The Nice Guy Next Door

by Haley Zaragoza

  I smile to myself, thinking of what Daddy would have said about that whole incident. There were so many times when I was dealing with mean kids in school that Daddy encouraged me to stand up for myself. He wasn’t raising meek girls. He knew that I was on the shy side, so he taught me to never allow anyone to walk all over me. I thank him for that daily.

  Lo bursts into my room, interrupting my thoughts. “Hey, I want to go put flowers on Daddy’s grave today,” she says. It’s a good idea, but Harris is two hours away. It wouldn’t be a quick trip.

  “You can’t miss school again after your suspension last week, and I have to go to work. Gertrude has already threatened my job.”

  “Come on, Millie. It’s just one more day,” she argues.

  “Have you met Gertrude, Lo? She’s terrifying! We’ll go this weekend,” I assure her as I rush around my room, grabbing all of my bags. I run out the door in a mad dash to get to work a little early to set up for story time. We’re reading one of my favorite books from when I was a kid, Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me, and we’re going to make moons out of paper plates. It’s sure to be a disaster because three- and four-year-olds doing crafts usually is. It’ll be a fun disaster, though.

  Gertrude looks shocked beyond belief when I walk into the library five entire minutes early. I didn’t know her wrinkled face could do anything other than scowl. I give my coworkers a quick wave and a “hello” as I scurry back to the event room. Their faces are as equally surprised as ol’ Gertie’s. By now, everyone has accepted that I’m going to perpetually be two minutes late for work every day.

  I step into the room and get to work setting up the supplies for a magical toddler story time. I lay out all of the craft supplies we’ll need: white paper plates, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, googly eyes, and star stickers.

  Last week, I learned that glitter is a definite no. There’s a little girl, Laura, who comes to this story time, and the girl loves glitter.

  Loves. It.

  Her sweet mama warned me when she saw last week’s supplies set out on the table waiting to be used, so I only had myself to blame. But this little girl somehow glittered the entire room with that tiny bottle of glitter. When her mama was getting onto her, she jutted that bottom lip out with expert precision and cried that she was only trying to make the room beautiful. Me, being the sucker that I am, assured her that the room was the loveliest it had ever been. Then, as soon as she left, I proceeded to throw away every single bottle of glitter in this entire library. No glitter bottles escaped my wrath.

  Gertrude saw the mess and told me to have it all cleaned up by the end of the day or she’d give my job to Hannah. Don’t tell her, but there’s still glitter hiding in all of the nooks and crannies of the event room. I think it’s a permanent fixture now.

  At 10 AM, all the little preschoolers begin arriving with their parents or nannies. I watch as they run around together and wonder how their little bodies have an endless supply of energy. Their caretakers all look exhausted. I’ve developed a theory over the past few weeks that the kids somehow siphon the energy from the nearest adult, so I make a point to stand as far away from them as possible without being too obvious.

  After my first story time, I made note of all the caretakers’ under eye bags and obvious exhaustion and started setting up a coffee station. They were all excessively grateful, and story time attendance is now up by fifty percent. Gertrude, to my absolute shock, complimented the idea.

  When it’s time to start, I have all the kids sit on the carpet in front of me, and I open the book and start to read about the little girl who begs her father to climb up a tall ladder to get the moon for her. It’s quite a ridiculous request if you ask me, but that man is determined.

  It reminds me of my own dad and how he worked and worked to give me and Lo a good life. He loved us and would literally do anything for us. The little girl in the book is now dancing happily with her sliver of the moon, and I’d bet anything her dad is watching and thinking that his hard work was worth it just to see this moment and the smile on his daughter’s face.

  Tears start pouring down my face as I finish reading the book, and my voice is all wobbly. The kids and caretakers are all exchanging concerned glances with each other. I try to rein in my emotions, but it’s no use. One woman holds up her cell phone, and I hear the telltale sign of the camera snapping a picture. Her fingers tap on her phone as she starts sending off a text. I’ll once again be the center of the town gossip by noon.

  I excuse myself from the room to grab Hannah and ask her to do the craft with the kids while I try to pull myself together. She agrees and rushes into the room. I stand by the door, listening to her cheerful voice explain the craft to the children as she passes out all of the supplies.

  “The woman is unstable if you ask me,” one of the moms sitting nearest to the door says to the young woman sitting beside her. Lo was right. I should have taken the day off…or chosen a different book for today’s story time. I was perfectly fine until I started reading about that hardworking dad.

  Gertrude happens upon me standing in the hallway. I stiffen my back against the annoyed look on her face. “Hannah tells me it’s the one-year anniversary of your father’s passing?” she asks. I’m surprised by the genuine concern in her voice. I nod my head and scrub the moisture from my face.

  “I remember how I felt the first few years after my own parents died. It was difficult, and I was much older than you are. And I didn’t have a younger sister to take in.” Gertrude has never been kind to me in the entire month and a half I’ve been here. I assumed she had a heart of stone and was incapable of human emotions. All I’ve seen from her is annoyance and tolerance at best. I don’t know how to handle this empathetic Gertrude.

  “Take the rest of the day off,” she urges me with a nod toward the door. She sees my look of surprise and says, “Unless you’d like to stay here and have more library patrons taking pictures of you blubbering and posting them all over social media.” She holds up her phone and shows me the picture of me sitting in front of the crowd of preschoolers, crying my eyes out. I’ve never sunk so low before.

  Sitting at home has never sounded less appealing. I came home to throw on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, but the idea of sitting here alone has me pacing the floors. I grab my laptop and haul myself to the local coffee shop.

  I walk into the coffee shop and take a long, deep breath, breathing in the smell of fresh ground coffee beans. It’s not too busy at 11:00 AM on a Thursday. There’s only one other customer in here right now, also working on a computer. It looks like some sort of graphic design project. I wonder if he could do a book cover for me if I decide to get brave and publish this book I’m working on. That will not be anytime soon. I stop my creeping on his work and refocus myself on my novel.

  I’m sitting in the corner of the coffee shop to make sure that no one can look over my shoulder and see what I’m working on. I’m not ready to spill the beans about it yet—if I’ll ever be. Not even Lo knows about it. I take a sip of my iced latte and peek around to make sure no one’s watching me. Not that anyone would even care about this book.

  The scene I’m working on now is especially juicy. The female main character is watching the male main character flirt with another woman at a formal event, and she is jealous with a capital J. She considers grabbing her glass of champagne and throwing it in the woman’s face, but she’s a dignified woman and suppresses that urge. It’s all a huge misunderstanding, of course, and she’s going to be mortified when she finds out the “flirty” lady is his cousin!

  I’m so busy laughing at my ideas that I don’t notice the 6’2” giant standing in front of me until he peeks over the top of my computer screen. I snap the laptop shut so fast that I’m worried I may have cracked the screen.

  “Jameson, what are you doing here?” I ask with a nervous chuckle.

  He narrows his eyes at me and watches my nervous fiddling. “I think the better question is, what are you doing?”
He pulls out the chair across from me and sits down with a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. I grab my iced latte—much more preferable when it’s eighty degrees outside—and take a long drink to avoid answering his question.

  “Keeping secrets?” he asks before taking a sip of coffee. He’s prepared to stare me down until I crack and tell him what I’m doing. Well, he better prepare himself to sit here for a long time, because I’m a locked vault. An impenetrable fortress.

  I shrug my shoulders. “It’s nothing. You’re not working?” I ask, desperate to change the subject. He laughs because the lack of uniform makes it obvious he’s not working, but he takes the bait willingly.

  “Nope. I’m off today,” he says and spreads his arms wide to show me that he is, in fact, here in the flesh and not a figment of my imagination.

  “You have a horrible work schedule,” I say, feeling a bit of pity for him.

  “You have no idea,” he grumbles. “What are you doing here in the middle of a Thursday?” he adds when he realizes that I should be at the library working. Do I tell him about my embarrassing display of emotion, or do I play it off? He’ll probably hear about it eventually. Might as well get it over with.

  I pull my phone out of my purse and find the picture the evil woman posted on social media. Placing my phone in front of him so he can see the picture and all of the rude comments about me, I stand to go to the counter and buy myself another snack. I hear a whistle behind me and know that he has read the comment from that evil Shandi woman. She better be praying that I don’t run into her in a dark alley anytime soon.

  I return to the table, and he hands my phone back to me. “So, that’s pretty horrible, but did you see that ol’ Gertie defended you in the comments?” he asks. I hadn’t seen that yet. I scroll through all of the comments until I find Gertrude’s.

  I laugh so hard at her scathing retort that I snort. I had no idea that she cared about me so much. Hannah replied, “Way to go, Gertrude!” to her comment. I think I just felt my heart grow two sizes. I have friends here in Waverly. Real friends who have my back.

  Sure, I still miss my friends back in Harris, and they’ll always be my friends. A two-hour drive won’t change that. But they can’t drop what they’re doing and be with me in a matter of minutes like Jameson, Hannah, Tess—or I guess even Gertrude—can.

  “Why did you try to go to work today?” he asks.

  “I thought I would be okay, and I do think I would have been if I hadn’t read that book,” I answer, but I know it’s a lie. Something would have eventually set me off. I’m feeling fine now, no different than I feel any other day, but I’m more aware of things that remind me of my dad.

  I wonder how Lo is doing at school. Has she been a crying mess all morning? I should have listened to her and let her stay home. Maybe she is feeling more sad than usual. I put my laptop in its case and turn to Jameson. “What are you doing for the rest of the day?” I ask him with a raised brow. He’s about to be my accomplice in busting Lo out of school for the rest of the day.

  “Uh, I was going to play baseball with some guys this evening, but I can bail.”

  Lo has been checked out of school, and now the three of us—Jameson, Lo, and I—are driving through Harris on our way to visit my dad’s grave. We stop at the local grocery store to get a bouquet of flowers. Lo wants the most obnoxious one they have. It’s every shade of bright orange and yellow imaginable, and I can’t help but think that Daddy would hate it. I want the pale-peach roses. They’re pretty and elegant, but Lo says they’re boring.

  “You two buy those,” Jameson says, pointing to the bouquet in Lo’s hand, and he grabs the roses from me. “And I will buy these.” Lo smiles and twirls around toward the registers.

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “You’re a good friend.” He visibly flinches, and I wonder if it’s a sore spot for him. Has he been in spats recently with his friends? What are their names? Seth and Colby, I think.

  If he has, I don’t see how it could be his fault. It’s probably Seth. He seems obnoxious.

  Jameson has been nothing but kind and helpful to me. I don’t deserve a friend like him. I’ll never be able to repay him for everything he has done for me and Lo.

  I honestly can’t believe he’s not married yet. He’ll make a great husband for some lucky woman someday. You’d think a woman would have snatched him up by now. Men like him don’t usually make it this long without getting hitched.

  I know it’s wrong of me, but I hope he never gets married. If he were to meet the woman of his dreams, I wouldn’t get to hang out with him like this. She’d take up all of his time and energy. The twinge of jealousy in my gut is just because it wouldn’t be fair to lose my friend. It has nothing to do with any potential feelings of attraction. There are no feelings…none at all.

  Lo skips up beside me as we walk to Jameson’s truck and sings, “Millie and Jameson sitting in a tree…”

  I cover her mouth with my hand before she can finish and say in a hushed voice, “No one is sitting in a tree, and there will be no k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” I look at Jameson walking in front of us to see if he heard us. Judging by the way his shoulders are shaking with laughter, it’s safe to say that he heard everything.

  “Riiiight, okay,” she drawls and winks dramatically at me. I’ve done nothing to make her think I have feelings for him. Sure, I stare at him sometimes and then have to wipe the drool from my chin, but I’m assuming that’s something most women do around him. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I laugh hysterically at all of his jokes—even the ones that aren’t that funny. He’s hilariously dorky, and his face is so cute when he’s telling a joke. And of course, I do want to be around him any chance I get, but that’s only because he’s so fun and he doesn’t judge me for being such a mess. None of that means anything.

  I let Lo sit up front this time in an effort to put some distance between me and Jameson. I can’t have either of them thinking Lo’s right. I can’t let them see how flustered her comments have made me.

  I look into the rearview mirror as we’re going down the road, and my eyes meet Jameson’s. It feels like he’s staring straight down into my soul. Shouldn’t he be watching the road? I shift around in my seat and look out the window, but I can still feel his eyes watching me. I take a quick glance at the mirror, and the corner of his mouth tilts up into a half smile, causing that dimple on his right cheek to pop. This was a bad idea. At least sitting up front he can’t blatantly stare at me.

  “Do you remember the time he tried to make fried chicken and Mrs. Herschel, next door, called the fire department because the smoke was so bad?” Lo says, reminding me of my eighteenth birthday while sitting in front of Daddy’s grave. I had just wanted fried chicken for dinner, and Daddy insisted that his mama’s recipe was better than any chicken place could make. He tried. He failed. He almost burnt the house down. We had to leave the windows open for days for it to finally smell normal in the house again.

  “Do you remember that Christmas he couldn’t afford to get us presents, so he took us hiking the whole day, and we ended up getting lost for half of it because he tried to follow that baby deer?” I ask, laughing as I remember all of my father’s hare-brained plans. I was about Lo’s age now that Christmas. Money was really tight that year after home and car repairs, and Daddy’s eyes constantly wandered to the tree with no presents underneath.

  I think the hiking was his way of getting out of the house and forgetting that it was Christmas. A way to avoid thinking about the presents he wasn’t placing in front of us that morning. Little did he know that it would be my favorite Christmas. We packed lunches and ate them on top of a huge hill looking down on the pastures below. We could see for miles and miles. It was peaceful and nice for the three of us to be together with no distractions. Still to this day, I get the urge to go hiking on Christmas.

  “Yeah. Best Christmas ever,” Lo sighs, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and leaning her head against mine. We sit staring at Daddy’s tiny headstone for what
feels like an eternity, and all the while, Jameson sits behind us in the distance, quietly giving us the time and space we need to remember the man who selflessly raised us. He wasn’t a perfect father—none of them are—but he showed up and tried his best. He was as perfect as he could have been.

  “You know, he’s a really nice guy,” Lo cuts into my thoughts. I jerk away from her and feign confusion. She rolls her eyes and flips her hair from her shoulder. “Don’t even act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, young lady.”

  A snort escapes my nose as I laugh. “He’s a friend, Lo. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you.”

  “He’s very…attentive. He follows you around like a lost puppy. He has hearts in his eyes,” she jokes, giving me puppy-dog eyes and trying to nuzzle against my face.

  “Stop!” I shriek. I look over at the subject of our discussion, and he stands from his seat under a tree and walks toward us. Pushing Lo off of me, I try my best to compose myself and straighten my hair.

  “No, but really. Put the gorgeous man out of his misery. I doubt he’s ever had to chase a woman before.”

  “Well, maybe it’ll do him some good,” I argue with a shrug of my shoulder. Her face lights up, but she’s kept from responding by his arrival. She turns her head away from me and bites her thumb nail to keep from laughing.

  She has a great point, I think to myself as I look up at Jameson standing over me. He’s the kind of guy most women would fall all over. He’s devilishly handsome, he has his life together, he’s good to his mom without being a total mama’s boy… If I wanted a relationship, I’d be all over him too.