The Schemer

by Avery Flynn

  He had no fucking clue what the protocol was here. He spent 95 percent of his talking time around other guys. Did he acknowledge the hurt? Did he brush over it? He didn’t think it was the latter. His friend Frankie, who he’d grown up next door to, had four sisters. They loved talking about their feelings. Okay, they loved shouting and laughing and crying and giggling about their feelings. He should ask her more, invite her to say what she wanted because she was obviously close to her grandma and dementia wasn’t a kind disease.

  After taking in a steadying breath, he opened his mouth and said, “I kill it at bingo.”

  Yeah, he’d totally chickened out.

  Asshole, know thyself.

  Her lips went from pressed hard together to curling upward. Looked like he’d assholed his way into saying the right thing.

  Everly looked him up and down. This time, though, it was as if she were trying to decide if he was worthy of an important quest. “Are you angling for another invitation?”

  He didn’t mean to press his luck, but being around her fucked with his head. “Not if you’re too scared to play with me.”

  His dick liked that idea. Liked it a lot. He hadn’t totally meant the challenge to come out as a double entendre, but he had a dirty mind and judging by the way her dark-brown eyes turned nearly black and the pulse picked up in her neck, so did Ms. 3B. He’d been worked up after their conversation last night. Had she? The tip of her pink tongue snuck out and wet her bottom lip. Oh yeah, she had. He got dumb around her, but he didn’t lose all his brains.

  Taking some pity on them both as the air crackled around them, he pulled his wallet out of his jeans and took out his lucky quarter. “Loser has to drive.”

  “What makes you think I’m taking you to bingo?” she asked, her voice a little breathier than it had been before.

  He took a step closer, near enough that he could smell the vanilla of her perfume and see the light-brown freckles he’d never noticed before on her exposed shoulder. “Because you missed me.”

  Her gaze never wavered from his; she wasn’t ever the kind to give an inch. “You sure think a lot of yourself.”

  “And I know you’ve been thinking a lot about me.” Otherwise she never would have thrown in that text last night about what she was wearing. She may not want to want him any more than he wanted to want her, but the reality was that his upstairs neighbor had the hots for him and he had it bad for her. What harm was there in a little meaningless flirting? It wasn’t like it would ever go anywhere beyond wrinkled sheets and sweaty satisfaction.

  Just when he thought she wasn’t going to play along, she gave him a smirk before saying, “Heads.”

  Using the tip of his thumb, he flipped the quarter into the air. It went end over end several times before he caught it and slapped it down on the top of his hand. Tails.

  “Well,” he said, putting the quarter away in its special pocket. “It had to go your way one of these times.”

  She snorted and led the way down the stairs to the garage. He didn’t mind—the view was amazing.

  “If I weren’t holding a pie, I’d beg for a ride on your Harley.” She grinned as they passed the covered beast.

  He was going to need to enroll in classes or something soon. As mad as she was that he’d kept from her the fact that he owned the building, he could only imagine the size of the doghouse buying a bike you couldn’t even ride would cost him. He wasn’t even 100 percent sure he knew how to start the damn thing.

  The Lakeland Community Center didn’t have a lake nearby, but it sat up on a hill and had an amazing view of the harbor. When the wind hadn’t whipped off all the leaves from the trees lining the walk up to the front doors, it had to be a great place to sit at the outdoor tables dotting the lawn and play chess, have a coffee, or talk about the good old days when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and milk was fifty cents a gallon. He was kinda looking forward to doing the same when he hit his seventies.

  Everly led the way inside through the double doors, past the attendant manning a desk by the door who knew her name, and into a room full of comfortable chairs and a wall of windows looking out at a massive garden that had to be pretty impressive in the spring. Most of the people in the room were either residents at the facility or about to be—except for one couple nearby in an overstuffed floral love seat.

  “You know Hudson and Felicia,” Everly said as she led him over toward the other couple.

  That was putting it mildly. They each were a younger sibling of two of his closest friends and had fallen for each other. “Only for most of my life.”

  “Great,” she said, her voice strained, and handed him the pie. “They’ll get you squared away with bingo and introduce you to Mary, who’ll get the pie ready for the refreshment break.”

  He didn’t like the slight droop to her shoulders or the way she’d pressed her lips together. This wasn’t the ball-busting woman who gave him grief on an almost daily basis. This was someone about to knowingly go ballroom dancing in a minefield. His hand was intertwined in hers, turning her toward him before he even realized it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, searching her guarded eyes for any clue of what he could or should do next.

  Her step faltered, but she recovered and slipped free of his hold. “Of course. I’m just going to visit my grandma before the bingo starts. I’ll see you inside. Save a spot for me.”

  And then she was gone down a hall painted a cheery yellow. The temptation to follow was a burn in his gut. But what could he do? Nothing. Her grandma had dementia. He didn’t have the cure. He wasn’t her boyfriend. They were…neighbors, with any luck soon-to-be fuck buddies. There was no strategic reason for him to go with her. Then again, there wasn’t any reason for being here with her at bingo period.

  So why are you here, numbnuts?

  Because… Fuck. He didn’t even know anymore. “Hey, wait up.”

  She turned around, obviously as confused as he was about why he’d called out. “Yeah?”

  “Can I meet her?”

  Her eyes rounded. “Nunni?”

  “Yeah.” In any other situation, this would totally be a move to gain her trust and confidence in order to have forward momentum on a scheme. But that wasn’t the case here—and that was even weirder than his wanting to go along to bingo.

  Her shoulders seemed to relax a few inches, and one side of her mouth curled up in an almost smile. “Okay, but don’t freak out if she thinks I’m my mom.”

  “Is that pretty common?”

  The line of her jaw tightened. “Often enough that I usually get warned at least three times each visit that she doesn’t trust that man my mom was dating. Nunni wasn’t wrong on that score.”

  He nodded and, after telling Hudson and Felicia that they’d catch up with them before bingo, they walked together down the hall past the doors with nameplates on the wall beside each one until they finally stopped at one marked Patrice Ribinski.

  After exhaling a deep breath, Everly turned up the wattage on her smile to blinding and opened the door. “Hey, Nunni, how are you tonight?”

  An old woman sat in the recliner in front of a TV playing a game show from three decades ago, judging by the clothes. Her hair was snow-white and cut into tight curls that framed her face. With her tiny frame and unassuming posture, she couldn’t have been more of Everly’s opposite right up until she turned to look at them. There was no mistaking those no-nonsense eyes.

  “You brought a man,” Mrs. Ribinski said, unabashedly eyeballing him up and down as if she could see every flaw he had or bad deed he’d ever committed. His skin suddenly felt too tight.

  “I did.” Everly nodded. “This is my neighbor Tyler Jacobson.”

  Neighbor? Okay, he could play the part of neighbor.

  Mrs. Ribinski shot Everly a yeah-right look before turning back to him. “Are you a nice man?”

  Now wasn’t that the one-billion-dollar question. “Most of the time.”

  “Honest. I like it.” The older wo
man smiled at him before returning her attention to Everly. That’s when the happy look slid away, replaced by a seriousness that didn’t allow for any doubt about what would come next. “Never trust a man who pretends to be what he isn’t. Now, tell me about the gallery.”

  Tyler stood in the doorway holding the pie and watched Everly and her grandma talk, each gesturing with their hands and laughing. Not once but four times in the span of ten minutes, they finished each other’s sentences. It was totally foreign from how he’d ever talked to a blood relative. The bond between the women was more like what he’d seen at the Hartigans’ house than anything he’d ever experienced at home. The easy intimacy of what he was seeing made him realize he was an outsider here, who’d pushed his way into a moment that both women obviously cherished. He needed to go.

  He cleared his throat and lifted the pie box. “I’m just going to take this out to the pie table.”

  Everly and her grandmother looked up at him and smiled.

  “I’ll be out in a few minutes,” Everly said.

  “Take your time. It was good to meet you, Mrs. Ribinski.”

  The old woman nodded. “You, too, Trevor.”

  Not wanting to point out the slip, he just nodded, eased out of the room, and walked down the hall back to where Felicia and Hudson were waiting.

  “Did Everly finally brain you with one of her shoes?” Felicia asked, pushing up her glasses that always seemed to slide down on her nose. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard there was pie.” Yeah, that seemed totally believable. Really. Solid answer. In another dimension, anyway.

  Hudson reached over and lifted up a corner of the pie box’s lid. “You do realize you’re carrying a coconut cream?”

  “It’s Everly’s,” he said, pulling it away before Hudson could take a swipe of the cream top. “I’m supposed to give it to someone named Mary.”

  “Come on,” Felicia said, taking pity on him. “She’s right over here.”

  Next thing Tyler knew, the pie was on a table with about ten others and he had a red and a blue bingo marker as well as four bingo sheets in front of him. Hudson and Felicia were across the table with two sheets each. The empty seat next to him with four sheets and three markers was for Everly—the old guy manning the bingo supply table swore that was her usual bingo order. Steps lighter than they’d been before, Everly hustled across the room and slid into her seat just as the woman with the bullhorn called out the first letter and number combination.

  He leaned over even as he pressed his marker onto B5. “Good visit?”

  “Great visit,” she said, her shit-eating grin back in place. “Now, let’s see if you’re all brag and no bingo.”

  …

  Whenever Nunni made it through an entire visit without calling Everly by her mother’s name, there was an undeniable lightness that filled Everly’s chest and, for at least a little while, it was like having her nunni back with her again. Of course, the little nugget of knowledge in the pit of her stomach that Nunni wouldn’t stay like that weighed heavy, but she refused to give in to the feeling of dread tonight. She’d take the visit as a win even though she was getting her clock cleaned at bingo.

  In fact, Everly had never laughed so much during bingo night in her life, because it turned out that Tyler had no bingo game. None. The man could barely keep up with one bingo card let alone the four he had in front of him, and his attempts to do so were so hilariously inept that they were both laughing. Hudson and Felicia hadn’t fared much better than Tyler, giving up the bingo for the pie table across the room halfway through the night. Tyler was obviously too stubborn for his own good, though, as he muddled through trying to keep up with Mary yelling out numbers at a quick clip. There were only two explanations that accounted for Tyler’s predicament: the male ego and Bernie Henderson.

  She leaned in close and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Bernie shamed you into getting more than one bingo card, didn’t he?”

  Tyler nodded, fumbling with the marker. “He said the money raised went to a good charity.”

  Money? Oh God, the old coot got Tyler good. She glanced over to her left where Bernie sat on the other side of the empty chair between them, his lips twitching. Oh, he might complain about his hearing aid never working, but he wasn’t having any problems hearing right now. The resident confidence man didn’t bother to look ashamed—in fact, he looked damn proud of himself at the moment. The giggles started up again as she pictured what had happened. Bernie, with his Coke-bottle-thick glasses and Santa beard, had probably given Tyler some sob story about three-legged dogs or homeless sea turtles. So much for the chess master’s ability to read people. “Yeah, that charity is called the Bernie Needs Bus Fare to Go to the Movies Fund. There’s no cost for the cards.”

  Tyler’s blue eyes went wide. “You’re kidding.”

  Mary called out G48.

  “Nope,” Everly said as she stamped her six cards with the marker in a clockwise motion her nunni had taught her. “You got scammed by an old man.”

  “I thought old people were supposed to be sweet and bake cookies,” Tyler grumbled, missing the G48 on the bottom left of his bingo card collection.

  “These are Riverside seniors,” she said amid another fit of giggles as she marked the card for him. “You might be from Waterbury, but you look like an uptown Harbor City mark, and Bernie is one of the best.”

  She couldn’t testify to it in court, but she was pretty sure she heard the sound of “damn right” off to her left before Mary called out O70.

  Bringing Tyler here could have been a huge mistake. Inviting him to come meet Nunni? A total disaster. Instead, Nunni and her friends at the assisted living center had welcomed him even if they were shooting her questioning looks. Everyone wanted to know who he was to her, and she didn’t have an answer for that. Just trying to think up a definition for them made her chest tight and her nerves jangly.

  Tyler stamped the space on one of his cards and turned to face her, totally missing the O70 on the card next to it. “You know some people are actually intimidated by me, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes as she searched her last card for O70. “The ones who’ve never been smoked out of their apartment by you.”

  He snorted, trying for offended, but the twitch to his lips gave him away. “That hasn’t happened in days.”

  “You’ve been out of town, remember?” Not that his being half a country away had stopped her from thinking about him.

  “How could I forget after your text?” His lips curled into a sly smirk that did things to the panties she was wearing for once, and he pivoted in his seat, their knees brushing.

  Even that mere touch was like a match to a can of hairspray, setting every nerve in her body ablaze. Mary called out I19, but Everly didn’t bother with her marker, since she was white-knuckling it as the fantasy she’d had earlier that morning about him played out in her mind. Were his hands really that talented? His tongue that sure? His cock that fucking hard? She clenched her thighs together, needing some sort of relief. Damn. She had to get him out of her system because this was nuts. She didn’t fuck around with men like Tyler Jacobson. He might be from the wrong neighborhood, but he was all upscale Harbor City now. And while the whole across-the-tracks thing may work in the movies, it sure didn’t in real life as her own family’s history attested. So why did her pulse tick up the second his gaze dipped down to her mouth?

  “Are ya two going to kiss already or keep up ya yammerin’?” Bernie asked, his voice pulling her away from the fall that had too often ended up with her mouth planted on Tyler’s. “I have my hearing aid turned up all the way, and I can still barely hear Mary call out the numbers over the sound of ya hormones.”

  Embarrassment slapped her cheeks, but she knew better than to duck her head or show any hint of weakness. “Seems that finicky hearing aid of yours is working well enough tonight.”

  The old man just grinned at her. “I’m still waiting for an ans
wer.”

  Oh, she had an answer, and as soon as she could clear her brain a little, she’d get it out.

  Tyler didn’t seem to suffer from the same problem. He threw his arm across the back of her chair and trailed a finger along the column of her neck, scattering the few basic words she’d strung together in her head.

  “Don’t worry,” Tyler said to the older man. “I’m going to kiss her.”

  Jana Milbank, who’d taught her the tricks of buying groceries on a budget from the corner store, looked up from her bingo card, squinting in their direction because she’d forgotten to take her glasses from their perch on top of her head, and put them on. “Who’s he kissing?”

  “That cute fella is gonna kiss Patrice’s granddaughter,” Catherine responded, never looking up from her bingo cards, as focused on them as she’d been on teaching Everly the basics of a well-placed elbow to the sternum or the heel of her palm to the nose before she’d gone out on her first date.

  More than a little flustered, Everly fought to keep her cool as her nunni’s friends continued to chatter about something that so was not going to happen—again. “I am not kissing him.”

  “Well not now she’s not,” Tyler said, playing up to the crowd. “But she has before and she will again.”

  “I don’t blame her. If I were thirty years younger, I’d be kissing him, too,” Jana announced.

  “Thirty? Try fifty, Jana,” Catherine shot back.

  Oh. My. God. This was just… There weren’t even words for it because while one part of her was counseling her to resist, the other part was setting up a cheer routine rooting for her to get in the game and go all the way. She knew which way the crowd of seniors at the table would vote as they watched Tyler and her as if they were characters on the screen during movie night.

  “Bingo!” a woman cried out from two tables over.

  Everyone at their table groaned their disappointment—except for Tyler and her. He leaned in close and dipped his head so his lips almost touched the shell of her ear. Pulse jackhammering loud enough that she just knew he had to be able to hear it, she held her breath, anticipation stringing her whole body tight. But he didn’t turn and kiss her. Didn’t whisper a teasing word. Instead, she felt the vibrations of his soft chuckle against her skin before he sat back in his chair, a satisfied expression on his too-handsome-for-his-own-good face and picked up his bingo marker right as Mary called out the first number in the next round.