Page 22 of Sunshine
“I wasn’t aware it was that personal. Feel free to ask me about my day at work.” I wink. “I promise I won’t be offended.”
She huffs an unfriendly laugh and turns. She doesn’t walk away though and I think I know why. Like a wild animal, she doesn’t want me knowing she’s injured.
I have irked this woman and damned if I know how. But Reece and I are starting fresh and we’re going to need friends. We’re going to need a support system that’s closer than Lulah and Jeff. I look around. There isn’t another house close by.And I promised Tessa’s grandmother.
Besides, I’ve sunk every dime I had into this place, and I can’t turn tail and run now. I must make this work and ignore the urge to spank the attitude right out of her, even though that’s clearly what she needs.
I’ll stop by in the morning. Maybe she’ll be in a better mood then and we can work out a schedule that works for both of us.
“Have a good night, neighbor.” I give a friendly wave to her back and walk down the path, ignoring her indignant snort.
Chapter Seven
Tess
The effing rooster strikes again. This time when Jake screeches, I fly up so fast, I slide in my silk pajamas right out of bed. Now my ass hurts as much as my ankle. And when I look at the bloody bird with narrowed eyes, he has the intrepidity to look at me with curiosity.
“What are you doing on the floor, human?”The imaginary voice of the bird pops into my head.“It’s time to rise, not fall. Lily never did this. I’d really like my morning treats and you’ll be faster retrieving them on two legs.”
Cocking his head, he carefully examines me with a beady eye.Reaching for the slippers under the bed, I grumble at the winged creature, and at myself, for being so ridiculous.
By the time I get out of the shower, the rooster has given up on me and I’m ready for my tea like never before. “I might have to switch to coffee for the caffeine boost if you don’t quit.” The words are aimed at the chicken door as I limp by.
I’m about to start the kettle, when I spot the pod coffee machine tucked into the corner. The De’Longhi All-In-One combination coffee and espresso machine I bought Gran forChristmas two years ago had been returned and she’d replaced it with this and several years’ worth of pods.
I shake my head and search for the coffee pods. Finding an entire cupboard full, I pop in a flavored one and head to the bedroom that used to be mine. My mission? To find a way to lock the rooster flap.
Not much has changed in the room, the desk no longer has my things on it, instead it holds a laptop I gave Gran a few years ago to pay her bills, and a pile of letters, likely from Gran’s pen pals from around the world.
The shelves in the room still have my various awards and achievements, including a framed newspaper clipping of a short story contest I’d won while in middle school. I pick up another frame, this one houses a picture of me with Paige and Gran and I smile, nostalgia filling me. There are several around the room, I take a moment to look at each one and remember the moments surrounding the event. That is until I get to a photograph of my parents.
I stare at it, feeling nothing. I’d long ago shoved my emotions surrounding my parents and their abandonment deep inside. As a kid I hated that picture in my room. In fact, I’d hid it on more than one occasion. But Gran always found it and put it back up, insisting it stay there. I never understood why, after all, they’d dumped me on her, so she should be mad at them too.
Instead of wondering about that and what had happened all those years ago with an adult’s mind, I think about how Gran’s life might have been different without me.
Would she have traveled the world, perhaps visiting some of those pen pals? Or found love? I never knew my grandfather; he’d died when I was six weeks old, and she’d said hundreds of times that he was her one great love. But Gran was still young when I was dumped on her, having been married at seventeen and a mom at eighteen. And with my own mother being twenty-two when she had me, Gran was only fifty. She was still attractive and full of life at that age, but what middle-aged man wanted to be saddled with a petulant and bitter ten-year-old?
I gained a better life from my parents ditching me with Gran, but what did she get? I look around at the room and remember painting it with her. It’s still the same pretty lilac color we’d picked together. She’d made a nook in the corner with bookshelves, a fuzzy purple rug, a mountainous pile of cozy pillows and a deep purple canopy that hung like a silken tent around the area.
In the beginning, it was my security spot, a place to hide from the world, but it wasn’t long before Gran became my safe place, and the nook took on its intended purpose. A spot for reading, giggling and secret telling. I smile thinking of thechoose your ownadventurebooks Paige and I would read, taking turns choosing.
I suddenly want to crawl into the nook and read one of my books where everything was solved nice and neat by the end.
Instead, I sigh and head for the kitchen, not wanting to be surrounded by memories of my past anymore. The rooster flap could wait.
Coffee in hand, I open my laptop and stare. Each minute the cursor blinks is another minute I feel like a failure. Nothing makes me grumpier than a blank page. I’m seconds away from giving up when a knock at the back door startles me. It’s so unexpected I jump in my chair, knocking over my coffee which has no more than one cold swallow left in it, but still further tanks my mood.
I curse as I limp to the door, seeing my new nemesis as I do.
“This damn well better be important,” I bark. Yanking open the door, my eyes land on a muscle- hugging Foo Fighters t-shirt. My gaze sticks there for several beats before it swings up to my neighbor’s eyes.
“Bad time?” he asks and looks at his watch. I take advantage and appreciate his well-formed arm as he does. “Not teatime, is it?” His easy smile irks me, almost as much as his body heats me. Why the hell did I read that book? What I should be reading is some fade-to-black historical romance that might help inspire my writing instead of my libido.
My eyes narrow. “From now on, just consider all times bad for a visit,” I clip with a sniff. “I’m far too busy to take callers.” I want to roll my eyes at myself for being so insufferable, but he’s the most distracting man I’ve ever met.
“Wow. Not a morning person either I guess.” He looks past me at my laptop. “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting your work, but I thought we should talk.” He seems genuinely apologetic, so I don’t slam the door in his face.
“Talk?”
