Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

9. The piano bench leg defense

9

THE PIANO BENCH LEG DEFENSE

HAZEL

Did you know there’s a piano in here?” I called from the sitting room after my sneezing fit stopped. I’d muscled open as many of the first-floor windows as I could to give the dust we were stirring up a place to go.

“Uh-huh. Yeah, awesome. I’m definitely not searching for nearby hotels as we speak,” Zoey said from the purple velvet settee we’d uncovered in the library, a.k.a. my future office.

I threw the dusty sheet on the pile in the foyer on my way to her. “I said you could have the big bedroom.”

“And I told you I want you to have every square inch of inspiration you can squeeze out of this ghost-infested horror house.”

I flopped down next to her and put my feet up on the three-legged piano bench we’d found in the pantry. The fourth leg had been discovered in one of the coat closets that flanked the front door. “Cam said the scratching we heard in the wall is probably just a teeny tiny mouse.”

“Whatever it was, it was telling me to leave before it ate my face,” Zoey insisted.

I leaned my head against the back of the settee. This room was something special.

Built-in shelves took up two entire walls, framing in the curved-glass bay window that overlooked the junglelike side yard. A pair of skinny antique glass doors opened into the hallway. The light fixture that hung from the center of the ceiling medallion was stained glass with more hearts.

I knew the second I stepped over the threshold that this was my space. My office. I could actually see myself writing away, a gorgeous desk in the alcove. My own books on the shelves. A fire in the fireplace. A pudgy cat snoozing in the window. A team of grumpy, gorgeous contractors kicking up sawdust and slinging tool belts…

How would I…I mean, how would my heroine get any work done with Book Cam and his presumably gorgeous blue-collar brothers working just one wall away?

“You don’t have to do this with me, you know,” I said.

“Now you tell me after you show up at my apartment and kidnap me,” she joked.

“I was sleep deprived and excited.”

Zoey tilted her head to look at me from her slouch. “Look, I’m your friend and your agent. If this is what you need, I’m in.”

“I appreciate that. But you can be here for me without being physically here in a town with two restaurants and a room with a face-eating wild animal.”

She shook her head, making her curls bounce. “I’m not leaving your side…for at least a week or two. Without me here, you’ll end up getting pecked to death by a bald eagle or hibernating in your own filth again.”

“Did I really get five hundred comments on that live?”

She turned her phone screen my way. “Six hundred and seven.”

“Wow. That’s good, right?” When it came to social media, my presence had been mostly invisible.

“You’re ‘blowing up,’ as the kids say. I think the whole hitting rock bottom and then running away from it all is striking a chord.”

“Really? I thought I might be the only person out there with fantasies of a fresh start.”

“From the comments, I’d guess that it’s one of those universal themes. Hell, even I’ve dreamed of walking out on everything that annoyed me and starting over. Usually around my period or performance reviews at work.”

We sat in silence for a moment, appreciating the softening light outside and the slightly cooler evening breeze from the open windows.

“I’m proud of you,” Zoey said suddenly.

“What? Why?”

“You’ve lost a lot the past year or so, but here you are making the best of it. I really admire you for it.”

“Are we sure this is just a hangover? You’re starting to worry me.”

Zoey dropped her head to my shoulder. “I have to be mean enough for the both of us. Someone’s gotta protect you.”

“Maybe it’s time I start protecting myself,” I said.

My best friend sighed. “We can protect each other. Starting with you unearthing some ibuprofen and electrolytes.”

Before I could get up, a loud, meaty pounding from the front of the house startled us both.

Zoey snatched up the fourth, broken piano bench leg and hefted it like a baseball bat. “Who the hell is that?”

“How should I know? Maybe Cam came back to yell at me some more?” I speculated and picked up my purse. It was heavy enough I could at least swing it in a bad guy’s face if necessary.

“Maybe it’s a mob here for justice for that gaslighting Goose,” she guessed as we tiptoed into the hallway.

The pounding started again, making us jump. Unanticipated angry knocking usually meant one of two things in the city: one, the cops, or two, you were about to get robbed.

“I need a deadbolt and one of those video doorbell security things,” I said as we inched our way to the foyer.

“And better weapons.”

Another round of knocking began. I took a breath. “Okay, I’ll open the door and you stand by with the piano leg.”

Zoey nodded and stepped behind the door, holding her makeshift club at the ready like a batter at home plate.

“One…two…three!” I yanked on the door, but it didn’t budge.

“Well, there goes the element of surprise,” Zoey observed.

It took the two of us almost twenty seconds to wrestle it open.

Zoey immediately re-teed the piano bench leg.

“Yes?” I panted to the grizzled bear of a white guy on my front porch.

He was only an inch or two taller than me but had a chest like a barrel and shoulders like two linebackers smushed together. His beard came down to his sternum, and he wore suspenders over a Story Lake Ultimate Bingo shirt.

He gave us both the once-over and I swore I heard him mutter something like city weirdos before glancing down at his grease-stained clipboard.

“Hazel Hart?” he said gruffly in a vague kind of accent that had me picturing gumbo and bayous.

“Uh. Maybe?”

He stared at me for one long annoyed beat. “I’m Gator. Got your car and your stuff out front,” he said finally, hooking his thumb toward the street.

I peered over his massive shoulder and spotted my mangled rental behind a Gator’s Towing truck. An aggressive-looking, scaly reptile was painted down the entire length of the vehicle.

“You wanna try to beat me unconscious with a purse and a chair leg or you wanna sign this paper so I can go home for the day?” he asked, shoving the clipboard at me.

“Actually, it’s a piano bench leg,” Zoey supplied. “And I’m extremely hungover, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make me hurt you.”

“Sorry. Can’t be too careful these days.” I reached for the clipboard.

“Hold on. As your agent, I can’t let you sign anything without at least pretending to read it,” Zoey said, taking it from me.

Gator rolled back on the heels of his filthy work boots and shook his head. “Cam warned me. But did I listen? No siree.”

I was not interested in hearing anything Campbell Bishop had said regarding me, my driving skills, or my big-city-ness. But I also didn’t want his first impression of me to be the entire town’s. “Sorry, Mr. Gator. It’s our first night in a new place, and we’re a little nervous.”

“Get a lotta murderers knockin’ at your door?” he quipped.

In my building, it was more like neighbor kids selling stupid things like wrapping paper and minuscule amounts of frozen cookie dough for school fundraisers. But I didn’t want to open the door to them any more than I did a murderer.

“Here.” Zoey thrust the clipboard at me.

“Is it okay to sign?”

“Honestly, this hangover is just making the words swim around on the page like a toddler aquatics class. But I’m sure I can get you out of it if necessary,” she admitted. “You’re not trying to screw over my friend here, are you, Gator?”

“Only one way to find out.”

With an eye roll, I scrawled my signature on the form and handed the clipboard back to Gator.

He dangled my key fob in front of my face with fingers the diameter of hot dogs. “You can get your stuff out of the car before I take it to my garage.”

But when I reached for the keys, he pulled them away. “I would be remiss in my duties to this town if I didn’t strongly suggest that you treat this house better than you did our sign and our eagle.”

“I understand and I will,” I said meekly.

“I’ll have you know, Gator, your eagle hit Hazel , not the other way around. Look at her head wound,” Zoey said, shoving my bangs out of the way to show off my bandage.

“Maybe you should watch where you’re going,” he suggested.

“Maybe your eagle should watch where he’s going,” she countered.

Gator held up the fob again. This time I plucked it from his bear paw–sized mitt.

“Careful when you open the trunk. I heard an awful lot of clinking. Hope you didn’t have anything breakable back there,” he called after me.

“You packed one suitcase and three cases of wine?” Zoey said as we stared at the wreckage inside the trunk.

“Priorities,” I said, thinking that my heroine—we’ll call her Book Hazel until I come up with a real name—probably would have packed several color-coordinated suitcases and put the wine in something that would have contained both the wine and the glass.

I was no Book Hazel. I was an author. And as such, I didn’t require an extensive wardrobe. I did, however, rely heavily on alcohol.

I wrinkled my nose at the mess.

Shards of glass glittered under the streetlight. My suitcase—and everything else I’d crammed into the convertible’s stingy trunk—was tinged red and smelled like the floor of a winery after an all-you-can-drink tasting weekend.

The front end of the car was in worse shape. Apparently it was undriveable due to something about a radiator, a puncture, and the whole bumper still being lodged in the base of the sign.

“Good thing my stuff was in the back seat,” Zoey said cheerfully.

“About that,” Gator said, eating a ham sandwich he’d produced from thin air.

My stomach growled.

“You might wanna clean the eagle shit off it.”

Her hands froze on her sporty luggage. “Please tell me you didn’t say eagle shit.”

“Don’t birds crap all over New York?” he asked before taking a gigantic bite of sandwich.

“Bald eagles don’t just fly around shitting all over everything in Manhattan,” she complained, sounding slightly hysterical.

“It’s usually the pigeons,” I said, dragging my suitcase out of the trunk. Wine peed from the bottom onto the street.

“Just in case anyone needs to know, there’s a daily AA meeting in the Unitarian church.” Gator waved his sandwich toward town.

“Thank you for your concern, but I don’t have a drinking problem,” I assured him. “I’m just a mildly depressed impulse shopper.” I grunted and lugged my wine-soaked luggage to the curb.

This first impression just kept getting better and better.

Zoey used a pair of glove compartment napkins as makeshift mittens and gingerly pulled her suitcase free while muttering, “Oh my God,” and gagging on repeat.

Gator grunted, finished his sandwich, and brushed the crumbs off his hands. “If you got everything you need, I’ll tow this weapon of mass destruction over to my garage and get started on a quote for repairs.”

“Do you at least have a rental I can borrow?” I asked.

He looked as if I’d just suggested he remove his pants and jog down the street naked. “A rental for the rental you destroyed? No, ma’am. I do not.”

“Thank you so much for your help,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm.

“You’re welcome. Try to stay off the roads now. Oh, and don’t try to murder any more wildlife,” Gator said, patting the fender of the convertible then turning for the cab of his truck.

“But your eagle tried to murder me!” I called after him.

But he was already gone. A second later the truck’s engine roared to life and Gator, his rig, and my rental drove off down the road.

“We need sanitizer, dinner, and you need some clothes that don’t smell like Lucille Ball stomping grapes,” Zoey decided. “In that order.”

“I guess that means we’re walking to the general store.”