Finding Mr. Right Next Door

by Sarah Ballance

  Matt shook his head. “What if she—”

  Diego cut him off with a shake of his head. “Every minute you sit here doubting the size of your balls is another minute she’s sitting somewhere hurting. For a reason not a single one of us has been able to decipher, she loves you. Not even you could be dense enough to doubt that.” Diego put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Despite her taste in men, she’s an incredibly capable woman. Why don’t you stop thinking for her and just let her decide?”

  Because what if she says no?

  But Diego’s words had resonated. Matt stood, threw down enough cash to cover his drinks and Diego’s, and said, “Come on. You’re driving.”

  If Lexi didn’t want Matt, she’d have to tell him herself.

  …

  Lexi had been moping for two solid days.

  She hadn’t seen Matt, but she knew he’d left the house because his Jeep was gone. Her mom had asked why Lexi didn’t go with him when he picked it up. From her mother’s description, it sounded like Jack had given him the ride, so Lexi had just said that they’d been out in the area and decided to stop.

  She’d deal with her parents later.

  For now, she had her hands full with Elsie.

  “Want some tea?” the older woman called from her kitchenette.

  “Sure,” Lexi replied, then quickly added, “but hold the whiskey.”

  “Hold it hell,” came the reply. “I’m going to drink it!”

  “Don’t put any in my tea,” Lexi repeated, louder this time, wondering how in the world she’d ended up with such a character in her life…and what might change if she and Matt continued to avoid each other. Lexi honestly couldn’t see herself ghosting Elsie, but she’d hate for her to ever feel like she had to take a side. Knowing Elsie, though, she’d tell them both off and go about her business like nothing had happened.

  If only Lexi could do that so easily.

  While she waited for Elsie to bring in her drink cart, Lexi studied the pictures on the wall. Elsie had talked her through them a hundred times, so they were as familiar to Lexi as if they were her own. And many were. There was one of baby Matt with his parents and one of Elsie with her late husband, but the rest were the story of not just Matt’s life, but Lexi’s. From diapers to prom… She touched a fingertip to the formal picture and tried to remember if she’d even considered going with anyone else.

  Elsie came in and handed Lexi a cup. Still lost in her melancholy, Lexi took a sip and nearly spit it out. “I said no alcohol!” she said.

  “You said no whiskey,” Elsie said. “That’s bourbon.”

  Lexi put the cup back on the cart. “You can’t just go around spiking drinks, Elsie.”

  “You looked like you needed a pick-me-up.” She sat on the sofa and patted the cushion next to hers. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No,” Lexi said. “Talking won’t change anything.” But she sat anyway, curling up on the cushion and resting her head on Elsie’s lap. Lexi was tired. She’d survived the past forty-eight hours on cold cereal and Uber Eats, too afraid to risk her beautiful new kitchen by cooking in it. Besides, who would happen over to put out the fire this time? Certainly not Matt. She wondered if he’d been eating alone or had just skipped it altogether. They usually had breakfast at the station at shift change, but on the days he came off shift or didn’t work, he’d always come to her house. She hadn’t realized how empty her mornings were without Matt and Waffles barging in.

  “Matt’s grandfather was a stubborn old coot,” Elsie said. “And Matt’s daddy was a chip off the old blockhead.” She stroked Lexi’s hair as she spoke, her attention absently on a corner of the room, and Lexi wondered what her mind’s eye saw. “It’s like the good Lord decided to test me with those two. And then there was Matt. Poor boy doesn’t even remember his daddy, obviously wasn’t raised with his influence, but he couldn’t be more like him.”

  “I bet that’s bittersweet for you,” Lexi said. Elsie had lost her only son and her daughter-in-law. Lexi couldn’t imagine.

  “You’ve got that right,” Elsie said with a laugh that surprised Lexi. “Lord, I made it through one of them and here comes a second. I thank God every day for your parents. I was in bad shape then.”

  “Matt and I had a…” She wasn’t sure what to call it. Not a fight. Not even a disagreement, really. Just…an end. The thought of that made her eyes fill with tears, and when the first one rolled across her cheek, Elsie gently wiped it away.

  “You are two peas in a pod, you know that?” Elsie pointed at one of the photos. Lexi and Matt crammed onto the single narrow seat of a rope swing. She had her hair in pigtails and held on for dear life while he wore a mischievous grin. The reason wasn’t obvious in the photo, but Lexi remembered the moment well. He’d been determined to swing high enough to grab a flower from a branch, all because Lexi had said it was pretty.

  “I think we were five,” Lexi said.

  “You know, he kept that picture on his nightstand until the day he moved out. ’Course, I reckon it could have stayed there after. I don’t know.”

  “That’s not possible,” Lexi said. “I would have noticed.”

  “You two were at your house more often than his,” Elsie said. “And he’d tuck it in a drawer during the day. I once asked him why he kept up the routine. He must have been sixteen then. Said it was the only thing you’d ever said you wanted that he hadn’t been able to give you.”

  Lexi tore her gaze from the decades-old photo and stared at Elsie. “He could have climbed a ladder if it meant that much to him.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but you didn’t ask him to do that. You asked him to swing higher.”

  “I was five.”

  “Yes,” Elsie conceded. Then added, “Funny thing is, so was he.”

  The words did achy things to Lexi’s heart, but those weird flutters seemed to have become part of her life now. “He’s never said anything about…us,” Lexi said. “All these years, and he’s never once acted interested. Not until I was ready to move on.”

  Elsie raised an arched brow. “And that’s not reason enough?”

  “He doesn’t take anything seriously,” Lexi said. “Except his job. I don’t know where I fit in.”

  “Lexi,” Elsie said. “You don’t have to fit anywhere. You already belong. You’ve been the center of everything for as long as he can remember.”

  Lexi fingered the quilt that hung over the back of the sofa. Elsie had made it, years ago, and it was one more thing that drove home how intricately linked her life was with Matt’s. “How do I risk that? That it might not work?”

  Elsie gave Lexi one of those wise, knowing looks that seemed to come only from village elders. Then she said, “When you consider the alternatives, how can you not?” After a moment of quiet, she said, “Matt came to see me yesterday.”

  “I’m glad,” Lexi said. Actually, she was surprised, because Elsie was a bit much for Matt. She found it ironic that Elsie seemed to feel the same way about him.

  “Aren’t you going to ask what for?” Elsie asked.

  “I think I need to worry a little less about what Matt does,” Lexi said. She sat up, wiped her eyes, and forced a smile. “But I’m glad he was here.”

  Elsie smiled, and if Lexi wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of mischief there. “I think you will be.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Lexi had to hand it to Matt. When he disappeared, he vanished. He’d had a five-day break in his rotation, so she didn’t see him at work, but to go from seeing him daily to living with him to sleeping with him to nothing was the kind of jarring that made tears spill at the most random times and had her scowling at the dazzling Rocky Mountain sunsets.

  She’d killed a few hours helping the police department bundle blankets and teddy bears for kids. She’d spent a few more dodging her parents’ questions. But m
ostly she sat on her sofa and had threesomes with Ben and Jerry—so far she’d gained a new favorite flavor and about five pounds—and avoided her own bedroom window, because it stared directly into Matt’s, and that made her sadder than she ever imagined.

  Lexi’s phone dinged. A match from her dating app. She scrolled through the guy’s profile. He seemed decent. Her thumb hovered over the screen for a moment, but she couldn’t do it, so she deleted the app.

  She wouldn’t find anything on there that she hadn’t already lost.

  She tossed down her phone. As soon as it hit the sofa, it dinged again. She nearly dropped the phone when she saw the name at the top of the notification. Matt.

  Her hands shook as she opened the message.

  Can you go check on Waffles?

  Well, it was something.

  But it was something that required her to go back into that house. For the past couple of days Waffles had visited via the backyard. She wondered if that was the next thing that would change.

  Before she could think too much about that—or anything else—she stood. Crumbs fell off her shirt. She looked down at her stained sweat pants and old Denver Broncos tee with the hole in the armpit and decided the odds of her running into a neighbor were slim enough, so she went next door glamorously as-is.

  She swung open the back door of his house to a view of Matt, looking ridiculously hot in a pair of cargo shorts and a forest green Smoky Bear shirt. Leaning against the counter, tanned and muscular, he looked like he’d been plucked out of an issue of Men’s Health.

  Lexi’s limbs went weak.

  “Is this not where I was supposed to find Waffles?” She managed the question without stammering, drooling, or shoving her knee in his nether regions, so she considered that a win. As much as she’d missed him, she was pissed—more so now that he had the nerve to act so casual, like nothing was wrong. Like he hadn’t only absconded with her ability to fall for any mere mortal, but had left her so wrecked that neither Ben nor Jerry could fill the void.

  He kind of shrugged, kind of smiled, and said, “I kind of made that up.”

  “Okay.” The sheepish look on his face had her more than a little suspicious. Suspicious enough to look around and see for the first time that his kitchen was an absolute wreck. Bowls upon bowls of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries sat on the counter, mixed in with warehouse-sized containers of baking supplies. Flour, butter, powdered sugar…pounds of it. She peeked in the fridge. It looked to hold little more than eggs, heavy cream, and mascarpone. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “You said you wanted to make Elsie’s tart recipe.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “And then I burned down the kitchen.”

  “Kind of a pivotal moment in the story of us,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed a hitch. “Who told you to say that?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, that was a bit over the top. I probably heard it in one of your movies.”

  Hesitantly, she asked, “Can we get back to the part where you tell me what’s going on?”

  “We’re going to make the tart, just like you wanted before the fire. Only, so we’re clear, you’re not allowed to put anything in the oven. I’ll do that.”

  She blinked. “You think you can make Elsie’s tart?”

  Grinning, he said, “Why not? You thought you could.”

  Ugh. No way she’d concede that point. “Wait. So you let me walk out of here two days ago without a word—”

  “To be fair, you walked out of here barely dressed, legs for miles. I’m not sure there’s a sighted man within a hundred miles of this place who could have found his tongue in a moment like that.”

  “I don’t know,” Lexi said. “A better man might have found something to do with his tongue that didn’t involve speech.”

  He stared for a moment, his gaze dropping briefly south, before he met her eyes, his mouth twitching into a playful grin. “Point taken.”

  “And then you don’t talk to me for days.”

  “I didn’t hear from you, either. And as you so brilliantly pointed out, you walked out.”

  Lexi blinked. She’d been holding it together by a thread since the last time she saw him. A disheveled, fraying thread that had no chance of stitching together her broken heart. It hadn’t even occurred to her to reach out first. But here he was, offering her an olive branch. But an olive branch to what? Love? “So… What is your game plan? You make dessert, I admire your muscles and swoon over your prowess in the kitchen, and then we get back together?”

  His brow hitched. “Back together?”

  Heat rose, surely staining her face bright red. Oh God. She’d totally misinterpreted his intentions. Time to backpedal. “No. I mean, we were never together, right? Back on speaking terms.”

  “Actually,” he said. “No.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “No?”

  “No.” He gave an affable shrug. “We’re just going to…make the tart. If you want to, that is.”

  “You just want to make a tart?” She glanced around the kitchen, once again taking in the tremendous supply of ingredients, and wondered if he might actually be serious.

  “Again, as long as you promise to stay away from the oven. And probably the food processor. So what do you think?”

  “I think you’ve lost your mind.”

  He gave her clothes a pointed look. “You had plans?”

  Ignoring that point, however well deserved, she realized something. “You went to Elsie for the recipe, didn’t you?” That was what Elsie had meant. Elsie knew.

  “I had to. Yours was lost in the fire.” He took her hand. “But before you wow me by not setting fire to my kitchen, I want to show you something.”

  She didn’t say anything—by that point, she wasn’t sure what she could say—but she did follow him. Or she intended to, until something on the stove caught her eye and she pulled up short with a gasp.

  …

  Matt hadn’t noticed Lexi come to a dead stop until her hand slipped from his. “What is that?” she asked. “Is that…oh my gosh, Matt!”

  He stood, perplexed, until he noticed the direction of her attention.

  Elsie’s tart pan. Or her grandmother’s, or Napoleon’s depending on who you believed. Eyes bright, Lexi went straight for it and scooped it off the stove. “Is this the same one?” she breathed.

  The absolute depth of shock and joy in her voice annihilated all the aggravation he went through during the hours he’d spent chipping the remnants of Lexi’s homemade lava off its surface. He’d forgotten about the pan the moment she’d walked through the door, but now that he saw what it meant to her, his throat grew tight.

  He pushed back his own surge of emotion with a wry smile. “Is that really the best thing about this moment?”

  “I can’t believe you saved it. I felt so guilty—” She broke off with a watery smile. “You could have led with this,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked, “when there’s something better outside?”

  She glanced from him to the pan and back, skepticism written all over her face. “There’s no way you can top the eradication of the guilt I felt over ruining that pan, to say nothing of the fact that Elsie would make sure I remembered it at least as often as she did.”

  “I think I can top the eradication of guilt,” he said. He didn’t mention the second part. Elsie didn’t exactly pull punches, so Lexi was probably right on that point. He reached for Lexi’s hand again, and this time she let him lead her into the yard and around the corner. He’d tucked this little surprise in a sunny spot on the opposite side of his yard from her house, where he hoped she was unlikely to notice it. If she had, she hadn’t mentioned it.

  They stopped in front of an enormous planter, from which jutted the remains of the Japanese tree lilac that had been ripped from her flower bed the day of th
e fire.

  “Remember this guy?” he asked.

  He’d hoped for at least half the reaction the tart pan had garnered, but instead she just stared at the tree, then him.

  Uh-oh. “I know how much research you put into finding just the right spot for it,” he hurried to say, “and how much it meant to you.” He’d been with her the day she’d asked the current owner of her grandparents’ old place if she could have it, and while she hadn’t said as much, he’d seldom seen her so emotional—at least not until the day it had been scraped into the gutter. “I wasn’t sure if it could be saved, so I got one of the guys from the extension office to give it a once-over, make sure the soil mix was right, all that stuff. When it gets a little stronger, we can transplant it back to the bed.”

  Wordlessly, Lexi watched him talk.

  He was no expert at this kind of thing, but she looked like she was going to cry. Anxiety clawed at him.

  He offered a small, hopeful smile. “The guy said it would probably be okay, just to maybe not set anything else on fire around it.”

  She broke into a sudden laugh that almost sounded like a choked-back sob. “He did not say that!”

  “Okay, I added the second part. But the point stands.”

  She looked at her tree, then reached out and ran a gentle finger along its branches. When she looked back at him, her eyes were wet. “This is amazing. Thank you. For someone who hates romance movies, you sure nailed the ending.”

  “The ending?” It was his turn to stare. That couldn’t be good.

  She closed the distance between them. She fit so easily, so perfectly in his arms that he ached. “I said that wrong,” she said, looking up at him with something he was tempted to describe as adoration. “It’s not the ending. It’s the beginning.”

  He kissed her gently. “It’s the continuation,” he said, “but the best is yet to come.”

  She gave him a watery smile, slipping from his arms and grinning broadly. “The best? Are you referring to this tart we’re about to make?”

  He hesitated. She still wanted to bake? He very much preferred they take this to the bedroom—where he’d be content to set continuous fire to the sheets—but he had about fifty pounds of fresh fruit straight from the farmer’s market sitting in his kitchen. No sense in wasting it. With any luck, they had a lifetime to make trips to the bedroom.