Back in the Burbs

by Flynn, Avery

  Dad insisted I don’t need a car—I would be going back to New York soon. When he realized I was serious, though, he begged me to let him buy me something newer. Something from this decade. But pride is a fickle bitch, and I decided this is the right car for an unemployed soon-to-be divorcée. A dented and banged-up, useless shell of its former glory that’s now reduced to an anecdotal epitaph. The car, I mean.

  I let my head drop to the steering wheel, hitting it just right so that the horn blares and scares the ever-loving shit out of me and sets off half the dogs in the neighborhood. The dude mowing slows down enough to glare at me.

  I keep my single-finger salute below the dashboard so he can’t see. Then I march back into the house—using the back door, because I have a feeling that the third time is definitely not the charm for me with that porch disaster—to figure out how in the hell I’m going to pay for a tow truck in addition to the inheritance tax and home repairs.

  If only Aunt Maggie hoarded hundred-dollar bills.

  Chapter Five

  I should take the death of my car (melodramatic? me?) as the sign it surely is. An hour later, my dead car has been towed to a garage. Thank goodness Aunt Maggie’s car is still in the garage, though I probably need a boating license to drive something that big these days. I decide to not risk another misadventure and instead scour the kitchen for the only thing on my grocery list that really matters—wine.

  I find an unopened bottle in the fridge and have it open in five seconds flat. Well, mostly because it has a screw cap, but it’s an urgent necessity, too. I just discovered that my HGTV addiction and newfound (and misplaced) confidence has led me to a very dark place.

  Literally.

  There isn’t a single light in the living room of Aunt Maggie’s house that works, and the sun is minutes away from disappearing altogether for the night. I toss back the last of the wine in my classy red Solo cup and pour another before I lose all light entirely. Priorities and all. Plus, I already spent forty minutes trying to find the circuit breaker box. It defeated me.

  The Property Brothers make it look so easy. Jonathan and Drew are now officially a pair of straight-up lying jerks. I’ll still watch them, though. Hell, I swore off men forever after Karl but, no joke, I’d blow Jonathan right now if he showed me where the breaker box is located.

  Okay, that might be the wine talking—at least a little. But anyone who has ever tried to find a breaker box in an unfamiliar house in the dark knows my frustration level.

  Even more pathetic, I’m doing that alone as I wander onto my death-trap front porch and sink onto the middle step, wrapping one arm around the fallen tree limb like it’s a lifeline, and stare out at cookie-cutter Americana.

  The only thing that stands out more than Aunt Maggie’s ramshackle two-story cottage with its cracked driveway and raggedy yard and porch is the droopy-eared dog of indeterminate breed and age lying in the middle of my jungle-themed front lawn.

  I set my empty cup down and slowly approach the sad-looking dog. She apparently has worse survival instincts than I do because she just lays there like this is to be her fate. She is clearly well fed and cared for, so she must have a home somewhere in the neighborhood. I reach for the bone-shaped tag hanging from her collar and flip it over to show her name. Buttercup. But of course no address.

  “Nice to meet you, Buttercup.” I scratch behind her ear, and her foot immediately starts slapping against the grass.

  I wish I felt a tenth as happy as she does. Instead, I’m an anxiety-riddled pretzel who, after way too long staring at my phone today, is now a YouTube-licensed contractor, which is about as legitimate as having a medical degree from WebMD.

  Scared?

  Yeah, me too.

  Of course, being frightened out of my mind and running on panic-fueled adrenaline is pretty much my life right now. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever knew which way I was going besides following the lead of someone else.

  A loud three-note whistle comes from down the street. Buttercup lifts her head and looks in that direction but doesn’t get up. The sound blasts out again. My girl Buttercup, though, is not interested.

  “Butters, come.”

  A commanding male voice has both of us straining in the dark to gaze down the tree-lined street, lit only by the occasional faux gaslight lamps, at a man jogging toward my house. He runs under another lamp, the soft glow illuminating him enough to pick up that he is a big guy in running shorts with a T-shirt tucked into the waistband. Then he disappears as he moves out from underneath the umbrella of soft light. He shows up a few seconds later under the light of a different lamp. Each time, I take in different details. Wavy brown hair. Broad shoulders. Nice arms. Trim waist. By the time I notice his calves, I realize I’m holding my breath every time he disappears in the shadows.

  Yeah, it has apparently been that long since I’ve even remotely found someone attractive. It’s like sometime during the past few years, my libido was turned off. It was there, and then it wasn’t. Even worse? I really didn’t care.

  But suddenly there it is again—tanned, rested, and ready for action like it just came back from vacation on Horny Island. I’m so startled by this revelation that I stumble backward to my porch steps and plop down next to the tree again. Honestly, that’s the only wood I want in my future.

  I’m so distracted by this change in my hormones that I don’t look up at the runner’s face until he stops on the sidewalk in front of my house. As soon as I do, my oh-hello hormones become come-and-get-me-tiger hormones. Yeah, I’m embarrassed for me, too.

  Buttercup begins thunking the ground with her fat tail; then she gets up, moseys over to the steps, and plops herself down next to me. Of all the dogs in all the world, Buttercup has to belong to the guy I now recognize as the one mowing his lawn across the street, who I flipped off on the down low earlier.

  If I could speak, I would. Instead, I just sit there with my mouth half open, because some people really are so good-looking that it’s hard to form words around them.

  “Getting the place ready to sell?” he asks, his voice low and slow like warm honey in a hot toddy on Christmas Eve.

  Words still beyond my abilities, I shake my head.

  “I should have known this was where she was going.” He nods at the dog as he unwinds a worn leash that was wrapped around his wrist. “I can’t seem to keep her away from this wreck.”

  And just like that, my libido goes back into cold storage. I grit my jaw. “Was that really necessary? My aunt wasn’t exactly herself before she got sick.”

  Unless she was always a hoarder and we just miraculously missed it. I mean, sure, I haven’t been back to Sutton once in the past twenty years, but Aunt Maggie and I talked all the time. I would have noticed if she was hoarding at such dangerous levels, right?

  Now I feel ashamed that my family just accepted Aunt Maggie’s constant suggestions that we meet up at our house, which is two towns and three awful highway interchanges over, or in the city, and we never saw them for what they really were—a strategy to keep us from noticing her illness.

  “As if you actually knew her,” he says, echoing my own thoughts, the bastard. He gives me a slow up-and-down that manages to stay on the not-creepy side of the line. “So you’re the famed great-niece, eh?”

  From his tone, it’s obvious he’s not impressed. And sure, I’m not looking my best these days, but that’s intentional. I’m choosing not to give a shit. You can’t judge a person intentionally fucking off, right?

  “You have some nerve just showing up and passing judgment.”

  He makes a clicking noise, and Buttercup turns her head in his direction but doesn’t move.

  They always say that dogs can recognize bad people. I never really believed it, but as Buttercup doesn’t even inch toward Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dickish, I’m ready to bet it all that dogs have a sixth sense for sure.

 
; “You’re not actually going to live here, are you?” he asks, one brow raised in challenge.

  “I am.” Against everyone’s unasked-for advice.

  He scans Aunt Maggie’s house, a smile playing on his lips, and then centers his attention back on me. “Good luck with that.”

  I stand up, needing the extra added height to even out what feels like a weird power differential between us, then cross my arms, going for a self-confident chin raise that still manages to feel awkward as hell. “I don’t need luck.”

  He smacks his palm against his thigh, drawing Buttercup to his side finally, and then snaps the leash to the dog’s collar and stands up, a know-it-all smirk on his face. “Glad to hear it. By the way, if you are naive enough to try to fix up this place, I’d suggest starting with the grass. I understand you’re on your last HOA violation warning about that.”

  Wait. How does he know that? Who in the hell is he? And more importantly, do I have “be an asshole to me, please” tattooed on my forehead?

  Before I can get any of that out, though, he walks away, appearing and disappearing under the fake gaslight lamps’ glow as he crosses the street and jogs up his front steps, then disappears behind a perfectly painted red door. Yeah, I watched. He is a total and complete smug dickwad, but it’s still a good view.

  Not that it matters. I’m going to show that big jerk.

  This is my house, and I’m a new woman.

  I’m Mallory Martin, soon-to-be divorcée and already unemployed office manager. I have nowhere to go but toward the light of success—and I will not be mowing the grass until the last possible day now.

  Of course, before I can do any of that, I have to find the breaker box.

  Chapter Six

  Dawn shoves its way past my aunt’s minuscule curtains and bitch-slaps me right across the face the next morning.

  It’s just my luck that the one thing my aunt apparently didn’t hoard was good window coverings. The drapes in here definitely subscribe to the same rules that govern most good lingerie—reveal more than you conceal. And like the sexiest lace teddy, the filmy hot-pink-and-lime-green zebra-print fabric over the east-facing windows do the revealing quite artfully. The concealing? Yeah, not even close to mastering that one.

  The clock on the once white, now definitely more tea-stained cream wicker nightstand reads 6:12. Fantastic. Great. Perfect. So much for sleeping in. I could bury my head under the pillow and try to go back to sleep, but with the way my luck has been running lately, I’d end up suffocating myself while getting poked in the eye with the feather quills packed inside it…which might not sound like the worst option in the world right now, except I flat-out refuse to give Karl that satisfaction. I already made things too damn easy for him with this divorce. Death would just be overkill.

  Plus, since I’ve recovered from the retina-searing brightness shining through my window—dear God, how did Aunt Maggie deal with this every morning?—my mind is racing with all the things I have to get done today.

  Go through the HOA complaints and sort in order of importance.

  Find a contractor who will work for magic beans.

  Buy about eight million garbage bags to take care of the stacks and stacks of junk my aunt has in every single room in this house. Seriously, who still subscribes to magazines, let alone has multiple copies of the Sears Christmas catalog from the eighties?

  Mow the damn grass…though maybe that doesn’t have to be today. I’m totally okay with letting my obnoxious neighbor marinate in his own stuck-upedness for a while. I mean, how far up his ass is that stick if he feels the need to whine about the length of my grass? Of course, maybe that’s how he got such a perfect ass—he has a copy of Butt Clenching Your Way to Perfect Glutes For Dummies. If I encourage him, he’ll probably be over here with a ruler to get the exact measurement of my lawn, just to make sure I mowed enough but not too much.

  Renewed annoyance sweeps through me like hot fudge over a scoop of vanilla bean, and I push the covers off and all but spring out of bed—and knock over three stacks of magazines. I ignore all the little aches and pains that come with sleeping on a new mattress and mentally readjust my to-do list. Definitely need trash bags before HOA regulations.

  But first, coffee. Please God, let Aunt Maggie have hoarded the magical brown bean of happiness.

  After a quick shower in my aunt’s searing hot-pink bathroom, I dry off with one of her zebra-striped towels and slap some expensive moisturizer onto my face. It soaks in and—I swear to all that is good in the world—my skin lets out a relieved sigh. Karl got me the moisturizer for my last birthday. No doubt it was his way of telling me I’m looking old. Sure, I was tempted to hurl the hourglass-shaped bottle at his head, but I controlled the urge. And my skin has thanked me every day since.

  A quick brush of my teeth and topknot later, I make my way down the creaky stairs, doing my best not to trip on everything my aunt piled on the edges of them.

  By the time I get to the kitchen, every cell in my body is jonesing for a hit of caffeine. But when I finally open one of my aunt’s circus-tent canisters—the one marked Caffeine, not the one marked Quaaludes—it’s empty except for a lone coffee bean. Desperation has me searching all the others—Calories, Candy, Quaaludes, Ganja, Gluten, and Glitter—but to no avail.

  I do find small individual snack packs of Oreos in the Calories canister, though, and a bunch of Hershey Kisses in the Candy one, so I take the win. It’s okay to chew a Kiss and a coffee bean at the same time, right? Isn’t that just a deconstructed mocha?

  As I swallow, I do my best to ignore the gummy bears in the Ganja canister. It’s possible they don’t contain marijuana.

  Suuuuuuuuuuuure.

  The part of me that is more like Aunt Maggie than my parents can stand is totally curious. I’ve never smoked weed—or done any other kind of drug—in my life, but that dearth just makes the gummy bears all that much more enticing.

  Too bad even thinking about trying one of them is for another day, when my to-do list doesn’t involve driving to town for trash bags, coffee, and—I open the door to the very empty pantry—absolutely everything else a human being needs to survive.

  Wonderful.

  I grab my purse and the keys to Aunt Maggie’s purple Cadillac, aka Jimi Hendrix (Jimi for short), and head toward the store, marveling as I make my way downtown that nothing in this place has changed. Nothing.

  I pull into the local Stop & Shop parking lot—which is packed—and try to find a place to park Jimi. I end up circling the lot for five minutes before someone finally pulls out of a spot all the way at the end of the lot and I manage to squeak in. A guy with wild hair and a wifebeater tank top in a baby-blue minivan waves his fist at me like I didn’t just sit here for several minutes with my blinker on for this spot before he turned down the same lane.

  As I climb out of Jimi, the guy rolls his window down and yells about my driving, my parentage, and—my absolute favorite (sarcasm alert)—the fact that women shouldn’t be able to have driver’s licenses at all. I ignore him; a pissed-off dad in the New Jersey burbs has nothing on a New York cabdriver when it comes to creative insults. Plus, it’s hard to take him seriously when at least two kids in the van are singing at the top of their lungs about Mickey Mouse’s clubhouse and a third is screaming that she wants her My Little Pony.

  No wonder he’s in a bad mood.

  In fact, if I didn’t need caffeine so desperately, I might have felt bad enough to give up the parking spot. But there’s a Starbucks right next to the Stop & Shop, and inside it is a caramel macchiato screaming my name. Or maybe I am screaming its name. Either way, right now I need coffee more than he needs a parking spot, My Little Pony notwithstanding.

  As I hop out of Jimi, I’m not surprised I’m drawing a few questioning looks. I throw my shoulders back, tilt my chin up in a total yes-I’m-bold-enough-to-own-a-car-like-this move, and head i
nto the store.

  I have a date with the coffee shop—or there will be bloodshed. And I have a trunk big enough to hide the body.

  Chapter Seven

  Ten minutes later, I’m pushing a wobbly wheeled cart through the grocery store with one hand and drinking my venti macchiato with the other. I’m also doing my best to pretend I don’t miss the little neighborhood bodega and specialty stores where I used to do most of my grocery shopping. It seems I traded in Effie the bodega cat for a set of four-year-old twins in matching pink outfits and snotty noses. Both are dangerous in their own way, I guess.

  On the plus side, Stop & Shop does have an abnormally wide variety of specialty cheeses with samples out, and I decide to try a dozen or so of them, mostly because there’s no one around to stop me. Whoever says a woman can’t live by cheese alone obviously hasn’t met this deli department—or me.

  After sampling everything from Brie and gouda to goat cheese and pepper jack, I head to where those with costly home renovations in their futures and anemic bank accounts shop—the cereal aisle.

  I have every intention of picking up my usual box of Cheerios—it’s heart healthy and eminently sensible, after all—but once I’m standing right in front of the bright yellow boxes, it’s the last thing I want. Not when every time I reach for the box, I can hear Karl lecturing me on the importance of fiber—and how much I need him to make sure I eat well—as he pours the little round Os into his favorite black-like-his-heart cereal bowl.

  You know what? Fuck fiber.

  I drop my empty coffee cup into the cart and grab a family-size box of Crunch Berries in one hand and a box of Froot Loops in the other, throwing them into my cart with wild abandon. Karl doesn’t get to tell me what to do anymore. And he sure as hell doesn’t get to tell me what to eat.

  I toss in a box of Cookie Crisp for good measure and then start to make my way toward the trash bag aisle. But just as I’m rounding the corner, a woman with wild red hair squeals my name.