Page 2 of The Deadbeat Next Door

“Is that what you wore?” I heard Dilly before I saw her. Her razor-sharp laughter and high-volume words were hard to miss. I loved her, I really did, but she had so much energy and attacked every aspect of her life with such enthusiasm, and I wasn’t…I just wasn’t the same. I liked to take my time, to move through life quietly and to draw less attention. Sometimes, she just made me feel tired and decades older than her. Maybe it was because I’d been born twelve years after my only sister when my parents were fifty, or maybe it was because I’d spent the best years of my twenties raising my nephew. Probably a combination of both.

I spun on my stool to see Dilly in a pair of fuzzy pajama pants and a tank top, her hair up in messy bun on top of her head, no make-up on her small, delicate face. To look at her, you’d think she was a china doll, too fragile to touch. And then she’d speak and shatter the illusion.

“Dilly,” I said. “It’s like thirty degrees out, where’s your coat?”

She grinned and climbed onto the stool next to me. “I rushed out of the house without it so I could save your ass.” She ordered a virgin strawberry daiquiri - Dilly never drank if she was driving - and spun to face me. “Can we please talk about what you’re wearing? I told you, no sweater sets on first dates.”

I looked down at my slate-colored slacks and my pink sweater set. “It’s chilly and I wanted to look nice.”

“You look like my eighty-year-old grandmother,” she said. “Where are the clothes we bought on our last shopping trip?”

“In my closet.” I sipped my drink and pretended her words didn’t hurt. Dilly had taken me shopping, but she hadn’t listened when I told her I preferred my clothes not to be skin-tight and revealing. She said she was trying to dress me for my age, but she was really just trying to dress me like her. “I like this outfit, I feel comfortable in it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “So, will you see Jonas again?”

I gave her a look. We knew each other well enough that words weren’t necessary.

She frowned. “I’m sorry. I really thought you would like him.”

I softened. Maybe it was time I started saying no to set-ups and blind dates. “I think I’m ready to try one of those dating sites you’ve been harassing me about.”

“I don’t harass,” she said. “I suggest. Graciously.”

“Riiiggghhhhttt. I just want a date who at least pretends he’s excited to be out on a date with me. Is that too much to ask?”

“You said the funeral director was excited to be out with you.”

“He was just excited to have a captive audience to tell about embalming techniques.”

She grimaced. “I’m all for the dating sites, Carrie, but maybe…Maybe you need a break from dating. You’ve had extraordinarily bad luck. I mean I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a maggot farmer, but somehow you found him and dated him.”

“He was actually the nicest guy in the bunch. I introduced him to Harrison and they still get together once in a while to talk bugs.” My nephew wanted to be a bug scientist after college.

Dilly shuddered. “So what was wrong with him?”

“Well, he still lives with his parents for one thing, but the biggest problem was that his idea of a good time was going out and singing karaoke really, really badly. He thinks he’s a great singer and I just didn’t have the heart to tell him he’s not. Plus, there was zero physical attraction.”

“Right.” Dilly spun on her seat so that she was facing me, her knees against my thighs, her face animated in a way that was never, ever good news for me. “You’ve gone out with how many men since Harrison went to college and you decided it was finally okay to have a man over?”

“Twenty.” Was it weird I knew that number off the top of my head? It was probably weird, but I’d been keeping track, because I believed in the law of averages and my run of bad luck could only last so long. The last guy I’d dated and actually liked was Larry Whitmore in college. He’d dumped me after two months because I never had time to do more than have sex and fall asleep on him every three days or so. He felt I was using him, and didn’t believe me when I tried to explain I was just busy with work and trying to get my degree early so I could get a place and have Harrison live with me. Come to think of it, Larry Whitmore was kind of a jerk, too. “You think I’m cursed, don’t you?” Dilly wasn’t a crazy person, or a believer in magic or fairies, but she had a thing about curses.

She nodded, her eyes wide. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Have you pissed anyone off or dumped some poor guy who didn’t deserve it?”

“If I found some guy to date who didn’t deserve to be dumped, I’d marry his ass before he got away.”

She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! You’ve cursed yourself.”

“I don’t think—”

She shook her head. “Love is a delicate, finicky magic of its own, and—”

“You don’t believe in magic.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe in magic like woo-woo fairies and disappearing unicorns.” She waved her hands around to demonstrate fairies flying. “And I—”

“Excuse me,” a man said. He was old enough to be my father.

“No, we don’t need a drink and we’re not giving you our numbers,” Dilly said. “I just want to talk to my girlfriend, here.”

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