Lust Meter System: Conquering Beauties

Grace opened the door before he knocked.

She was wearing a fitted grey oversized shirt that stopped at her mid thigh, her sleek brown bob sitting clean against her jaw, her amber eyes finding him immediately with that quality they had in certain light, warm and direct at the same time.

She had one hand on the door and the other on the frame and she looked at him the way she looked at him when she had been waiting but was not going to say she had been waiting.

"You actually came," she said.

"You asked," he said.

She stepped back and let him in.

He came through the door and she closed it behind him and they stood in the living room for a moment, the apartment warm and familiar around him, the lamp in the corner on low, Daisy already at his feet doing her greeting.

He crouched down and ran both hands through the fur behind her ears and she leaned into it with the full commitment of a dog who had decided this was the best thing that had happened today.

"Hey girl," he said.

Grace watched him with Daisy and crossed her arms loosely and looked at him with the expression of someone who was not going to say the dog likes you more than she likes most people but was thinking it.

He stood back up.

"You look good," he said, looking at her properly.

She looked down at herself briefly, at the oversized shirt, at the bare legs beneath it. "I just got home," she said.

"Still," he said.

She pressed her lips together and looked at the room. "Sit down," she said. "I’ll get you something."

"I’m fine," he said.

"I’m getting something anyway," she said, already moving toward the kitchen.

He sat on the couch and looked at the apartment, at the familiar layout of it, at the small things that had shifted since he was last here.

A new plant on the windowsill that had not been there before. A book on the coffee table lying face down on a page she had not finished.

Daisy settled at his feet like she had been waiting for exactly this and was satisfied now that it had arrived.

Grace came back with two glasses of water and set one in front of him and sat on the other end of the couch with her legs tucked under her, holding her own glass in both hands.

"How have you been," she said.

"Busy," he said. "You?"

"Same," she said. She looked at her glass. "Work has been a lot this month."

"The usual or something specific."

"Both," she said. "The usual plus something specific." She said it with the tone of someone who was going to leave it there, and he did not push it because that was the kind of thing she said when she wanted to let it sit for a moment before she said the rest.

They talked for a while. Small things, the kind of conversation that existed in the gap between arriving somewhere and getting to whatever had been the reason for arriving. She asked about him and he gave her enough without giving her everything. She told him something about a case that had been annoying her for three weeks without telling him anything that would get her in trouble for telling him.

At some point Daisy moved from his feet to Grace’s lap and Grace absently ran her hand through the dog’s fur while she talked without looking at what she was doing.

Then she set her glass down.

"I need your help with something first," she said.

He looked at her. "What’s that."

She looked at the wall briefly, the specific look of someone organizing how to say something before they said it. "Do you remember that neighbor I mentioned? The one from down the hall."

Liam thought for a second. "The one who said he liked you and you turned him down."

"Yeah," she said. "Him."

"I thought he took it well," Liam said. "Thought it wasn’t a problem."

Grace exhaled and put her head down slightly, looking at her hands in her lap. "I thought so too," she said.

"What happened."

She looked up. "He’s been at it again. More than before. And this time it feels different. More pushy. Like he’s working himself up to something." She paused. "I don’t want to arrest him. He hasn’t technically done anything I can charge him with yet. But if you could just talk to him. Tell him you’re my boyfriend. Maybe that’s enough to make him step back."

Liam looked at her.

"You’re too kind," he said.

She looked back at him without saying anything, which was its own kind of response.

He let a small smile come to his face. "So I’m going to go over there and tell your boyfriend wants him to step back and give you some space."

She moved fast, her hand coming to his side and pressing in sharply with two fingers, and he pulled away from it.

"You’re enjoying this too much," she said.

"Okay okay," he said, standing up. "I’m going."

He left Grace’s apartment and pulled the door shut behind him.

The building hallway stretched out in front of him, wide enough for two people to pass each other without turning sideways, the walls painted a shade of off-white that had been applied sometime in the last decade and had been slowly losing the argument with time ever since.

A window at the far end let in the afternoon light, cutting a long pale rectangle across the carpet that ran down the center of the floor.

The carpet itself was a deep burgundy that had probably looked intentional when it was new and now just looked like a decision nobody had revisited.

He turned left and stopped immediately.

Steve’s door was right there. Direct neighbor, the gap between Grace’s door and his barely wide enough to fit a person standing sideways.

A small video doorbell sat mounted on the frame beside it, brushed silver and modern, completely at odds with the aged brass of the door handle beside it.

A tiny camera eye sat above the button watching the hallway with the patience of something that did not blink.

He pressed it.

A faint beep sounding from somewhere behind the door when he pressed it.

Nothing for a moment. Then a voice through the speaker, slightly distorted by the small device.

"Yeah."

"Hey," Liam said, looking at the camera directly. "Look, we don’t know each other. I’m just here to ask you nicely to please stop bothering my girlfriend. She’s not comfortable with it and I’d appreciate it if you’d give her some space."

A pause.

"Girlfriend?" the voice said. "Wrong door man. Get off my porch."

"No," Liam said, with the patient tone of someone who had decided to be reasonable for as long as it took. "I don’t have the wrong door. I’m asking you respectfully. Her name is Grace. Just leave her alone."

Another pause, longer this time.

"Grace," the voice said, quieter now, like the name had landed somewhere unexpected.

"Yeah," Liam said.

"She didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend." The voice had changed quality, something processing in it.

"Well," Liam said, "now you know. So I appreciate it if you—"

"You know what."

The voice had changed again. Something had shifted behind it, the processing done, a decision arrived at.

Liam stopped talking and looked at the camera.

"Now I want her even more," the voice said. Slow and deliberate, with the specific energy of someone who had decided to say the worst available thing.

Liam looked at the camera for a moment.

"Sorry," he said. "You want to say that again."

"You heard me, fucker."

A smile came to Liam’s mouth that was not a happy smile and was not trying to be. "You want to say that to my face?" he said.

Like the question had been an invitation he had been waiting for, the door opened.

The man was big, thick through the shoulders, wearing a vest that had seen better days, his jaw carrying three days of growth that had not been intentional. He was holding a shotgun at his hip, pointed at Liam, his expression carrying the specific energy of someone who had been waiting for a reason to produce a shotgun and was satisfied that the reason had arrived.

Liam looked at the gun.

Then at the man.

He did not move. His hands stayed loose at his sides. His expression did not change.

"Look at you," the man said, grinning now. "Bet you’re regretting those words right about now."

"Not even a little," Liam said. "If anything I’m glad you gave me an excuse."

"Oh yeah?" the man said. "I’d like to see you try something."

"Steve."

Grace’s voice came from behind Liam, carrying down the hall with the flat authority of someone who had a badge and was not currently using it but wanted the room to know it existed.

"Steve, if you don’t lower that weapon right now I will arrest you where you’re standing and you will spend tonight explaining yourself to people who find your explanation very uninteresting."

Steve looked past Liam at her.

"Hey sexy," he said, and the grin came back, rearranged into something that thought it was charming. "Tell your little boyfriend to get off my porch and maybe I’ll think about it."

"I’d like to see you make me move," Liam said, his voice completely even.

Steve looked at him. "You think I won’t?"

"I think you can’t," Liam said. He said it the way you said a fact about the weather, no performance behind it. "Because I know the difference between someone who has hurt someone before and someone who hasn’t. The gun is confidence. The eyes are something else."

Steve’s grin shifted. Something behind it moved.

"You don’t know anything about me," he said, but the voice had lost a register from where it had been.

"I know because I’ve done it," Liam said. He looked at the man directly and let the sentence sit there doing what it needed to do. "And I’m standing here telling you to lower the gun and go back inside."

Steve stared at him.

Something in his face went through several stages quickly, the confidence and the bravado and the performance of it all running into the specific quality in Liam’s eyes that was not performing anything and had not been performing anything the entire time they had been standing there.

He lowered the gun.

"Get off my porch," he said, but the voice was different now. Smaller. "Crazy."

He stepped back and the door closed.

Liam stood on the porch for a moment and then came down the steps and walked back to where Grace was standing in the hall with her arms crossed and an expression that had several layers to it.

"I said talk to him," she said. "Not frustrate him into pointing a gun at you."

"I’m also confused about how it got there," Liam said honestly.

She looked at him. Then she exhaled and looked at the closed door down the hall. "Based on what I saw it didn’t go particularly well. Don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it."

"He won’t bother you anymore," Liam said.

She looked at him. "What did you do."

"I might have made him an offer he couldn’t decline," he said.

She looked at him for a moment longer with the expression she wore when she was deciding whether she wanted the full answer or not.

"Okay," she said.

He looked at her. Then at the direction of her apartment. "Now," he said, "let’s go treat that back."

She blushed, the color arriving in her cheeks before she could stop it. "Why do you sound so happy about it," she said.

He smiled. "I just am," he said.

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