Page 21 of The Deadbeat Next Door

“He’s a clerk at the courthouse,” I said. “And yeah, he’s still kind of cute, but he also dresses like he’s nineteen and he still lives at home with his mother.”

“Oh.” She leaned away from me like my curse might be contagious. “Oh, no. Where’d he take you?”

“Well, he walked to my house, so he could save gas money, and I drove us out to the lake for a picnic.”

She scrunched her nose up and scowled. She was not an outdoorsy girl. “Was he under some delusion that picnics are romantic?”

“If he was, he got it all wrong. The only food he brought was stale bread for the ducks.”

She smiled. She knew me so well. “I can only imagine that went over like a ton of bricks.”

I might get a little bit carried away when it comes to protecting our native wild life, but I don’t think it’s ever wrong to look out for those weaker than ourselves. “He didn’t believe me when I told him bread is bad for ducks. I even showed him an article on my phone about how ducks should eat bugs and weeds. He said it was probably fake news and he was going to feed the bread to the ducks anyway.”

“How cruel!” she said. “Did you show him the pictures of that wing thing they get from a diet of bread? Did you tell him they die?”

“Angel wing. And yes, I did. He didn’t believe me or he didn’t care. I just…I mean…What a monster.”

“Did you tell him about the poisonous algal blooms that too much bread in the pond can cause?”

“I didn’t bother. He clearly wanted to pretend science and fact don’t exist. There was no talking to him. So, I grabbed the bag of bread, dumped it out into the trash can, being sure nothing was left where the ducks could get it, and shut the lid tight.”

“Good for you. I can’t stand a man who thinks he knows everything. What did he do?”

I shook my head, anger I thought I’d buried re-emerging. “He demanded I pay him fifty-two cents for the lost bread and then asked me to take him home.”

“The nerve,” she said. “You left him there and told him to walk home, right?”

I stared at her for a long moment. She was so much harsher than me. “Um, we were six miles from his house, Dilly. I paid him the fifty-two cents and I drove him home. Then I hung out at the bookstore until I felt better and had calmed down.”

“What’d you buy?”

Dilly was almost a bigger book junkie than me. I showed her my purchases and she oohed and aahed over them. I lent her two that I knew I wouldn’t be getting to anytime soon.

“How’s it going with Wayne?” I asked. Dilly liked to pretend she was care-free and uninterested in a serious relationship with anyone, but deep down she was a huge romantic. I might want a husband and a family, but I was realistic about it. Stable family life and passionate romance didn’t go together well, and I knew it was a dreamer’s silly wish to expect to find a man I could trust to care for me and our family and for him to also be someone I loved with any sort of fictional-level romantic attachment. I’d never admit that to Dilly, though, or she’d insist I read her entire collection of romance books.

She pursed her lips and looked away. “It didn’t work out. I didn’t expect it to. We were just having fun.”

Dilly knew that I knew she was a romantic, but it was not something either of us admitted aloud. I knew it hurt Dilly every time one of her romantic hopes was crushed. “What happened? It seemed like you two got along really well.”

She looked down at her hands, picking at the polish on her thumbnail. “Turns out all those trips he was taking for ‘business’ were actually for another woman. You know I don’t date guys who are dating someone else, no matter how casual we are.”

“I know.” If it was me, I’d want sympathy and hugs, but Dilly just liked to pretend the guy had never mattered to her and move on. “It’s good you found out the truth before he got attached and things got messy.”

She stared out the window, her eyes a bit damp. Dilly hated to let anyone, even me, see her sad or disappointed, so I waited until she cleared her throat, swiped at her eyes, and turned to me. “I’ve already forgotten him. And I’m ready to go out and flirt and have some fun with my girl tonight. Chicks before dicks and all that.”

“Gals before guys.”

“Dames before dudes.”

“Babes before pork steeples.”

She snort-laughed. “I can’t believe you just used the phrase pork steeple.”

I smiled, glad to see her laughing. “Believe it, baby. This is just the beginning of wild, cut-loose, care-free Carrie Harrison.”

She clapped her hands in glee. “Where’s your computer? We need a list for this shopping trip. I don’t want you buying a bunch of clothes you aren’t going to wear this time.”

I took her back to my office and we visited Dilly’s favorite on-line clothing shops until we had a pretty good idea of what sort of clothes I was looking for. I won’t say I was excited about the styles, but I thought I might actually wear the outfits we found. Dilly called it a more classic or traditional style that could still be sexy if I wore it right. And maybe bought clothes with a tighter fit.

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