Page 4 of The Chad Next Door
“This is home,” I say as cheerfully as I can. It’s not very convincing, but that could be because I haven’t found the willpower to turn the car off yet. It’s not even in park, like I’m secretly trying to decide if this is actually going to work. Maybe we need to run back to the sun.
But we can’t go back. I sold the Florida house because there was no way I was ever going to be able to pay for it, and this is probably the only thing we’re going to be able to afford until I figure out some kind of job. It’s also the only place close enough to my Aunt Phoebe for me to feel even a little bit comfortable with our new situation.
That’s a strange sensation on its own. I don’t know if I’ve ever even had a conversation with Phoebe since my parents died eight years ago.
A little sniffle comes from the seat behind me, and I carefully glance in the mirror because the last time I looked directly at Link, he burst into tears and cried until he fell asleep. He seems okay for now, but that will probably change. He’s only thirteen months younger than his sister, but he couldn’t be more different from Zelda. That makes this so much harder. I think in the last three weeks he’s said maybe a dozen words to me, and I have no idea what he needs. Zelda, on the other hand, tells me to the minute what I’m doing wrong and how awful everything is, which is oddly comforting as I scramble to figure this whole thing out.
“Should we go take a look?” I ask, forcing myself to turn off the car and accept that this is our new reality. No amount of wishful thinking is going to change it. I step out into the cool mountain air and take a deep breath in this tiny moment to myself while the kids undo their buckles. I don’t remember the last time outside smelled this fresh, and I can’t deny that I don’t love the piney edge to the breeze. It’s colder than I expected, though, and I shiver, wishing I had thought to buy some coats before we got here. But Florida doesn’t exactly have a lot of winter gear.
A door closes somewhere nearby, and I glance over just as a man steps out of the house next to ours, a fluffy golden retriever on his heels. While these houses aren’t necessarily sharing yards—one of the perks of being on the edge of a barely populated small town—the neighbor is close enough that I really hope his dog doesn’t spend all day barking at squirrels.
The dog notices me first, ears perking up as he pauses his sniffing and gives me a smile. Okay, that’s pretty cute. So is his owner, if I’m being honest with myself. The man—broad shoulders and scruffy beard placing him firmly in themancategory—bends to pick up the newspaper with his coffee mug in hand, and I feel like I’ve entered a movie set in the nineties. I didn’t know people still read newspapers. Nor did I realize people from small towns could be this attractive. He’s got a whole lumberjack look to him, though he’s dirty blonde rather than dark, so he can only claim sixty-seven percent of “tall, dark, and handsome.” But he isrockingthose two-thirds. Even with the small patch of gray in his beard putting him several years my senior. If this were a movie set—because even though it’s overcast and the kids are whining, this still feels like the start of a movie—he would absolutely be the small-town hero who falls in love with the outsider.
It’s a good thing this isn’t a movie.
“Who’s that?” Zelda asks, making me jump because she says it loud enough that Dreamy Neighbor glances over.
Face heating, even if he doesn’t know how long I just stared at him, I give him a little wave. “Uh, hi. We’re your new neighbors.”
He frowns. No, it’s more than that. It’s a full-on scowl as his denim-blue eyes take in the picture we make: Zelda, who matches the man’s scowl completely because she’s angry at the world; Link, who looks like he’s spent the last three weeks crying and is one refused meal away from becoming dangerously thin; and me, a twenty-four-year-old grad school dropout who has no idea what she’s doing because she suddenly got custody of her niece and nephew when their mom died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
It’s not a pretty sight.
He grunts, gives a short whistle, and disappears into his house with the dog right behind him.
Okay, then.
“Can I go play with the dog?” Zelda asks. She’s still scowling, but it has softened in the last two seconds.
Something tells me we’re not going to see much of our neighbor, which is a pity because his is one of only three houses on this lane. We passed the third on the way in, and it’s a ways down so we can’t even see it from here.
“I don’t think so, sweetie,” I tell her. “We need to unpack before it gets dark, anyway.”
She rolls her eyes so hard that I’m amazed it doesn’t hurt. “Fine.” She hefts her backpack higher on her shoulder and stomps up the front steps with some impressive rage in her feet.
I glance at Link. “Ready?”
He nods once and then follows his sister without a word, though his lip quivers. I’m so glad I’m not a crier or his heartbreak would be my undoing. It’s still painful, but at least I can keep that pain to myself.
I put in the code in the padlock on the front door and brace myself for what we might find inside. When I bought the house, I looked at the pictures of course, but I know pictures can be deceiving. My last apartment looked like a spacious dream, but it turned out to be a prison cell with a separate bathroom. This place in size alone is an upgrade for me, but I know what these kids are coming from. They’re not going to love trading their massive playroom for a house that could fit inside their last one five or six times.
I can’t help that my sister was a literal rocket scientist and made the big bucks. I…do not. I make no bucks, to be exact, except for the few hours a day that I used to makeStarbucks in between classes. Bailey had a surprising amount of debt, and I have all my student loans, so after the life insurance money and selling the house, this is what we can afford while still leaving enough for the kids to go to college if they want to. Knowing my luck, in the decade between now and then, an undergrad degree will probably cost ten times what it does now. And if these kids are half as smart as their mom, they’re not going to be going to community college. I see Ivy Leagues in their futures.
My bank account is weeping just thinking about it.
“Are you ever going to open the door?” Zelda asks.
I guess there’s no point in delaying the inevitable. Gripping the doorknob, I push it open with gusto and then flinch as a wave of musty, dead air hits me right in the face.Gross. In unison, the three of us poke our heads inside, trying to see in the darkness, but it looks like all the curtains are closed.
“Anyone see a light switch?” I ask. I could just step inside and feel around, but I worry that I’ll end up touching something I don’t want to. Who knows what might be lurking on the walls?
Zelda lets out a heavy sigh that makes her sound like she’s fifty, and then she pushes me out of the way and takes the first step inside. She finds a switch in half a second, and the room is suddenly bathed in light.
“Oh, okay, this isn’t so bad.” Those words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and Zelda and Link both give me looks of horror. I mean, they should have figured out at this point that I’m out of my element here, right? Of course I was expecting the house to be bad.
Or maybe they’re looking at me like that because the front room looks like it hasn’t changed since 1957. The listing said this place was furnished, but I didn’t realize that would mean it would look fully lived in. Suddenly I’m wondering if some old lady lived and died here and no one ever bothered to get rid of her stuff.
Let’s just hope they got rid of the lady. No way am I living here if we come across a mummified body in one of the beds. I can deal with ghosts, but I draw the line at corpses.
