Queue this up first. Everything hits different with the right soundtrack.
Alex swiped his keycard twice before the light turned green. The reader had been glitching for a week. Someone needed to call the building manager, and by someone he meant him, because someone in this apartment always meant him.
He held the door with his foot while he hauled the grocery bags through.
Five in one hand with his laptop bag over his shoulder.
A cardboard tray with two coffees balanced in the crook of his forearm.
The coffees were both his; he was not sharing.
If he drank the first at nine, he’d crash by noon. Crashing at noon meant losing prep time for the presentation set at 2:30 tomorrow. The presentation attached to a three-million-dollar proposal. The one with his name on slide seven. He was not spending the afternoon unconscious from a caffeine crash when four hours and twelve minutes of sleep was all the night had given him. He had the presentation on all five of his calendars, and it synced to the alarm clock. The second coffee was for one o’clock, and it was sacred.
He kicked the door shut behind him.
The loft was quiet.
No indecipherable thrash metal assault that shook the cave walls while the Neanderthal smoked in his room, having disabled the smoke detector.
As if to test Alex’s limits personally.
No scent of overpriced coffee being poured over at the island by Ethan, who would read some pretentious novel from the 1700s by an oversexed nobleman with syphilis, or educate Alex on the virtues of coarse-ground beans sourced from some unpronounceable island his parents visited on sabbatical.
The loft was quiet at 9 a.m. on Sunday, and while Alex should feel comfort, his sleep-deprived lizard brain perked up.
Alert.
Alert.
There was an unknown variable that would inevitably put the three-million-dollar presentation with his name on slide seven in jeopardy.
