Page 4 of Small Town Sizzle

“I’ve never seen him jump on someone like that. He usually goes straight to the crotch,” my nephew, Alex, adds. “He’s only ever jumped on you like that when you rescued him.”

“And Miss Greta,” Jaz says.

I send a quick text to my coworker and friend, Leti, asking if she can run to another client’s house to handle the situation I had been dealing with when the man threw a tantrum about coffee. She immediately answers yes, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Yeah. That dude was not impressed,” I say with a nervous laugh.

The whole interaction was off. I can’t blame him for being upset over George’s introduction, but he didn’t need to stayrude. Which is really a shame, because he was drop-dead gorgeous—until he opened his mouth to speak.

Take a breath, Maya. You don’t know what other people are dealing with.

“He was a jerk,” Alex adds with a shake of his head.

“Well, we’re headed back to Hicks Creek, the friendliest little city on earth, and we don’t have to worry about jerks like that there. Do we?” I interject, a bad attempt to change the attitude in the car.

“No,” Jaz says quickly as she reaches over and squeezes Brady’s hand.

He smiles as his other hand is buried in George’s fur. I watch the three of them in the rearview mirror.

Brady is a client of mine; his mother is in the middle of an active addiction, and we’re taking him to his grandma’s house in Hick’s Creek while his mother gets the help she needs. He’s a great kid with a lot of love in his heart but a backstory that will make you cry.

“Brady already knows how great the town is,” Alex says.

“I kept asking Mom to move here. Mamaw was asking, too, but she didn’t want to,” Brady adds.

“Well, that’s okay because you’re here now, kiddo.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says softly in the backseat.

“I forgot how jerky the people from Culver City can be,” Alex adds quietly.

“We are on the interstate, bud, and he could have been from anywhere.”

“He looked familiar though, didn’t he?” he asks as he cocks his head to the side. “He seemed familiar to me.”

“I thought so, too.” I shrug. “But I couldn’t place him.”

Initially, before George introduced himself to him, I had spotted the man and thought that he was cute. I even stopped and looked a bit longer than I should have because of it. I haven’tventured back into the dating world after my last disastrous relationship, and sometimes it’s nice to window shop, but that’s all I’m ready to do.

Alex turns in his seat to look out the window for the rest of the trip. Some days, he’s talkative; other days, he withdraws into himself and is unreachable. This conversation is the most I’ve gotten from him in two days.

His mother, my sister Megan, died last year, leaving Alex in my care. I’m grateful she was responsible and had all of that sorted out years ago. Alex’s father has never been in the picture, as his mom was always adamant that it was a one-night stand, and she didn’t even know his last name.

Megan and I were as close as sisters can be. We weren’t always that way, because of our six-year age gap. Megan struck out on her own when she turned eighteen and made about every mistake a person could make while she was there. She fell in with a bad crowd and started using drugs and alcohol.

She was clean when she was pregnant with Alex, but the first four years of his life were a struggle. I married my high school sweetheart in a rush ceremony before he left for Army bootcamp, and his first station wasn’t far from where Megs lived, which meant that Carson and I stepped in and took care of him a lot. It’s how I knew it was the career path I wanted to take.

Carson committed suicide after a tour in Afghanistan, when Jaz was just two years old, and that was a wake-up call for my sister. She got clean, and the four of us returned to Hicks Creek to start our lives over in our hometown.

Megs was my best friend, and we were constantly together or on the phone with each other. Life hasn’t been the same since that car accident, but I have spent the last twelve months making it as normal as I can for Alex, Jaz, and my parents.

I’ve never had the opportunity to grieve Carson or Megan, because I’m so busy making sure that everyone else is okay.

Less than an hour later, we deliver Brady to his grandmother and head to my parents’ house for Sunday brunch. I love the family time, but sometimes it’s a bit much. I feel like I have to be the person who fixes everything for everyone all the time.

I’m a social worker; it’s kind of the job I signed up for.

I take a deep breath as I pull into my parents’ driveway, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the promise of my mom’s French toast wafting through the open windows.

---