The Nice Guy Next Door Page 5

  Now, at the very moment that we need to be leaving, she’s yelling at me because I won’t let her drop me off at work so she can take the car. The arrangement has always been that I drop her off, and after school, she either gets a ride from a friend or takes the bus home. It has never been an issue until this very moment. This very moment that I do not have to spare.

  “I don’t understand what the big deal is! I get out of school way before you get off work. I could just pick you up.”

  “I don’t understand either. Why are you all of a sudden pushing me on this?”

  “You don’t listen to me! You never do anything I want or ask! It’s always your way or nothing!” she yells as tears pool in her eyes and then slide down her flushed cheeks. My heart is aching, and I wish I understood what she’s going through.

  Just then, the doorbell rings, and our heads snap to the front door. I see the patrol car in the driveway just as Lo runs down the hall back to her room.

  Chapter Six

  Jameson

  I’m standing at Millie’s front door, listening to the two sisters scream at each other. It’s not pretty. I only came over because Nana had some things she wanted me to drop off to them. I dug through the bag because I have no self-control. Nana must have been impressed with Millie at the book club meeting Thursday night.

  There are gift cards to the local coffee shop and clothing boutique, two tickets to the high school football game on Friday, and another overloaded bag of veggies, fresh from her garden. I don’t know why, but Nana’s trying to butter Millie up.

  I’m debating whether or not I should leave the bag by the door and run. I thought they would have already been gone by now, so I wasn’t planning to see Millie anyway. The screaming reaches an all-time high, and I impulsively push the doorbell. The yelling stops, and I wish I could take it back.

  A minute later, Millie answers the door with red-rimmed eyes and mascara smeared above her eye. “Good morning,” she says with a smile that says she’s anything but happy. I want to reach up and wipe the mascara off her face, but that would be intrusive. We might be friends after last night, but not that good of friends.

  “Is it, though?” I ask. “I’m sorry to bombard you when all of…that was going on.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. She runs her hands through her hair and massages her temples. I look at the time and see that she’s going to be late for work again if she has to drop Lo off at school first. Even I won’t be able to sweeten ol’ Gertie up for a second time in one week.

  I step into the house and place the bag and envelope on her counter and say, “Nana apparently likes you and ordered me to bring this stuff to you.”

  She nods her head and darts around, grabbing her things. She slides her feet into her heels as she yells, “Come on, Lo. We have to go. I’m going to lose my job if I’m late again.” We both hear a loud, angry groan sound from the hallway.

  I step closer to her and drop my voice down low. “Look, I couldn’t help but overhear while I was waiting outside, and I know you’re going to be late for work. Why don’t you let her drive to school, and I’ll take you to work…just for today so everyone gets where they need to be on time.” I may have just overstepped here, and I hope it doesn’t make her angry with me too. There’s a fine line with authority and teenagers, but I hope she sees it for the lifeline that it’s meant to be.

  She glances at Lo sulking by the wall and then back to me. She nods her head slightly—so slightly that I almost miss it. My heart leaps for joy that she’s allowing my help. I turn to Lo and explain the plan. The girl’s whole demeanor changes in an instant. Her face lights up, and she clenches her hands in front of her chest, promising to be extra careful. She runs to the car and pulls out onto the road.

  “She’s going to be even angrier when I don’t allow her to take the car tomorrow,” Millie sighs. She puffs up her cheeks and blows the air out slowly through her mouth. She’s cute, and I smile without thinking. “It’s not funny, Jameson,” she says.

  I smile even bigger from hearing my name on her lips and realize that I’m a complete goner. We climb into my car, and she settles herself in the passenger seat as I start the car and pull onto the road.

  “Stop smiling like that,” she says.

  I clear my throat and wipe the smile off my face and say, “You’re right. It’s not funny. Have you thought about letting her get her own car?”

  “Are you kidding? I can’t afford another car right now!” she says with a look of outrage on her face.

  “Well, she can get a job to help pay for it,” I suggest.

  “Even then I wouldn’t be able to get her anything nice.”

  “You should see the truck I drove when I was in high school. It was awful. Pops and I spent almost every weekend fixing something on it.”

  Her eyebrows lower in thought. She goes so long without saying anything that I assume she’s not going to answer. Several minutes pass before she says, “She worked so hard while I was trying to finish my master’s degree. I didn’t want her to have to work again until she finished high school. I never had to have a real job in high school.”

  “Why don’t you ask her what she thinks? She might like the idea,” I suggest. She nods her head and continues fidgeting with her hands.

  I pull into the library parking lot, and several people are sitting in their cars, waiting for the library to open. Book junkies. They just can’t wait for their next book fix. She rushes out of the car and into the building. I try not to take her swift departure too hard. She did have a really bad morning.

  A few minutes later, I’m driving down the road when I get a text alert on my phone. When I stop and check it, I turn into a grinning fool.

  Millie: Thank you for being there for me this morning. You really are the best.

  My mom, Joan, is the busiest hairdresser in the area. Her schedule is so booked up that people have to call and schedule their appointments a month in advance. She’s the reason I was voted ‘best hair’ my senior year of high school. A title I still carry with pride thirteen years later, apparently, since I’m randomly thinking about it right now.

  She has taken a much-needed day off today so she could go to the doctor and the dentist. Who schedules two medical appointments on the same day? She must be a glutton for punishment. She did make time to meet me for lunch. At least, I think she did. I’ve been sitting at a table in the diner by myself for fifteen minutes, looking very pathetic and lonely. The waitress asked me if I had been stood up when she brought me my second glass of sweet tea.

  Mama finally walks in and has to greet everyone at every table she passes to get to me. That’s the problem with being everyone’s hairdresser. You become everyone’s gal pal and therapist also. The woman knows everyone’s secrets, but she has an iron will. She never spills. Patient confidentiality, she says. If she wanted to, though, she could bring the town of Waverly to its knees with everything she knows.

  She finally makes it over to me and plants a big kiss on my cheek. “Geez, Mama, now I’m going to have lipstick on my cheek,” I groan.

  “Sure do,” she says with a huge grin on her face. She sits down across from me and takes a long drink from the Dr. Pepper I took the liberty of ordering for her. It’s probably watered down now, but she only has herself to blame. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “I’ve been waiting so long I’m dying of old age,” I quip. I don’t crack even a hint of a smile as I stare her down. This is our game. Someone makes a joke, and the first one to smile has to buy lunch. She caves first…she usually does. Sometimes I think she does it on purpose so she can buy my food. It’s her one way to still take care of me.

  “Oh, you’re such a smart-alec—always have been,” she says as she reaches across the table and half-heartedly smacks my hand. She holds up her menu and says, “I hear there’s a pretty new librarian in town.” She peeks her eyes over the top of the menu and looks at me with her eyebrows raised in question.

  “Ther
e is. What about her?” I ask. I know what she wants to know, but I’m going to make her say it. She rolls her eyes.

  “Are y’all a thing? Shandi told me that she saw y’all canoodling at Bob’s the other night.” She holds the menu in front of her face, embarrassed to think of her grown son ‘canoodling.’

  I push the menu down and say, “Shandi is a gossip-mongering busybody. Millie and I are friends. She’s new to town. She lives next door in Nana and Pops’ rental, by the way, so I took her out to dinner where we sat a respectful distance away from each other the entire time.”

  “Well, that’s boring. Her name is Millie? That’s so cute! Is that short for something?” she asks. I scratch my chin because I hadn’t really thought about it. I haven’t pondered the cuteness of her name yet because I can’t get past the cuteness of her face.

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask her next time I see her,” I say.

  “I want to invite her over for dinner,” she says, bouncing around in her seat and clapping her hands together. My mom should have been a cheerleader in high school with all of her uncontained pep.

  “Mama, we’re just friends.”

  “What? You can’t have friends over for dinner at your mama’s house?” And that is the end of that conversation. Mama is too much like Nana. Once she decides she’s going to do something, nothing is going to stop her. You don’t argue with Joan Lane. I’ll have to send Millie a text to warn her that some crazy woman is going to corner her and insist that she come over to her house and eat her food. Because that is how Mama would do it. She has no tact.

  “So, what have you been doing, other than not canoodling with this tiny little librarian everyone’s talking about?” she asks.

  I close my eyes and groan. “Just working,” I say.

  “And hanging out with Seth and Colby like usual, I’m sure,” she says, and I hear the edge in her voice. Mama loves my friends. Heck, we practically lived in each other’s homes on a rotation growing up.

  “What, Mama?” I don’t know what she could possibly have to say against them. They’ve always been like bonus sons to her.

  “I just think that if you spent less time with them, then you could, I don’t know, find a nice woman and settle down. You’re thirty-one now. It’s time,” she says. My jaw drops to the floor. My mother, the woman who swore off men the day my father abandoned her at the age of eighteen, is telling me that I need to settle down and get married.

  “You do realize that you yourself never technically ‘settled down,’ right?” I ask in disbelief. I thought she was fine with my bachelorhood—not that I have ever decided against marriage or being in a relationship. I’ve had girlfriends. I’ve dated. The pond is just really small here in Waverly, and my work schedule sucks.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re not talking about me, though. Trauma and all that,” she says, waving her hands around haphazardly.

  “Don’t give me that,” I argue. It’s an excuse, and she knows it.

  “Look, I didn’t settle down, and now I regret it. I’m forty-nine, and I live alone. I’m lonely, and I don’t want the same for you. I don’t want you to wake up and realize you’re almost fifty years old and you’ve never been in love.” Her eyes are watery, and my heart breaks for my mom. I never knew she felt this way. She always seems so happy. “Gosh, I don’t want to cry in public. It’ll be all over town by the evening.”

  “Mama,” I say and go to her side of the table to hug her. “I’m not against marriage. I just have to find the right person.”

  “It’s Millie,” she says.

  “Don’t you think you should meet the woman before claiming her as your future daughter-in-law?”

  “She’s coming over for dinner, remember.” I shake my head and pray. The women in my life are going to give me a heart attack.

  After walking my mom back to her hair salon, I head back to my patrol car so I can get back to work. I get a strange feeling that someone is watching me. There are quite a few people out around town with the nice weather and it being the end of the lunch hour. I do a quick scan of the area but see no one suspicious, just the regular people I see milling around all the time.

  A prickling feeling creeps up the back of my neck as I walk closer to my car and see a slip of paper on the windshield. I unfold it and read the same sloppy handwriting from a few days ago.

  There’s no doubt in my mind now. This is not a joke. Seth and Colby would have mentioned it on Monday night if they were behind this. They know how stressful this job can get for me and wouldn’t let it go on for so long—if they were idiotic enough to do something like this to begin with. I have to figure out who this is—and fast.

  Chapter Seven

  Millie

  Lo breezes into the library like one of those girls from a teen movie. Her blonde hair is flowing effortlessly around her, she has a pep in her step, and her smile is glowing as she glances around the library. That is, until she sees me, then she freezes and crosses her arms across her chest.

  “Are you ready?” she asks in a clipped tone.

  “Sure, just let me grab my things,” I say. I’ve been in a good mood today. We parted on good terms despite our fight this morning, and I feel like I’m finally starting to get the hang of everything at work. I was hoping she would have had time to calm down and forgive me since I last saw her nine hours ago, but I can see now she’s determined to stay angry for the long haul.

  I go outside and see that she’s in the passenger seat—her day of freedom is over. I sit down behind the wheel and say, “Let’s go get some ice cream.” She rolls her eyes in response. Who gets mad about ice cream? Isn’t it a universal peace offering or something?

  We drive to the ice cream parlor and place our orders through the drive thru. She gets strawberry with brownie pieces, and I get mint with brownie pieces. Brownies have always been our go-to dessert, and it seems we can’t get away from it even for ice cream. We park and watch the traffic drive by on the road.

  “Can you please tell me what has been going on with you? I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong,” I say. I’m scared to move or even breathe. I hear her take a few deep breaths and then some sniffling. I slowly turn my head and see that she’s crying.

  “The first day of school was awful. They were so mean,” she says. I put my cup of ice cream down on the dashboard and lean over to rub her back and run my fingers through her hair like I know she likes.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I walked in really late, obviously, and some boy in my homeroom could tell that I had been crying. He pointed it out to the entire class. By the end of the day, half the school was talking about how I’m an emotional mess who cries all the time. And then they made fun of me because I had to ride the bus home,” she mumbles the last part.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, and I really mean it. She should not have had to deal with that. I want to punch that boy in the face. “What’s that boy’s name?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she says.

  “I don’t understand, though. You rode the bus home in Harris, and no one cared.”

  “Millie, I rode the bus, like, twice. I always had a ride with friends. And even the few times I did have to ride the bus, it didn’t matter all that much because I knew everyone. No one knows me here. They don’t care about me.”

  Jameson’s suggestion pops into my head, but I don’t know if I should mention it to her. I don’t want her to think that I’m pressuring her to get a job or that I really need her to get one like I needed her to before. I want her to know that it would be for her and only her.

  “I want to ask you something, but I want you to know that it’s only if you want to. Do you want to get a job so you can help pay for a car…your car?” I ask.

  “Really?” she turns to me and asks. Her tears are replaced with a huge smile. “You’d let me get a car?”

  “Well, of course.”

  “Oh my gosh, yes! I have to text Lexi!” She pulls out her phone and
starts sending out rapid-fire texts to her best friends back in Harris. How does she do that? My fingers cannot move that fast. Her phone is blowing up with all of her friends texting her back with silly GIFs. It turns into a giggle fest in my car as she shows them all to me.

  We eat our half-melted ice cream, talking about nonsense. She does finally tell me the bully boy’s name—Daniel Ashby—and Lo makes me vow not to track him down and hurt him or his feelings. I crossed my fingers, though, so he better not mess with my girl again. I’m glad to have my sister back. And I’m also glad that I’m no longer in high school. I’ve never been good at dealing with drama.

  Millie: Do you know of any place that’s hiring? I have a 16-year-old who wants a job!

  Jameson: I’m assuming y’all talked and she has forgiven you?

  Millie: Yes. She wasn’t really mad at me, per se.

  Jameson: Good. I’ll keep an eye out for places hiring. By the way, my mom, a very loud woman who looks nothing like me, might corner you at some point and ask you to come over for dinner. I just wanted to warn you, because she’s crazy.

  It took me hours to get up the nerve to text Jameson tonight. I don’t want him to

  think I’m needy. I mean, I totally am. He’s sort of my only friend in Waverly, at the moment. I think I could be friends with Tess and Hannah at the library, but it hasn’t felt as effortless as it does with Jameson. I don’t have to try to find things to talk about with him. And Jameson isn’t thirty-six weeks pregnant and tired and irritable like Tess. Hannah’s sweet but a bit on the quiet side.

  I’ll have to make more of an effort to get to know the two of them. My only friend can’t be my insanely attractive neighbor. A girls’ night might be in order. Lo could invite a few girls she’s met at school.