanwhile, was a good thirty feet overhead.

"I-I shouldn't," I said uncertainly. "You know that social distancing thing."

"Oh, poof. We're all young and healthy. And if you've been cooped up like I have you won't have gotten anything either. Can I get you something to drink?" she asked. "You must be thirsty after climbing all sixty floors!"

"Well, fifty-nine, really," I said, more to have something to say. "You can't get to the sixtieth from the stairwell."

It felt... weird, being treated like... well, an adult. I know that sounds weird. But while I had been officially an adult for a couple of years, and was now out of school and on my own in my brand new (old) condo, I still had the kind of mindset which put a distinct separation between people my age and, well... adults. Real adults?

It sort of made sense they wouldn't know anyone here. I hadn't met anyone yet either.

"I feel kind of grubby," I said, looking at her lovely white sofa.

"Oh, don't be silly," she said. "Sit. Your legs must be ready to collapse."

"Well... a little," I confessed, sitting down.

"You live all alone here? You don't look old enough, honestly," she said.

"I graduated from Cornell last year," I said.

"And already have a place here?"

"Well, my parents helped with the down-payment."

As in they paid the whole thing, but I didn't need to add that.

Alaric came in, holding a pair of glasses. One had a dark liquid. He held the other out to me.

"Water," he said. "I wouldn't want to break the law by plying an underage female with liquor."

"Oh geeze," Regan said. "Does anyone really pay attention to that? I got so drunk I could hardly breathe when I was sixteen."

Alaric sat down next to her, across from me,

"You did? I never would have married you if I'd known you were so depraved," he said in mock indignation.

"You wouldn't have married anyone who wasn't depraved," she said tartly.

He smiled tolerantly.

I sipped from the icy cold water, eyeing them over the rim of the glass.

"So how long have you guys lived here?" I asked.

Yes, I'm a genius at novel conversational gambits.

"A year and a half," Regan said. "He wanted something close to work. I would have preferred midtown. Preferably with a view of the park."

"The views here are spectacular," Alaric said.

"Darling, which of us is the artist?" she asked.

"I'm a financial artist."

She snorted.

"You're an artist?" I asked.

She nodded at the picture on the wall and I turned my head. I was impressed. It was beautiful!

"Wow! That's gorgeous!" I said.

"I couldn't find anything appropriate for the space so I painted it myself," she said smugly.

Alaric's phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket.

"Excuse me for a couple of minutes, ladies," he said, standing.

He walked out of the room and Regan shrugged at me. "That's the way it is when you're married to one of the city's business titans. Come, walk with me. I'll show you the terrace."