As it turns out, I'm not very good at blogging consistently. This probably comes down to the fact that I don't like writing blog posts...but that's just a guess. Anyways, I decided to write a piece of flash fiction and disguise it as a blog post. So, without further ado, I present, A Cup of Sugar.
A Cup of Sugar
“Elle, great, you’re back. Any chance you could lend me a cup of sugar?” Tag’s all-too
familiar voice floats down the hallway behind me as I stick my key in the lock. Groaning inwardly, I whirl to face his approaching form.
Most women probably find the sight of Tag far more appealing than I do. After all, he has that whole tall, dark, and handsome thing going on. Then again, most women don’t live in the apartment next to his.
Tag, for all of his good looks, has proven himself to be an atrocious neighbor. No, he’s not noisy like the guy who lived there before him. He’s not the nagging type either, like Mrs. Hanahan down the hall, who constantly complains about the lint traps in our communal laundry room not getting emptied. Nor is he even unfriendly like the couple who lived across the street from my family when I was a kid. Nope, Tag’s problem is that he’s a crazy-borrower.
From the day he moved in he’s been at my door asking to borrow things. A hammer, a flashlight, a pot, some movie he saw on my bookshelf. Lately it’s been ingredients. He’ll come over and ask me for an egg or a teaspoon of baking powder, or, like today, a cup of sugar. I suppose I’m an enabler in all of this, since I never actually say no or, I don’t know, point him in the direction of a grocery store, but can you really blame me? I don’t want to be perceived as the nasty neighbor who turned down his request for a simple cup of sugar. That has a distinct big, bad wolf vibe to it that I don’t think suits me very well.
“Yes, of course you can borrow some sugar Tag,” I tell him, pasting a smile on my face and repressing the urge to ask if he’ll bring it back when he’s finished. I don’t want to be the snarky neighbor either.
Tag follows me inside, lingering in the doorway with me as I hang up my purse.
“Good day at work?” He asks, and I nod distractedly. That’s the other weird thing about Tag. I’m not sure he has a job. I don’t know how he’s paying the rent here if not, but as far as I can tell he hardly ever leaves his apartment. Hence the lack of groceries, I suppose.
“Fine,” I tell him without elaborating. I’m not trying to be aloof, it’s just my job is actually pretty covert. I work as a typist for the well-known crime author, Max Redding, and he would absolutely kill me if I ever let any of his precious plot twists leak. Or at least fire me anyways. But given the genre he writes, I really wouldn’t put murder past him. He has all sorts of ideas for how to get away with that sort of thing.
I’m about to ask Tag about his day, when there’s a loud banging noise. Before I can even scream Tag is jumping on top of me and rolling us across the hallway. Wow, clearly he doesn’t need to borrow any weights from me, he must have his own set to have muscles like the ones I can now feel pressed up against me.
There’s another noise, this time a pop-pop-pop that sounds suspiciously like a machine gun firing. I instantly forget about assessing Tag’s muscles and enter panic mode.
“What’s going on?” I screech into Tag’s shoulder. “Are we being shot at?”
“Yes, stay down,” Tag hisses, his face trained on my front door. In one swift movement his hand goes to his waist and a second later my eyes register the fact that he’s holding a gun. A whimper escapes me. Is that his gun, I wonder fleetingly, or did he borrow it?
Tag hoists himself into a crouch, aiming the gun at the door. Bullet-holes litter my formerly beautiful oak door and annoyance twists itself into my panic. I just refinished that door last weekend!
Another shot rings out and I refocus on the life-threatening situation at hand.
“Who’s shooting at us?” I whisper-cry into his ear.
“Beckett,” Tag replies grimly.
“Beckett?” I repeat in confusion. “But-Beckett’s not real. He’s just a character in Max’s novel.”
Tag doesn’t get a chance to answer, because a second later my door flies open and a hulking man, who exactly embodies the murderer from Max’s novel, fills the doorway, his machine gun aimed directly at us.
“Oh my gosh, it is Beckett!” I whisper just as Tag fires his gun and a bullet whizzes through the air and straight into the man’s shoulder. The man jerks and his gun clatters to the floor. He thunders forward, but Tag quickly fires off another shot, this time hitting him in the leg, so that he tumbles to the ground.
“No!” The man cries. “I must end her!” He starts trying to drag himself across the floor, and I wince as his blood snakes a trail along my carpet. Now that he’s shot and disarmed, I feel like I’m allowed to focus on the home damages all of this mayhem is causing.
Tag rises out of his crouch, takes two steps forward, and thwacks the man hard on the head. He collapses against the carpet unconscious.
I blink repeatedly, as if this might be a dream, but then Tag grabs me by the arm and I know it’s not.
“Explain,” I demand, since it’s evident he knows way more than I do about what just happened.
Tag sighs as he holsters his gun. “Turns out your boss Max witnessed an actual murder and decided to write a novel about it.”
“No,” I protest, “Max is writing a novel about a woman witnessing a murder.”
“Well of course it’s a woman in the book. He wouldn’t have wanted to put himself in danger,” Tag says, raising an eyebrow at me pointedly. Suddenly it all clicks together.
“Me?” I squeak. “I’m the woman?”
“Beckett thought you were anyways,” Tag nods. “Max won’t testify, so we’ve been tailing Beckett, trying to get the evidence we needed for a conviction. Somehow Beckett got wind of the fact that he was going to be the featured murderer in Max Redding’s next crime thriller. He set his sights on eliminating the woman from the book. The woman he assumed had witnessed him murdering someone. So, of course we’ve been watching you.”
“We?” I echo faintly.
“Yeah,” Tag reaches into his pocket and pulls out a badge, “I’m a cop.”
“You’re a cop?” A rush of heat runs through me at this revelation. “And you came here to protect me?”
Tag shrugs. “Well, yeah.”
“Then what did you do with all that sugar you borrowed?” I ask stupidly.
Tag laughs. “Nothing,” he admits. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring it back now that this investigation is over.”
“You’re going to bring back the sugar I loaned you?” I say, my lips quirking up.
Tag smiles too, and I have to admit, now that I know he’s not actually a crazy-borrower, I am so back on the Tag-is-hot train.
“That’s got to be a first, huh?” He quips. We stare goofily at each other, then Beckett moans from his spot on the floor. Tag automatically knocks him in the head again. “Don’t worry, this guy won’t be bothering you anymore,” he tells me.
I study Tag for a beat, then, because that was such a romantic thing to say, I close the distance between us and kiss him hard on the lips. He startles, but then kisses me back. As I sink into the moment, I find myself hoping Tag will want to borrow a cup of sugar again tomorrow. Turns out having a crazy-borrower for a neighbor isn’t so bad after all.
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