4. August
4
AUGUST
I was sweeping the courtyard and talking Lemons with my “hellhound” Merlin. He was currently giving me the time of day because I’d been sharing the plate of peanut butter crackers I’d set on the patio table with him whenever I took a break.
It was the only thing that got his attention lately. I could open a jar of peanut butter on Mars and the big grump would find a way to join me.
“What do you think, old man? You want to try to talk me out of entering this homage to the midlife crisis, or are you planning another full and exciting day of sitting on the couch and licking your balls?”
He didn’t reply. Not that I expected him to.
Merlin was not a helpful dog. Nor was he a cuddler. A good thing, since his head came about waist-high on me and I doubted he’d fit on my lap. Mom and I hadn’t been sure what breed he was when we picked him up at the state line without a collar or a chip four years ago. But that smoke-black geezer-with-a-silver-beard look had always screamed part Schnauzer to me. The rest was all mutant mutt mystery, but for some reason, Mom hadn’t wanted to leave him at the nearest rescue. “I haven’t had a dog since you girls were little. It might be nice.”
I barely remembered owning a dog before him, since we’d moved too much to make it feasible. And I wouldn’t say he was nice. He was the grouchy, growly roommate I’d inherited with her absence. An elderly diva with demon-foul breath who’d seen some shit and had a chip on his shoulder. And based on his expression, he’d rather be enjoying the last bit of his life anywhere but here.
Join the club, buddy.
My phone chimed and I made a face. I’d been getting texts all morning. It was either the dog sitter with her hundredth message on the current status of Morgan’s “kids,” Morgan herself asking about my car while in another country, or Hudson’s Garage finally updating me on Myrtle.
I’d been waiting on that last one since I got up today. So far, I hadn’t heard a word.
You could always call him.
I could. What I couldn’t do was make myself want my car back badly enough to contact him yet. I’d already picked up my groceries. I’d be fine for a week or so.
Happily, it was another text from Chick.
Chick: Morning update request. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Me: 3 inquiries and a credit score to peruse. Haven’t looked yet, but they are there!
Chick: Wtf? Why haven’t you looked?!
Me: We didn’t agree to follow-up questions. Show me yours.
A moment later, I got picture of Chick looking mussed and rakish, with the biggest biceps I’d ever seen wrapped around his shoulders like a sweater.
Me: Glad the tux worked. Good job scaling that mountain!
Chick: It wasn’t the tux. It was my resume and oral skills ;) Look at those inquiries now, sunshine. We talked about this. This is a good sign that we’re going to be roommates soon!
I picked up a peanut butter cracker and handed it to the waiting Merlin before taking one for myself.
Chick and I had talked for hours last night—before he started scaling his wrestler mountain—and it did seem like a good sign. To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought there’d be so much interest this quickly. It was the reason I was out here, scrambling to create a clean-ish path to the apartment door, through a year’s worth of nature’s detritus, in case someone wanted to view it before signing a lease.
You don’t have to accept an application if you’re not ready.
Logically, I’d known that putting Mom’s place up for rent would bring some difficult emotions flooding back to the surface—not that they’d been that far away from it—but yesterday, it felt as if I were drowning again.
At least now I was back to treading water and focusing on the positive. “This is the right thing to do.”
I’d repeated that sentence a lot today.
Accepting Chick’s offer had me rethinking my priorities. Before I listed the house, I would need to fix it up, keeping appealing to a buyer in mind. The front yard, the courtyard and the garage would be top priority, because that was the first thing prospective buyers would see. Inside, the hideous wallpaper border in the living room had to go, the warped flooring needed to be fixed, and that hazard of a stair railing had to be replaced. I should also call in an AC guy to have the unit checked out, because it sounded wheezy to me, and air conditioning was a critical selling point in this state. Once that was done, the place would probably sell fairly quickly. According to Morgan, this was one of the top school districts in the area, and people around here always seemed happy with the fact that they had their own police force and there was no HOA.
Do you really think leaving is the right thing to do?
It was the one that made sense to me. I knew how to do it. After all these years, starting from scratch was second nature to me. I’d only taken the unique step of actually purchasing this house instead of renting because Mom was getting older and wanted to have us all in the same place again. But now…we weren’t.
Those first few years, we’d been inundated with invitations from Morgan and the Hudsons. From weekly floating dinners and game nights to group yoga classes at Bernie’s studio, they were always scheduling something to bring us all together. After dipping my toe in the un welcome pool, I was usually too busy being “in the zone” or “in my writer’s cave” or “really invested in rewatching a series in my underwear while avoiding reality” to take part in those. Since my mother lived here and never turned down an invitation to anything, I considered her my proxy and hadn’t let myself feel guilty about it. Even when she told me I should.
After she died, the invitations had, for the most part, simply stopped coming. Either everyone had gotten tired of me saying no, or they felt the same way I did.
I didn’t belong here.
The only one who might disagree—and who would definitely be upset about my decision to leave—was my goddaughter. Phoebe visited me all the time, whether I’d invited her or not, because “eccentric hermit aunties were her jam.”
She brought me soup when I was sick and we watched animated musicals together. We also talked about everything going on in her life. I’d been the first to find out she was pregnant. Mostly, I think, because she knew I had no life of my own and wouldn’t tell anyone until she was ready.
Being with her reminded me of the way things used to be between me and her mom.
And this house reminded me way too much of mine.
I ate another cracker at the table where Mom had had her regular dinners with Wade Hudson himself. I should preface that by saying the man had only stepped foot inside my house twice since I moved here. Once for our move-in party, and once for Mom’s celebration of life. But he’d shown up in my backyard every month for Sam Retta.
Before you go there, it wasn’t like that . She couldn’t have kept a juicy tidbit like that to herself, plus my office and bedroom windows both look out over the pool and her apartment. I might have taken advantage of that view whenever he made his appearances.
Mom hadn’t been amused.
“You could join us instead of snooping while pretending to answer emails. He was only rude that one time, and it’s not like you to hold a grudge. Wade is part of our family and he could use a friend. Your sister’s got her husband, Bernadette has her daughter and Yvonne’s moved out to the sticks to join a nudist coven or something. It’s not good for anyone to be alone in this world. Not even antisocial authors who have never learned to listen to their mothers.”
She’d basically adopted him, and to be fair, he’d tried to be friendlier after those first few gatherings. But instead of acting like an adult and rising above it, I’d been unnecessarily prickly around him ever since. All because he wasn’t that into me.
I glanced over at the pool I’d shocked with chlorine this morning and swallowed hard. Partly because of the peanut butter, but mostly because every time I looked at it, I remembered floating in it with Mom and Morgan in the early months after we moved here. Or that torrential rainstorm, when Mom had pulled out a red umbrella, not to keep her dry, but as a prop so she could dance in the shallow end of the pool. Soaking wet and singing in the rain. I still looked at that video on my phone now and then.
“Come on in, August. Dance with me.”
Yep. This was the right decision. I took a steadying breath and started sweeping again. “Let’s get back to Lemons, shall we, Merlin?”
He was lying down by the table, his eyes on the crackers, which meant he was willing to listen as long as he got paid for his time.
“I watched a few more videos last night. I’m not going to lie, the actual racing looks scary, but those guys are hilarious. They said, and I quote, ‘racing is not just for rich idiots. It’s for all idiots.’ Great for me, because I’m probably an idiot, but we are the opposite of rich. In fact, I’d say we only have another four months or so before our supply of peanut butter crackers runs dry, so enjoy them while you can.”
Like I said, even if I could talk my brother-in-law into my insane, but also possibly brilliant, plan, I’d need to spend some serious cash to make this happen. I’d ordered a helmet and racing gloves online last night, but my must-have list still included a fire-retardant racing outfit—including shoes, socks and underwear—and safety gear, as well as several different fees required to enter the endurance race.
Was I really going to do this? I had Jiminy as my ace in the hole, but on the other hand, I also had paralyzing fears of rejection, embarrassing myself in public and dying a violent, fiery death my first time on the track.
“I had the greatest idea, sweetheart.”
I was still doing it. I had to.
It was a pretty appropriate way to honor a woman that neither Morgan nor I could ever keep up with. Sam Retta had raced through her entire life like there might be a prize for the first over the finish line, moving from one challenge to another, impatient for the next horizon and too eager to wait for the turn of the tides. It had been impossible to keep pace with her when we were younger, and even after the triple bypass at forty-nine forced her into early retirement, she’d still run circles around us.
“Retiring” for her consisted of traveling continuously, getting two degrees in under two years, falling in love and marrying a man who marina-hopped for work and might have legitimately believed he was a pirate. She’d also gone on a dozen cruises, volunteered at Habitat for Humanity, shown up for every serious surgery or special event for her friends, written several more scripts and even managed to sit in front of her computer long enough to write and self-publish a book of her own, just to see if she could—a Wizard of Oz -like story based on a great aunt I’d never met who’d lived through the Depression. Listing it all off exhausted me.
Not even her husband’s passing had slowed her down, despite her devastation.
How was an introverted daughter with a fondness for reclining and long, lazy afternoons with a book supposed to live up to that kind of nonstop, overachieving legacy?
Then sixteen months ago, she’d gone racing off on another adventure, over my vocal objections, and her heart had decided to give out for good.
I’d been spiraling ever since. Stuck on this procrasti-whining hamster wheel and unable to cry, fight or write my way out of it.
You’re changing that now.
Yes, I was. All I had to do was rent out the apartment, convince Gene to let me join their October Lemons race, and use the extra cash to fix up my money pit in the next few months.
You also need to finish your book.
Yes, because financial stress was guaranteed to get those creative juices flowing.
When the repairs and the race were done, when Morgan was back and we’d fulfilled our last promise to Mom, I wouldn’t have this yawning pit in my stomach anymore. I’d be able to write again. I’d feel better about selling the house and moving to San Diego with Chick. The most important thing was that I’d finally be moving forward instead of standing still.
I was making the right decision.
My phone chimed again. This time, it was a notification that I’d received a completed application for the apartment, including credit score and background check. His name was Terry. I skimmed through the details before popping over and searching out his name on Facebook.
I wasn’t being creepy. A woman alone couldn’t be too careful, and credit checks were nowhere near as valuable as social media when it came to discovering whether or not you’d be renting to a potential serial killer.
No red flags. Excellent.
Going back to his application details, I polished off another cracker and then read out loud, “A construction supervisor traveling for work, with a home and kids out of town, so he’ll be gone most weekends. Only three months, barring job delays.”
That sounded perfect and as unobtrusive as I was going to get. He had to be the guy.
I put down the phone and grabbed a few crackers in one hand and my broom in the other.
Aren’t you going to accept his application? The one that will solve all those problems you’ve been listing off?
Possibly. Probably. I needed to think about it.
Lost in indecision, I popped a second cracker into my mouth without finishing the first and regretted it almost immediately when it turned into a cheek-bulging mass I could hardly chew.
“Hey there, Gus.”
I dropped the broom and whirled around.
Wade Hudson was standing in my backyard, tipping his head a bit so the bill of his cap kept the sun out of his eyes. “I was headed this way, so I brought your car along. I’ll unhook it and park it wherever you want.”
My “Shit!” came out as “Chff!” right before I simultaneously spewed and inhaled chunks of gooey peanut butter cracker putty and started to choke.
“August?” He sounded as appropriately alarmed as I felt.
I turned and lunged for the open kitchen doorway and the bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper I knew was waiting just inside, needing to wash this down. I made it to the island counter and pounded my fist on it while fighting down panic. My instinct was to cough it out, but I would have to inhale again to do that, and I couldn’t. Was I supposed to drink upside down now? No, that was for hiccups. Hold my arms in the air and hop on one leg? I couldn’t remember any save-yourself-from-choking life hacks at the moment, because my brain cells were being starved of oxygen .
I heard “Damn it, August!” and then Wade wrapped his long, hard body around me and lifted me to my toes, tightening his well-developed forearms like we were in a wrestling ring and he was about to bring the pain. Thank Chick for putting that visual in my head.
Damn, he’s strong.
Don’t pee.
This can’t be how I die.
Did I put on deodorant?
Only when I was coughing up unattractive blobs of cracker and sucking in air like a dying fish did I realize that I’d been Heimliched. And that his arms were still around me, practically touching the undersides of my unfettered breasts.
It was noteworthy for being the most action I’d gotten in a while. Even the word sounded dirty at the moment. Heim- licked .
He still smells really good.
Still coughing and embarrassingly turned on for someone who’d nearly killed themselves with peanut butter crackers, I tapped his forearms. He let go and immediately stepped out of the way so I could grab a handful of paper towels from the counter and wet them in the sink.
He wisely remained silent, giving me a moment to compose myself after my mortifying reaction to his unexpected appearance. I wiped my mouth quickly, then crouched to clean up the floor, which did nothing to block my awareness of him as he leaned against the island, watching me with concern.
Had I mentioned he’d filled out over the years? And not in that beer-gut-but-no-ass-at-all way you secretly wished on your teenage crushes. His grease-smeared tee hugged his shoulders, pecs and biceps in a way that made me jealous, and the relaxed fit of his jeans only emphasized the firm roundness of his ass .
Meanwhile, I was in an old tank top with no bra and a pair of shapeless sweat shorts. Which might actually top my homeless ragamuffin look from yesterday, as far as things I shouldn’t wear—or skip wearing, in this particular case—when there was any possibility that I might encounter Wade Hudson.
I wasn’t the type of person who could safely go without a bra in public, and believe me, that wasn’t a brag. After I’d gotten past the adolescent shame that my D cups existed, I’d had a mere five years in my twenties to enjoy the attention they received before gravity made them a hindrance that required sturdy, unsexy support at all times .
My one quasi-clean boulder holder was lying on the floor of my bedroom at the moment because I hadn’t expected company, much less that Wade would be delivering my car out of the blue. I might have thought about him more than I liked over the years, but that didn’t mean I appreciated him appearing in my backyard without a phone call or text message first. Even better, a full week’s notice, so I could pluck, shave, visit a hair salon, lose twenty-five pounds…run away.
Too late now
“Thank you,” I finally croaked, standing up and tossing the towels in the trash. “It must have gone down the wrong pipe.”
“Are you sure you’re okay, Gus? Maybe you want to sit down for a minute.”
“I’m fine.” I rasped out the lie, taking a drink of the flat soda to soothe my now-scratchy throat. If it weren’t so sore, I could have told him no one called me Gus anymore.
He was the only one who ever had. My name was supposed to have been something magical like Tabitha or Nimue, given Samantha Retta’s love of witchy-women power in general and Camelot in particular. But my father’s parents were having none of it. To compromise and passive-aggressively retaliate, Mom had named me after the first thing she saw in the recovery room. I may not love my name, but I was eternally grateful she’d spotted the calendar instead of a bed pan.
Wade started calling me Gus shortly after we became next door neighbors. At eleven, I’d thought the overly masculine nickname gave his sister Bernie and me something in common.
At thirteen, I was sure there was some secret encoded in it that meant he wanted to marry me, but he was eighteen and thought we should keep it on the down-low until I was legal.
Teenage girls are idiots.
Forty-three-year-olds had their own issues, I thought as I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to maintain some dignity while hiding my nipples. Instead, I managed to prop my breasts up like some OnlyFans doxy.
Now that I’d gotten all that choking and navel gazing out of the way, I finally noticed that he hadn’t come here empty-handed. He was holding a single balloon that said Congratulations!
“You do that for all your customers?” I asked, smiling a little at the idea.
He frowned. “Do what?”
I nodded at the balloon hovering above him. “Deliver repaired vehicles with a congratulatory balloon. It’s nice,” I assured him. “Probably good for customer relations.”
“Oh. Uh, no. Not usually. They were out of birthday balloons at the store.” He tried to hand it to me, and when I didn’t reach for it, he let it go to bob around on the ceiling. “It’s for you. Happy late birthday, August.”
Wade was giving me a “Congratulations, you made it another year!” balloon?
The last few days had been very surreal for me.
“Well, thanks.”
I’d rather have his secret for aging well than a balloon filled with helium. Did he lift those cars he worked on for fun? Because his broad chest made me think of naked body surfing. Those massive shoulders and thick thighs? Naked tree climbing. The capable, work-worn hands? Yeah, like I said before—lady bait. Despite how much he irritated me, if I wrote romance, he would be the hero.
If I wrote grisly murder mysteries or tentacle porn, he’d be the hero. He was always the hero .
I solemnly swear I will never write anything with sexed-up tentacles. Or tell anyone other than Chick that Wade is still my muse’s template for the perfect man .
When the uncomfortable silence stretched on too long, I said, “What’s the damage for Myrtle? ”
He looked at me blankly. “Who?"
“The Honda? I’d like to know what she needed and how much it’s going to cost me.”
“You named your car Myrtle?”
I shrugged. “She was used when I got her, a little slow to start and bad on an incline, but she always got me where I was going so…Myrtle the Turtle.”
“I suppose that makes about as much sense as naming a Beetle after a cricket.”
And now he was smack talking Jiminy. What was he? The name police?
He towed you home and fixed your car.
I took a calming breath. “Did she need a lot of work done?”
“A new thermostat and four new tires, but the rest is in decent shape for its age. You might want to look into trading it in though. Sooner rather than later.”
“ Four new tires ? ” That was going to pinch. “They were fine yesterday.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at me. “They hardly had any tread left, August, and the steel belts were showing on the front two. You were one rough speed bump or rainy day away from needing to call for another tow. Or worse,” he added in a dire tone.
I hadn’t realized. “And how much more is your arbitrary decision going to cost me?”
“It wasn’t arbitrary, and I didn’t get around to writing up the charges yet.” He looked away, not meeting my gaze. “Don’t worry, I gave you a discount.”
“I’m not worried,” I blustered, because I totally was. “And I don’t need any friends-and-family discount. I can pay for the repairs to my own car.”
Even with four new tires and the charge for a tow to the garage and back?
He was back to staring me down. “Nobody said you couldn’t. ”
He had no way of knowing that money and I weren’t on the best of terms lately. Morgan didn’t even know the extent of it. Which meant all he was doing was helping out his friend’s kid sister. And I was being a jerk for no reason again.
“I’m a little off-kilter,” I finally said, in lieu of an apology. “I wasn’t expecting company or, you know, that whole chokehold experience. Thanks again for that. I haven’t had the best few days, then you showed up without warning and everything got awkward.”
Wade let out a long, relieved exhale. “Yes. Thank you. So fucking awkward.”
Not the most flattering reaction.
You did just spit out peanut butter in front of him and then give him shit for fixing your car.
“I meant that I made it awkward.” He removed his faded ball cap to reveal the full head of dark hair with a few strands of silver at the temples and ran a hand through it in frustration. “And I’m the one that needs to apologize here. I brought your car back, but I should have called first to make sure this was a good time.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think you’d answer,” he said bluntly. “Phoebe tells me you screen your calls.”
Entirely fair and probably true. Still, Phoebe was going to get a lecture from me about giving out that kind of information to the very people I screen my calls to avoid. “Well, for future reference, a one-line text from the driveway would have given me time to cover up and saved us both a lot of emotional scarring.”
Because I’d pointed them out like a moron, his gaze dropped right to my doxy-propped breasts.
And stayed there.
It was too late for this to be some hypoxia-induced hallucination. And unless I was reading his expression wrong, he didn’t look embarrassed, repulsed or emotionally scarred at all .
He looked interested. Very interested.
Not possible.
Our story was the same long-suffering and painfully unrequited kind I’d once applied to the side characters in my first series. No matter how my readers howled at the injustice, those characters would never be together, because that was my—or rather their —story.
I would always be unwillingly attracted to Wade and he would never see me as anything other than Morgan’s sister. Rinse and repeat until the sad, inevitable conclusion where the sidekick sacrifices her life to save the heroine, only confessing her love to her guilt-laden but oblivious bodyguard in a tear-jerking monologue as she dies at the end of the second book.
The point of that spoiler was that Wade shouldn’t be giving me sizzling looks and I shouldn’t be enjoying it. But he was and I was, and I had no idea what to do with any of that information.
“The apartment,” he said suddenly, only looking away after studying my nipples long enough to bring them to full and hopeful attention. “Have you accepted any applications yet?”
Sorry nipples, I’m too busy going into shock to care about your feelings.
“How in the hell do you know about that?”