“I know. I like it, but only just this much,” I say, holding up my hand and pinching my thumb and forefinger so they almost touch. “I appreciate boxwood hedges, but I think I want to see about removing that one.”
Georgie turns to face me slowly, her eyebrows arching almost to her hairline. If I’m not mistaken, it looks as if she could be chewing on her cheek, like she’s trying to stop herself from laughing.
“You want to remove the hedge?”
“Not remove as much as maybe cut into it some,” I say with a flick of my wrist, indicating beyond the hedge. “There’s a beautiful pond on the other side of it and I’d love to have a better view.”
Georgie crosses her arms and looks at me, her eyes dancing with pure delight. “Have you spoken to your neighbor about this?”
“Not yet, but I plan on it. Although, I think that hedge is technically on my property. If that’s the case, I don’t need to discuss it with my neighbor, do I?”
Something in the way Georgie looks at me makes me take a pause. “Why, Georgie?”
She closes her eyes. “That hedge belongs to Austin.”
That’s a twist I didn’t see coming. “Austin?”
She nods, opening her eyes back up wide. “Yep.”
Now, there’s a name with the power to make my heart skip a beat.
“How is he?”
“He’s pretty much sequestered himself in that house,” she says with a shrug, her gaze wandering across the field in the direction of his property. “He’s always there, going nowhere and doing nothing.”
“Really?” I shake my head. Surely I didn’t hear that right. “Austin?”
“He’s angry now, Bex. Not the same guy. You know how they thought he had a knee injury? Turns out it was his Achilles. He’s been retreating into a solo world of loneliness and bitterness for months. It’s like watching a really slow train wreck.”
A sadness washes over me. Angry, bitter Austin? It doesn’t seem to gel with the person who I know. Or knew? “I remember he was pretty down in the dumps, or at least appeared to be, at your wedding.”
Georgie nods. “He’s been sliding downhill since then. We’ve all tried to get him to see his way out of the dark, but he seems to like it there. The other day, I had to stop by with some paperwork from Levi, and I was really surprised at how he’s let himself go.”
Georgie is married to Levi Porter, Austin’s brother and a former NFL star himself. As chance would have it, I was in town looking for a place to live and had just met Georgie when she started dating Levi. So, by proxy, I’d gotten to know Austin some. We were the extra friends/wingman and wingwoman on dates here and there. It’s fair to say I started crushing on him, and a small part of me thought he was feeling something, too.
But after his injury, he disappeared. I saw him briefly at Georgie’s wedding, but we never spoke. It was like we’d never met.
Still. I am curious. “What do you mean, let himself go?”
“Austin was always the kind of guy who had his beard either trimmed or was clean shaven. He liked being pulled together. When I saw him a few days ago, he was sitting in his threadbare sweatpants on the back porch, no shirt on, hadn’t shaved in weeks, probably, and he was really busy trying out his new binoculars.”
There’s a red-flag moment if I ever saw one coming. “Binoculars? Good to know.”
“I wish I was kidding.” Georgie gives me a look as she rolls her eyes. “So, don’t be hanging out around here in your underwear…”
“Oh, stop it,” I say, taking a playful swipe at her arm while she cracks up. “He can’t be that bad.”
“He’s not horrible, but he’s not the guy you met originally. At least he isn’t right now. He’s cranky, reclusive, and harmless. You don’t need to worry about him—unless you want to do something aboutthathedge.”
Eyeing the hedge, I shrug. “I’ll see. I’ve got a lot on my plate. These boxes won’t unpack themselves.”
“What about work?” she asks.
“I’m going to figure it out. I’ve got some time with what I’ve saved, but I’ll need to secure steady work soon-ish. It’s going to be a bit of a mission, though.”
“Because of the Graves?”
Georgie knows another little secret of mine: I have an auto-immune disease called Graves’ disease. Not that I want it to be a secret. It’s just…it’s mine and I’ve been dealing with it for only a couple of years now. Graves’ disease is when you have an overactive thyroid and it can cause a myriad of problems. Like many auto-immune diseases, this one is not the same for each person who has it.
