Seducing my hot maintenance man

Chapter 10

Greyson’s POV

I hadn’t seen Aubrey around at all over the weekend after our pseudo ‘date’ Friday night, which suited me fine. It’s not like I’m stalking her or really expecting anything from her at all, really. But I can’t seem to help wondering about her, what she might be doing at any given moment, or what she thinks of me.

Perhaps if I have s*x with her I might realize that she’s really nothing special after all, and I’ll be able to stop thinking about her all the time? That seems like a pretty sensible solution to me. But I need to find a way to make that happen, for it to actually work!

One of the parting words from my father’s phone call the other night is that he expected me to bring my ‘special someone’ to the wedding. Rather than admit that I wasn’t currently dating anyone, nor had I for some time, I had said that I would. So now I need to find someone to be my plus one, and in the absence of anyone else interesting in my life, I thought I would ask Aubrey.

I made a point of going to the fitness room early that Monday morning hoping to ‘casually’ run into her. Only she never showed up during the hour and a half workout I got in. I was exhausted as well as bummed out that she had been a no show this morning. It’s not until Tuesday morning that I finally catch her in the fitness room again.

“I thought you had switched to evening workouts?” She questions me in surprise, then she starts acting rather more aloof than I like as I hop on the treadmill next to her stationary bicycle. It’s almost like she’s angry with me that we are sharing the fitness room, which can comfortably accommodate 12 people working out at once and right now it’s just us, so I don’t see what the problem is.

“That wasn’t really working out well for me after all,” I reply, acting cool as I start up a moderately slow pace to get warmed up. “There’s too many people in here in the evenings, and half of them were asking me to do maintenance work on their apartments. It got to the point where I couldn’t get even a half hour work out in here what with one issue or another.”

“I see,” she says, turning her resistance up a notch.

“I was in here yesterday morning, in fact,” I say, trying to strike up a conversation. “I was surprised that I didn’t see you here, too.”

“I was out until almost one AM on Sunday night,” Aubrey claims, sounding frustrated for some reason. “I didn’t even hear my alarm yesterday morning and I ended up being late for work. I had to sneak in and hope to god that nobody actually noticed the lack of makeup other than my lipstick.”

“Oh, bad luck!” I reply, attempting to look sympathetic even as I felt a stab of jealousy. “But I suppose that it must have been a really great date if you stayed out so late!”

“It wasn’t a date at all,” she replies irritably. “It was a family thing that unexpectedly went way longer than it should have.”

“I see,” I reply, although she’s given very few details.

At that point she picked up the pace and pretty much ignored me for the rest of her workout. Meanwhile I increased my speed significantly as well, as if we are in some sort of weird competition. In a way I suppose we are! A competition without any rules and which neither of us is likely to win. Soon we were both quite breathless until she decided she’d had enough for one day.

“I better get going,” she says, hopping off the bike after I had been there about 20 minutes. “I don’t want to press my luck by showing up late for work two days in a row!”

“See ye later, beige!” I say, giving her a friendly little wave goodbye, and then she was gone. I adjust my pace down to a more reasonable one.

That was interesting, I think. I hadn’t had a chance to bring up needing a plus one for my father’s wedding, but I still have plenty of time to do so. It isn’t happening until November! Although she might need to ask for time off from work in advance, unlike me. So obviously I can’t delay asking for too long. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities in the very near future, though.

The next few days, though, Aubrey is wearing AirPods as she works out, indicating that she’s not in the mood for chit chat.

Fine by me. Maybe I’ll consider updating my online dating profile, and try to meet someone interested in a short term relationship? Although after a few hours of flipping through dating profiles I find that no one I’m interested in shows any interest back. And the few that seem to match with me on the other app sound an awful lot like raging psychopaths who hate men for some reason. Probably because no one wants to date raging psychopaths who hate men? Although there is one very attractive woman who sounds like a gold digger, requiring any man who dates her to make a quarter of a million per year minimum, or don’t bother calling her.

I’m quickly losing faith in whatever algorithm those websites use to create ‘matches’. I even check to make sure I didn’t input some spelling error making me somehow appear to be some crazy stalker who lives in his parent’s basement. My photo may be a little old, but it still looks basically like me! I haven’t even changed my hairstyle since the selfie was taken.

If none of this really worked out that well for me before, I don’t know why I should expect anything different this time. I give up!

I just need to get Aubrey to talk to me and give me a chance! Her brother has probably already left for Arizona, otherwise I might have asked him to mess up something in their apartment for me to come fix. Although Aubrey is smart and would have seen right through a ruse like that.

“Morning!” I say brightly when she arrives the following Monday morning just moments after I do. “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“It was quiet,” she says, heading towards the stair master. I take the nearby rowing machine. “Nick left a couple days ago. It’s nice to finally have the place all to myself.”

“Ah, then I shouldn’t expect a bunch of maintenance calls from apartment 1202, then,” I say in a joking manner.

“I certainly hope not!” She says. Then she puts her AirPods in her ears, and silence reigns supreme for a while as we both get into our separate workouts.

Normally Aubrey wears black yoga pants and an oversized tee shirt for her workouts, but today I notice she’s wearing a very snug and brightly colored Lycra crop top. Her clothes hug her curves in a way that draws my eyes to her feminine assets. Particularly her tight and toned ass as she works out on the stair master, which used to be mostly hidden by her oversized tees. I definitely think the wardrobe change is an improvement.

I’m halfway tempted to mention something about it when we are wrapping things up later on, but I don’t want her to take it the wrong way. Apparently it’s a very fine line between a guys natural appreciation of feminine beauty, and creepy staring weirdo.

But as we are leaving at the same time and both taking the same elevator, it would seem odd not to chat for a minute.

“I like the new top,” I say as I press the buttons for floors 12 and then 16. “What color is that?”

“Pink,” she says.

“It’s not some fancy pink color like fuschia, coral, or salmon?” I inquire.

“Nope, it’s just plain old pink,” she claims. Then the door opens on her floor and she hurries out. “Bye, Greyson.”

“See ya later, beige!” I say, catching a glimpse of her confused face as the door shuts, and then I’m whisked up to the penthouse.