Neighborly Intentions

by Falon Gold

  And she was easily the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. After a month of her absence, she resembled an oasis in a desert that I walked right up to before I thought better of it; I seemed to be the last person she wanted to see when she came to my house. Her shoulders bunched in tightly like she was afraid of something. That made my blood boil. God, I hoped she wasn’t afraid of me.

  “Who did it, Anna?” I may have sounded gruffer than I should have, but I was pissed so sue me.

  She sat up suddenly like something had electrocuted her, frowning. “Did what?”

  Her puffy red eyes met mine. The shadows of pain in them had increased tenfold since I had last seen her at my doorway, and yes, someone was going to die. I stuffed my keys in my short’s pocket. The truck could wait.

  “Did whatever that made you cry. Now, who did it?” I said again, even gruffer this time.

  “It’s… ah…” Her eyes darted to Kay then back to me. She swallowed hard.

  “Tell him, Anna,” Kay encouraged.

  “Right, tell me.” Then, I waited, impatient to fuck someone’s world up as much as they had Anna’s.

  “I… shit… I can’t do this,” Anna finally completed a sentence, and I was no closer to knowing who made her cry before I knocked on the door.

  My patience jumped out the window, and her denying me the chance to right the wrong done to her was wreaking havoc on my system. I clinched my fists. Nobody fucking hurt Anna and made her put herself in the corner.

  I knelt down before her, placing my hands on her knees. “Yes, you can tell me, sweetheart. I just need a name. I’ll figure out the rest from there.”

  Anna’s eyes bugged-out as she looked down on me. Maybe, what I said sounded ominous. I knew she could be violent, but she probably drew the line at taking a life. Most people did. As I said, I wasn’t most people.

  “I didn’t mean that I would literally kill somebody, Anna, but they’d wish they were dead.”

  After I had firmly taken killing off the table, her eyes didn’t shrink back to normal size. Maybe, I was violating her personal space again. It seared my soul to slide my hands down to my own knees, but if not touching her made her a little more comfortable in my presence, then I could stand a little ache. Except, her eyes stayed the size of saucers. Well, I was keeping my hands to myself. What else could have her reacting like this to me? I was about to ask that, but Kay burst out laughing first.

  She pointed at her friend’s face. “Anna, you look like somebody just told you to strip then run down the street naked, although talking about your feelings amounts to being naked in front of someone. This is the perfect time for you to start getting used to that. Now, tell him who hurt you.”

  It was too late when I realized that my hand had reached up on its own to caress Anna’s cheek. She shivered and rubbed at her arms like she was cold. You’re violating her again, Roland! Damn! I snatched my hand back down. The urge to touch her in some way refused to be denied, but I wondered if my touch repulsed her now. If that was the case…

  At the mere assumption of that, something splintered in my chest. It was going to be hell living next door to her if she couldn’t stand me, couldn’t stand my touch, but I’d come to terms with that after I fucked up whoever made her cry.

  “Please tell me why you were crying, Anna.”

  She gulped.

  Kay huffed. “I’ll decorate your house and pay for half the stuff as a housewarming gift if you tell him.”

  Anna’s eyes rounded out to the size of dinner plates as she jerked her head in Kay’s direction. “Well shit, I’d be stupid to turn that deal down.” The offer had come as quite a surprise obviously, and it was something Anna wanted really badly evidently.

  “Yes, you would.” Kay sounded so arrogant. I guessed she would since she knew where to find Anna’s soft spots. Decorating was most women’s soft spots though.

  “Fine then.” Anna trained her eyes on me again. Some of that fire I had seen in her eyes when we met was back. She was already bouncing back from whatever had happened in the little time I’d seen her today. The vise on my heart eased up a little bit… until she said, “You hurt me, Roland.”

  Did she say…

  I cut off that thought, was about to ask myself, which was the wrong person, the right question. “Wait, Anna. Did you say I hurt you?”

  She nodded slowly and blew me away. She had no idea that I’d rather harm myself than her or any idea of how much I wanted to be wherever she was to at least keep her safe… from everything.

  “How did I hurt you? I haven’t seen you in a month. And are you telling me I did something in the last few minutes that I have to kick my own ass for?”

  She nodded again. Jesus!

  “Where is everybody?” Hayden called out from the front of the house.

  Kay gritted her teeth and growled, “Oh my God, Hayden! Your timing really sucks.” It was like the tiny woman had a personal stake in getting Anna to confess her feelings to me.

  We all glanced back at Hayden leaning into the room with his hands braced on the doorjamb. He half-cocked a smile at Kay. “Well, I thought I had owned up to my faults when we first started dating, sweetheart.”

  She exhaled. “You did, but your timing still sucks.” Amen to that.

  “Can Anna and I have few minutes please?” I wasn’t really asking, but it sounded like I was and that was what counted.

  “Yep.” Kay rotated on her heels. “Come on, Hayden. Let’s go pretend to cut Roland’s grass, but we’re really going to make out on his new deck in broad daylight. Anna, if Roland tells me you didn’t tell him why he hurt you, no decorating.” That was Kay’s idea of a threat no doubt, and it would probably be more effective with Anna than threatening her with physical harm. She’d take that as her cue to fuck you up first no doubt.

  Hayden gave me the biggest damn grin I had ever seen on his face, and it was conveying a lot of things to me. One, they were about to christen my deck as payback. Kay closed the bedroom door behind her. When I turned back to Anna, she seemed to be trying to shrivel up inside herself, and she had that wide-eyed look again.

  This was one woman who did not enjoy talking. My girl was definitely not like the other girls. That was fine. We could talk as little as she wanted, could go as slow as she needed, but we had to start somewhere. Uh oh. I was already invested in getting her to love me as much as I did her however long it took. That was going to be a hard hill to hustle if she couldn’t stand me. Well, I was in the thick of it now. There was no going back.

  To keep from reaching for her who seemed like she needed a hug, I dug my fingers into my kneecaps pressing into her thick, beige carpet. “Okay, you can tell me what I did now without interruptions… when you’re ready.”

  She puffed air out of her mouth then stared over my head. The expression on her face was how someone looked when they had a difficult decision to make and both choices would cost someone their life… or their soul. I had seen that expression far too many times in my line of work, usually when Hayden was interrogating an insurgent we’d caught alive.

  Whatever Anna was feeling was coming from someplace deep within, and she needed time to open up a little to me. Had she ever really opened up to anyone? I don’t think so, so I sat down on my six and prepared to wait her out. Suddenly, my patience was back.

  “Take your time, Anna. I’m here for you. I’m not going anywhere, and I’d like to know what I did so I don’t do it again. Nobody hurts you. Not even me.”

  She looked down at me then. Her eyes suddenly had enough spark in them to set the house on fire. When they roamed over me, I felt their caress as if her baby blues were literally touching me. I wasn’t expecting that look from her therefore I wasn’t ready for what it would do to the member in my pants who responded to her hot gaze instantly. Then, she licked her lips like someone had presented her with a decadent desert, which I could be that for her if she that was what she wanted, but only if I got to eat her back.

  Yep, I�
�d definitely eat her back. My own scandalous thoughts had me smiling and cocking my head at her. When she mimicked my actions, everything felt alright even if it wasn’t. She made it seem like everything was okay with her smile, and I wanted to see that smile on two occasions; day and night. Now, if I could just make everything alright for her with my smile, we’d be getting somewhere.

  “You like me, don’t you, Anna?” I asked without forethought.

  The sexy siren look disappeared from her face. Suddenly, she looked as solemn as a judge. Shit, I had hit a nerve. Doubts rose up like tidal waves. Was I pursuing a lost cause? I had been known to do that a time or two.

  “Roland,” she murmured, then her eyes flew away again as if she’d lost the capability to hold eye contact.

  When she stayed silent for quite a few seconds, I thought she’d lost her courage to speak her mind as well. “I’m sorry, Anna. I shouldn’t have said that. I get it that you don’t like me, but you should still tell me what I’ve done, so I can fix it… if I can.” Right now, I wasn’t so damn sure that was possible.

  Her attention returned to me, and there was the resolve that I needed to see in her eyes. She would tell me what I wanted to know now, and I waited with bated breath.

  “You think I don’t like you? Ha! You hurt me just because you seemed to think I was up to something when I knocked on your door earlier. I didn’t know that was your door, and okay, in the past, I was usually up to something when I approached a guy. Wanting something was the only reason I approached guys because I don’t particularly like guys…” She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t particularly like girls either, but I don’t approach them for anything. Well, just make that people in general that I don’t like, but that’s not… nothing is…”

  She huffed. “Damn, this is hard. I’m not the same person you met at Kay’s house. I haven’t been the old Anna since you walked away from me at the bar.” She rubbed at her forehead and inhaled deeply.

  At least, she remembered how to take air in. I had forgotten how. She fucking liked me! But, something vital had changed for her upon meeting me and that hadn’t sat well with her. I was glad to know that it wasn’t just the sex we had, a shallow act most times, that had prompted the change in her. It was me coming into her life for a brief moment in time that had…

  I’d like to say I had rocked her world, but it was more like I had upended her existence. The last was worse than the first, and I was sitting firmly on the upended side. No wonder she cringed when I walked over to her. I represented the changes she didn’t like in her world. Maybe I should leave, and I would if I was a runner. If I ran at the first sign of trouble between us, I couldn’t convince her that I wouldn’t hold a bad place in her life.

  I was going to have to stick close to her but keep my distance until she knew I meant her no harm. “That was a lot of words for someone who really doesn’t open up to anyone. You must really want Kay to decorate for you?”

  She blinked, then burst out laughing, a tinkling sound that rang out in the sweetest of notes. “Yeah, I really do want her to decorate for me, and you’ve done something to me. I don’t know myself anymore.”

  But, I knew her; she had live one way and felt the same emotions for so long she didn’t know what to do with something different. She didn’t know what to do with me, and I had hurt her by appearing to question her appearance on my doorstep when she had no ulterior motives other than to get my truck off her driveway. Being doubted for no good reason would insult anybody. Insults like that hurt deeply to those who were sensitive. I made a mental note of walking on eggshells around Anna until she was comfortable with me.

  “I apologize if I seemed to be questioning your motives for coming to my house. I was questioning something though, and that was my right mind. Figuring out that it wasn’t playing tricks on me took me a minute. It took me even longer to accept that my prayers to see you had finally been answered by you literally being dropped on my doorstep.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “You prayed to see me?”

  I shrugged. “Of course. You’d went AWOL. I wanted you to be okay, and I can’t really know if you’re okay unless I see you for myself. And then, I saw you and thought I had lost my shit. Let me ask you something, Anna. If you had known that was my house, would you have knocked?”

  With me trained in her crosshairs, she shook her head.

  Her response hit me a like a two-ton truck in my chest and displaced the air in my lungs. “That was what I thought. So, you have been avoiding me?”

  She nodded.

  I took another hit to the chest. “And you’ve been avoiding Kay too because she’s our only tie.”

  She nodded again. Her answers kept creating pangs in my chest. I palmed the growing ache between my pecs. The world dulled around me who really wanted her to be into me as much as I was into her, but I represented the new things she wasn’t interested in doing with me. I had to accept that, and that was going to be the biggest hill to hustle with her living right next door.

  Anna eyeballed my hand covering up the wound she had no idea that she’d inflicted. “Do you want to know why I cut everyone off?”

  “Yeah,” I replied softly, slightly thrilled that she was initiating the conversation with me now. That meant she wanted to talk though I really didn’t want to know the details about why she didn’t want anything to do with me.

  Nevertheless, it was better to have too much information than not enough. That made all the difference in determining whether things like dreams should be held onto or set outside on trash day.

  She ducked her head, a sign that she was about to say something truly eye-opening. “Roland, when we met, you made me want everything that I shouldn’t have because I don’t know what to do with it besides destroy it. All I know how to do is survive, and I’ve lived alone for so long I’d make a good man’s life and a bad man’s life a living hell. Even if we didn’t move in together, I’m always angry, popping off at the slightest things, so I keep long-term relationships out of bounds for everyone’s sake. I can’t teach a child how to be gentle and carefree because I’m not. I don’t shrug things off, they fester inside me and I solve conflicts with my fists and a blade if necessary instead of talking things out rationally. Don’t ever go to a club with me by the way.”

  “Or buy you a gun,” I chimed in halfheartedly, and she was talking things out rationally now without even realizing it.

  And I was torn. So was she who wanted me but didn’t want me. I didn’t know whether or not to be mad that she’d considered a whole other life with me in the first minutes we met, then she shot that life down because she didn’t want to hurt me as she’d obviously been hurt. I didn’t know whether or not to be mad because she was essentially warning me off her like I couldn’t handle anything she threw at me, like her ingrained habits.

  I couldn’t believe any of the things she claimed she couldn’t and would do with me. But, she believed it all, and it wouldn’t matter to her that I didn’t believe it or if I said that she had enough information about herself to fix what she thought was wrong with her. Hell, I viewed what she thought was her faults as her strengths myself.

  The meek may inherit the earth one day, but we had to survive those who weren’t meek first. She had done that beautifully, growing as an adult without even knowing that was what she was doing while denying herself things that she obviously wanted. How many people, who solved things with their fists and a blade all the time, had bought a home? Usually, they were hardened boarders in a cell block somewhere.

  Anna was just as hardened and hardheaded. I wouldn’t be able to tell her what to do in her best interests as an adult who had grown up deciding what was in her best interests on her own. She had been wronged too many times to risk letting someone else in to steer her life down any path other than the one she had set for herself.

  She surely wouldn’t open herself up to being wronged again, but I reveled in the fact that she didn’t want to wrong anyone else. What she
was, was a work in progress like every damn body else. Then, she giggled as if she was the very carefree she said she wasn’t. “You know there is an old wives’ tale about buying a woman a gun.”

  “I’m familiar with it,” I mentioned, secretly enjoying the light turn of conversation that she had instigated. “Buy a woman a gun, and she’ll end up shooting you with it. Should I not buy you shoes or a watch too?”

  She harrumphed. “So, I can walk out your life and time will run out on our relationship? Probably shouldn’t buy me those things if you believe in those superstitions.” And it had already been established that she didn’t need a gift for motivation to cut your ass off.

  What she needed was a couch and a therapist. Her childhood had done a number on her, and the mindset created from growing up in a hellish home had done the rest. She didn’t have all the right things she needed as a child like guidance and love, so she didn’t think she was capable of giving those things to someone else and imprisoned herself in a lonely existence to keep from doing to someone else’s life what had been done to hers.

  Someone would have to show her that she could have all those things that she didn’t think she should. Though she’d never allow me to truly be her man at this point, I could be her friend whose new mission in life was to make her see that what she had gone through and come through could enrich her life and everyone else’s around her. Most motivational speakers were born from the lessons they had learned, and I had a few favors I’d be calling in on her behalf.

  “Anna,” was spoken on the other side of the door just as a soft knock sounded off it.

  She looked up. “Bo, I know I’m holding up your progress, and I’ll be out in a minute, okay?”

  “Are you okay?” he asked worriedly.

  I bristled, taking that question personal. Hell yeah, she was okay. Physically, anyway.