by Kira Blakely
“I’m installing a fountain in the front yard,” I hurried to explain. “You’re welcome to come by and lend a hand.” This was a complete lie, but it was the lie I needed to tell to get this clinger off my porch.
Chet nodded eagerly. “Sounds good! I’ll see you in a few, Michelle.”
“Sounds great.”
I slammed the door and leaned against it, then trudged to the kitchen to put the monkey bread in the fridge. I shrugged off my cardigan and threw myself onto the living room sofa, groaning loudly into its cushions.
This was day two with zero interaction between myself and Andrew, unless you counted the message on my answering machine from yesterday: “Hello, Miss Harper,” it said. Miss Harper. “This is Ace from Ace Garage on Florence Street, just giving you a call to let you know your invoice is ready for pick-up. Just give me a call before you come, so I know to expect you. Thank you.”
He didn’t mention how much the work was going to be, and I was too proud to call him back and ask. I had to do this, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go to his house and face his stiff, blank-faced act, like he’d never known me as a lover. That wasn’t what I’d wanted when he stormed out of my office on Thursday. I just didn’t want to go to his friend’s wedding with him. I just didn’t want to be thrust into his world when I knew I wouldn’t fit there, when I knew I’d be some alienated, uptight joke to all his old Pelham friends.
I forced myself up from the couch and trudged to my bedroom for a shower and real clothes, surprised at how heavy and hopeless I felt. He was just a mechanic. He was just a client. He was just a one-night stand. Fleeting. Fun. This was always meant to be temporary. He was the one breaking the rules by inviting me to his friend’s wedding. That wasn’t what this was.
I sifted through my wardrobe and selected a pair of blue jean capris and a blue button-down shirt. I pulled the ponytail from my sloppy bedhead, collected a towel, and went hobbling to the shower, pushing myself to start the day. Yesterday had been a patchwork of paperwork and phone calls and intermittent spells of sorrow. That couldn’t be my life today.
I was just out of college. I might have been twenty-nine, but this was my first serious job out of law school, and I couldn’t blow it because I was depressed about some guy. This was my first real home, a rent-to-own deal into which I’d sunk all my savings to meet the down payment. And I had to keep pushing forward.
“Ace” Bogart would not throw me out of sync with my own life the way that Daniel Fletcher had. I was done being a pathetic, ruined girl. When my family lost all their money, Daniel dropped me as if I was hot to the touch. It took me years to get over the total abandonment of my childhood sweetheart... and there was no way some random mechanic could get under my skin and wreak just as much havoc in a matter of weeks. No way.
I climbed into the shower and cleaned myself up. I pushed Andrew fully from my mind. I swept his scent out of every corner. Scrubbed his fingerprints from my walls.
He didn’t get it yet. He saw me as I was on the inside. He didn’t see my shell the way other people saw it. Laidback, happy people thought that I was a hilarious joke, with my pressed skirts and the way I spoke. Hell, I’m originally from Connecticut. I could only imagine how a Texan wedding would be so loud and wild and free, and I’d be standing there in my little heels behind my little glasses, like a boat lost at sea.
Andrew didn’t get it yet, but he would. I didn’t belong in his world.
I stepped from the shower stall and toweled up, neatly brushing my hair and twisting it up in a tortoiseshell clasp. I slid my glasses back up my face and stared myself down in the foggy mirror.
Ten years ago, my ex realized I didn’t fit with his life. He realized I was an imposter, and I got jettisoned into the atmosphere. I promised myself it would never happen again. I promised myself I would focus on my career and on my budget until I eventually met “Mr. Right,” and when it finally happened, I would just know. He would just complement me without even realizing it.
And that person was not Andrew Bogart.
He thought the wedding sounded fun because it was part of his world. But if I invited him to one of my mother’s garden parties, he’d get it. He’d understand.
* * *
Before dragging the small fountain out of the walk-in closet and down the porch steps, I had to dig through multiple boxes for everything I’d need in this endeavor: colorful marbles for the base of the fountain, the figurines to surround it, the stupid pump. I wanted something cheerful and welcoming because it would probably shine in the center of the lawn. Maybe I’d speckle it with rainbow paints. I’d been hanging on to this fountain through three moves now, just waiting for the opportunity to have it displayed at a real house. Now where were those little fairy figurines?
They must have still been packed, and I must have put them in the wrong fucking box, because they weren’t with any of my cutesy decorations. Those were all just inspirational picture frames and funky planters.
I prepared to burrow into my walk-in closet—halfway loaded with boxes right now—but there was already an overturned and spilled cardboard box at the front of the closet. My shoulders sagged and I moved “find cutesy decorations” to the bottom of the list. Now I had to “fix fallen box,” and bowed to collect the several old diaries that littered the floor in here.
A sad smile cracked along my lips as I settled next to the box and neatly lined up the diary notebooks according to year. I would probably never read these things again. The only stories they had inside them were of fierce competition with my older sister, Allison, and lovesick poetry about how I would live happily ever after with Daniel, and what happened to my father... How little had I known?
I had lined up all the notebooks and noticed that the earliest high school notebook—a simple, small composition notebook—was missing.
How the hell had I left a notebook behind?
I pursed my lips and struggled deeper into the packed closet, trying not to worry about it too much. I’m an organized mover. I’ve never left a single thing behind that I actually wanted. So where was the diary? Here. That was the only possible solution. I needed to find the box of baubles and figurines and lug it onto the porch with the fountain.
I wasn’t going to think about the diary. It probably fell and got kicked somewhere. I wasn’t going to worry about Andrew. He was my mechanic, and I was his attorney. And that was it. And I was going to put this damn fountain together as if my life depended on it. I was going to beautify my yard in a funky and refreshing way if it killed me.
* * *
An hour later, I mopped at my beaded forehead and sat back on my haunches. I was dutifully removing all the area topsoil with a spade and no one had showed up to help me. Thank God. This was going to be an all-day job, and I didn’t know if I wanted Chet Browntooth to be an all-day neighbor.
“You’ve done a great job,” Chet’s voice rang out behind me and I jolted.
“Thanks, Chet.” I twisted and greeted him with an unenthusiastic wave. He approached down the driveway with his arms loaded in tools. Great. “You really don’t have to come over and help me,” I went on. “This is going to take all day and I—to be honest—I enjoy the solit—”
“No problem at all,” Chet insisted brightly. He dumped his tools at my feet and added, “You know what would really set your fountain off and give it some flair? River rocks.”
To be polite, I asked him, “Oh?” and kept chopping at the topsoil.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got a few bags of those,” Chet said. “I just found them in my garage the other day. You can have them. For free,” he added heavily.
I slanted my mouth to the side. Woohoo, free stuff that you forgot you even had in the back of your garage. What a gesture, Chet.
“I was actually going to go to the store and grab a few pounds of stone dust,” I told him.
“Oh, no, you don’t want that,” Chet assured me. “River rocks are the way to go.”
“Oh, um, no, I d
on’t—”
He upended the first bag and sent a thick stream of river rocks over my yard. I coughed and brought my forearm up to my mouth.
“So classy,” Chet went on. “Where’s your pump and your basin? Let’s get this show on the road.”
“The base has to be level for the basin,” I reminded him, packing down the river rocks with my spade. They shifted and collapsed wherever I touched. “I just tried to tell you that.”
“Aw, shit, I’m sorry,” Chet murmured, scrubbing at his hairline and separating the sprayed front line. “We’re gonna be out here all day now.” He paused as I began slowly but diligently removing the river rocks from my hole. I quelled the urge to snap at him because he hadn’t known what he was doing. When I looked up, I caught the way his eyes bore hungrily into me, and I wished there was a way to garden without bending so much.
“Is it insanely hot out here, or is it just you?” Chet asked. “Let me go grab us some cold drinks. I’ve got soda, lemonade, tea. What’s your poison?”
“Lemonade,” I called over my shoulder. He was already jogging toward his house when I looked again.
He was still in his kitchen when Andrew’s truck jostled into my driveway, even though he had already dropped my car off yesterday. Technically, there was no reason for us to talk. A hot bitterness rose up in my heart as my eyes tracked his shadow, leaning and ducking from the interior. Sunlight poured over him as he swung down onto my driveway. He wore slate gray jeans and a green, plaid, sleeveless button-down. My lip almost quirked in a welcoming smile. This was the most countrified I’d ever seen him look. I forced myself to look stern.
“Hey,” I called to him, scooping more river rocks from the hole.
“You’re installing a fountain,” Andrew deduced, nodding firmly as he surveyed the scene.
“Yes.” I kept shoveling and my eyes were trained on this pile of river rocks. I wondered how shitty I looked. Our fight last night threw off my whole routine, and I hadn’t washed my face before bed or drank any water when I woke up. All I’d had to drink was coffee and I felt hideous.
“What are you going to do with all the river rocks?” he wondered innocently, like he assumed I had a good answer for that. “Bury the basin?”
“Actually—”
“Okay, call me old-fashioned, but I found a little gin in the back of the liquor cabinet,” Chet’s voice filtered through the hedges. He broke across the barrier between our yards with sweating glasses of bright yellow and dark brown, one in each hand, looking down to make sure he didn’t trip and spill them. “I made myself a whiskey and Coke, and you—” His eyes tipped to us and caught on Andrew. “Ace,” he said, though it didn’t read like a greeting. It sounded like an accusation as Chet’s eyes flashed over him. “What are you doing here?”
“I have business,” Andrew assured Chet coolly.
“It’s a little early for me,” I told Chet, looming over me with those sweating tumblers. “And we’re going to be working out in the sun.”
“Welcome to Texas!” he called down to me.
“No thanks, Chet,” I told him.
“Well, I’m not going to drink alone,” Chet pouted.
Andrew easily snatched the two glasses from Chet’s hands and poured them onto the ground. “Problem solved,” he announced brightly. “Miss Harper, I’ve got the invoice ready from the work I did to your Volvo over the weekend. You never called me back, so here I am.”
I gaped up at Andrew as he extended a folded piece of plain white paper toward me. I took it out of his hand and swallowed dryly and squinted against the sun and didn’t look at the number on it.
“Doorstep delivery,” Andrew said overhead. “I couldn’t count all the services I offer a woman on one finger.”
My heart pounded hard. Wasn’t this what I wanted? Why did I feel like I was strangling alive? Was it just me, or had he emphasized the word “finger”? Did he still want me, or was this—it?
Ace’s Garage logo was up at the top of the paper. The itemized expenses were only for twenty-five dollars. There was no way that was right. “What is this?” I spat out, folding it over again.
“His garage is notoriously overpriced. Are you overcharging this woman, Ace?” Chet added with a macho sniff.
“Cost for the belt,” Andrew answered me, ignoring Chet entirely. “You can pay that whenever is convenient for you.”
“Oh, like I might need another payment plan?” I noted caustically.
Andrew furrowed his brow at me. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Are you patronizing me?” I fired back. “Charge me the full amount.”
“Fine.” Andrew snatched the bill from me and yanked a pen from his pants pocket, scratching out a new item on the receipt. “Now it’s 115 dollars.”
Damn it.
“Great!” I yelled. “I’ll get it to you as soon as possible!”
“When you and Gomer are done fully submerging your fountain in quicksand?”
“Hey!” Chet barked after him, but Andrew was already swaggering back to his truck.
“You should have gone with stone dust,” he called over his shoulder, not looking back at us.
“I love the submerged idea!” I yelled after him as he swung back up into his truck. “I know what I’m doing!”
Andrew didn’t say anything back to me, and his truck jostled back down the driveway and onto Mayhew. Everything was exactly the way I had said that I wanted it to be—I was finally a professional lawyer, carrying out my promise to the people, finally installing this damn fountain in the front yard I could finally call my own—and I should have been happy.
But I stared after Andrew’s truck with my heart in my throat and a crumpled bill in my hands and felt like I had nothing at all. All the effort had put me back on square one.
“You really like the river rocks?” Chet wondered, standing there sweating in the noon sun with an empty tumbler in each hand.
I answered simply. “No.”
Chapter Seven
Andrew
I changed out four flat tires, three batteries, two sets of spark plugs, and a busted tail light before twilight on Sunday. I abused the bench press in my backyard without a spotter, which was dangerous. I chugged three beers when I needed to be chugging food and water, and I shoved Michelle Harper out of my mind every minute of the day.
I set myself up for the last of the last: an oil change for Lola’s mother’s car.
I rolled beneath the Chrysler and unscrewed its oil cap, letting the dirty oil run out into a refuse pan. I didn’t think about Michelle.
What was a scumbag like Chet doing at her house? Trying to give her liquor at noon? I could smell those drinks from where I stood!
I siphoned the oil into a container to be taken to the recycling center later, and I didn’t think about Michelle. I didn’t think about her bent over as she scooped those stupid river rocks out of her yard, right in front of Browntooth’s slimy gaze. I didn’t think about her tits crowding together at the neckline of her blouse, still in front of that goon. I didn’t think about it until I was torn between pulling my own hair out and not thinking about Michelle, so vulnerable, right next to a psychotic creep who could peer into her windows at night from the comfort of his home.
What if he’d been watching her for months? Waiting for an opportunity to exploit some weakness of hers? What if he was the one who’d been in her goddamn house, looking for any kind of conversation starter that could finally let him into her life?
You’re such a busy little bee, his words came back to me, paired with that relishing gaze spread over her body and face. Ugh! I just wanted to pry his eyes off of her. She was mine.
The thought occurred to me with disturbing force, boiling in the pit of my stomach. But I couldn’t feel this way. She wasn’t mine.
I organized all my invoices for Amy to file in the morning and washed up when daylight was spent. I tried not to think about Chet’s clingy nature, how he would invent excuse upon excuse to
stay in her home, to stay between her walls, like an insidious parasite. He would burrow between her legs using any means necessary. What would he tell her? How was he going to fake his way into her life? She was too attractive and too accessible; it was only a matter of time.
My phone bleated at me and I saw an accidental text message from Michelle: 1jk;;
I was already halfway to my truck when I thought about how I was supposed to not think about Michelle. She was my attorney, and I was her mechanic, and I was already turning over my engine and rolling onto the street. She hadn’t texted me. It was a butt text. But what if she’d had my contact information open, thinking about it? What if that had been the draft of a text she never could bring herself to begin?
I couldn’t take the risk. I had to see her.
* * *
The fountain in Michelle’s front yard balanced on immaculately packed stone dust, inlaid with pastel baubles. Tiny lights twinkled wirelessly along the rim and in the basin of the fountain, and I had to assume they were solar powered. Surrounding the lazy arc of the water fan was a retinue of porcelain fairies.
I couldn’t help but smile softly as I strode by. I could tell that she’d worked hard on this all by herself—and kicked Chet completely out of the picture early on. I remembered group projects with Chet. He had to be completely ostracized, or he would become the dictator.
I knocked gently at the door.
Maybe I should have had some more faith in her.
The front door fell open and she leaned her side into it, emphasizing the dramatic curve of her hips. She’d changed into silky, loose pants in a vibrant jewel-tone mosaic, and a cloying camisole.
Her eyes ballooned dreamily as she took all of me in, and she lulled slightly forward. I could feel the haze of steam coming off of her from some recent shower, could smell the shampoo in her hair.
“Hey,” she breathed.
“Hey.” All the words drained out of me as I traced her with my eyes. Her hair was down around her shoulders, damp and thick. I wanted to pull those adorable glasses off her nose. I wanted to bury myself in her neck. When I was around her, my impulse control eroded to zero. “I don’t want you to pay that damn bill.”