Back in the Burbs by Tracy Wolff
Chapter Sixteen
One non-drunk sleep and three brand-new pairs of earrings later, I cleared out the first flight of stairs, ate a killer omelet, and am now checking myself out in the bathroom mirror as I wind my still slightly damp hair up into my usual topknot for my lunch date.
I catch sight of the fun, flirty earrings I bought last night dangling from my ears—the silver chandelier ones with multicolored stones in them—and decide to just give in to the vibe they have going and leave my hair down.
I finally managed to locate the suitcase with my makeup in it earlier that morning—if I’m going on a date with a younger guy in New Jersey, where makeup is practically a religion, I’m doing it fully armored, so I take a few minutes to do my face. It isn’t full slap, just a subtle eye, nude lip, and a little bit of shimmer on my cheeks. I have to keep that natural, it’s-just-lunch vibe, but I still feel better than I have in a long time—lighter.
I add my favorite pair of jeans, the ones that even Karl used to compliment me on, and a cute cami top in my favorite shade of blue. After a quick spritz of perfume, I’m done.
I glance out the window and realize Mr. Mows With a Sexy Perma-Scowl has pulled into his driveway. A quick peek at my phone confirms that I have fifteen minutes before I need to be ready for Mikey to pick me up, and I sadly know how I should spend that time.
While there is a part of me that doesn’t want to ask, I take a second glance out the window at Mr. Damn He Looks Good in a Suit as he opens his car door and know I have to. It would really help Mikey to know the HOA regulations regarding dumpster usage, and I don’t have time to search the 150 pages of regulations before he gets here. Plus, I know in my soul that my neighbor already has every line memorized.
I hop up and hurry out to catch him.
Thankfully, he stopped to inspect the flowers on his bushes, probably making sure they’re all uniform in petals and diameter, and I manage to get his attention by waving at him before he goes into his house. I hustle across the street.
“Hey! Um…” My brain stops working, but my feet keep moving.
Wow. This is the perfect time to realize I have no idea what his actual name is, and I can’t call him Mr. Probably Kicks Puppies for Fun. At least not to his face.
“Nick,” he says as he crosses his arms and leans one hip against his sleek silver Mercedes. “Nick Holloway.”
Nick. He looks like a Nick. Not in a Santa Baby kind of way, though—well, unless Santa is six-three and has dark hair and the North Pole permanently stuck up his ass.
“Mallory.” I stick out my hand as if this is the first time we’ve met.
He stares down at my hand and then back up at me. For a second, I figure he’s just going to leave me hanging, but then he gets this half smile—the kind that should definitely be illegal—and his long fingers envelop mine, sending a sizzle of awareness to all eleventy billion of the nerve receptors in my body. And my brain breaks.
“Mallory Martin Bach,” I start rambling, the words coming out one on top of the other. “But it’s soon to be only Mallory Martin again and—” He lets go of my hand, and my synapses come back online. “You probably already knew that.”
“I did,” he says as he flexes his fingers.
Okay, this is going about as well as that time I tried to bake a soufflé. “So, um, I need to ask you a question.”
He looks a little suspicious—and more than a little grumpy—but he nods reluctantly. “What do you need?”
I open my mouth to tell him, and a fat drop of rain lands right on my nose. Then another. And another.
Nick glances up at the sky, working his jaw back and forth as if the weather gods have personally betrayed him.
“Why don’t we do this inside?” He walks toward his open garage, obviously assuming I’ll follow. “I’ve only got a few minutes before I have to head out again for a meeting, and I don’t have time to change if I get soaking wet.”
“It’s not like you’re made of sugar, so you don’t have to worry about melting,” I grumble under my breath, but I still follow him through his absolutely spotless garage—every single tool and box is in its place. Even the floor sparkles like the Swarovski crystals in the earrings last night that I most assuredly could not afford and bought anyway. He has to pressure wash the floor to keep it this level of clean.
He pushes open the door into his house, and my breath catches as I wonder if the inside is as religiously spotless as the garage. Then I walk over the threshold into a large kitchen and just nod. Of course it is. In fact, I’d eat my shorts if you couldn’t perform surgery on those gleaming marble floors.
His cleaners have to come twice a day, because for the life of me, I cannot picture him with a mop. Then I close my eyes and force myself to. It’s not my best decision, because in my imagination, he is also shirtless as he works the mop back and forth. Imaginary Nick has really good pecs.
I say goodbye to Mr. Clean Neighbor, open my eyes again, and spy Nick staring at me as if I just might be the one who got nailed in the head by a wine bottle.
“You okay?” He comes closer, not touching but near enough that my girlie parts do the hello-hottie wake up and dance. “Do you need a glass of water or something?”
“Yes. Please. I’m parched.”
He heads to the fridge, and I wander into the spacious living room to scope the place out and get my suddenly-alive-again hormones under control. Nick’s place is nice. Modern. Lots of windows. Warm leather furniture that looks comfortable but not like you can’t eat a cookie on it. There are a couple of paintings here and there on the walls, but the biggest decorative touches are the plants. Lots of them. Everywhere. There are big ones and small ones and hanging ones and drooping ones and flowering ones.
I walk up to the closest plant, a giant thing with split, elephant-shaped dark-green leaves, and can’t resist stroking the shiny leaves. I know next to nothing about plants, but I’m pretty sure it’s a split-leaf philodendron. My roommate in college had one, and she swore I killed it with all my Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails music, but I always thought it was because she would water it with the melted ice from her favorite vodka cranberries.
Again, I don’t know much about plants, but I’m pretty sure they don’t thrive on booze and sugar.
Nick obviously doesn’t listen to rock music or water his plants with anything but the purest, most rarefied water, because each and every one of them is gorgeous. Large, glossy, bright green, and full of life. It’s impossible not to smile while I wander from one to the next.
As I stroke the foliage of another plant—this one with tiny leaves that I absolutely have no idea the name of—I can’t help but think how weird it is to find something so…unruly with life in Nick’s orderly house. They are as wild and luscious and unrestrained as Nick is buttoned-up and restrained. It’s obvious that he doesn’t even try to exert any control over them. He just takes care of them and lets them do whatever they want to do.
Not gonna lie. I am sucked in, wanting to know the why of the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other factor.
I move on to yet another plant—this one a bamboo palm, possibly—and I kind of want to name it. Actually, I want to name every single one of them with ridiculous monikers like Russell and Violeta and Brandywine. Yes, I definitely think the philodendron should be named Brandywine.
Too bad they aren’t my plants to name. They aren’t even my plants to ask about, despite me dying inside with questions.
Nick walks back in with two crystal highball glasses filled with water and hands one to me.
“Thank you,” I say, ignoring the tingle in my fingers where his hand brushed mine. “Where’s Buttercup?”
“Doggy day care.”
I nod and take a sip of water. “So, um, I just wanted to ask you a question about the HOA regulations.”
One of his dark brows goes up, and though his expression doesn’t change in any other way, I can’t help thinking that he’s bracing himself for me declaring the Periwinkle Revolution.
“Anything in particular?” he asks after taking a long, precise sip of his own water. Not a drip slips down his glass, which isn’t exactly a surprise. I’m sure it wouldn’t dare.
“I was wondering how to go about getting a dumpster. I mean, I know how to get a dumpster. I was just wondering if there are any HOA regulations about renting one and parking it in my driveway for a week or two.”
“A dumpster?” Now his second brow joins the first near his hairline. “Don’t you think you should start with something a little easier?” he suggests. “Like mowing the grass?”
“What is it with you and my grass?” I ask, setting my glass down on the coffee table. “Yeah, it’s a little long, but it’s not like it’s a jungle or anything.”
It is.
“I just know that too-long grass is the number one way to get a citation in this neighborhood.” He walks over, gets two white marble coasters out of a small drawer in the end table, and puts one under my glass and the other his. “Besides, if you deal with the grass quickly, then the HOA might let you slide on a few of the other violations for a little while.”
“Like the shutters?” It’s my turn to lift a brow.
He sighs. “Okay, yeah. The shutters are going to cause a problem soon enough—if they haven’t already.”
“Oh, they definitely have. But I have a plan to deal with that.” The plan is pretty simple, actually. It involves me, a ladder, and a couple of cans of all-weather paint in the most boring gray I can find.
It’s a far cry from periwinkle violet, but it’s guaranteed not to piss off the HOA and will keep me from racking up a bunch more fines, and that is all I care about right now. I can afford the dumpster and the earrings I’m wearing, but only if I don’t have a ton of extra fees I suddenly need to pay off.
“Why don’t you want to handle the grass first?” he says, his voice taking that ultra-patient tone one uses for small children and lost animals. “It’s an easy job and will give you a quick win.”
The dude is obsessed with Kentucky bluegrass or fine fescue or Bermudagrass or whatever the hell kind of grass lives in between all the weeds that have taken over my front lawn.
“Maybe I don’t want a quick win,” I shoot back at him.
He rolls his eyes. “Everyone wants a quick win. And a dumpster, while probably necessary, is pretty much the antithesis of quick or win.”
Honestly, if he didn’t look so cute trying so hard to be something he is most definitely not—in other words, nice—I might have found his continued fixation on my grass amusing. But there is no chance I’m going to give him the satisfaction of doing it on his timeline. Partly because I am sick to death of a man telling me what to do or think and partly because mowing the grass just isn’t feasible right now. The only mower I found in Aunt Maggie’s garage is an old-style push mower without a motor. I cannot replace it with a mower that was built in this century, at least not until I get a regular paycheck.
“You know, the lawn mower is older than dirt and in the garage, stored behind about ten thousand magazines in about twenty different piles. So if you want me to mow the grass, you’re going to have to step up and help me figure out how to get a dumpster so I can throw away the clutter and clear a path to the world’s oldest mower. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure the lawn will just keep growing forever.”
Yeah. Take that, Mr. Grass Man!
Whew, I’m all flush and giddy off that little speech. That’s right. I can do things my way.
This time, his sigh is more like a groan—a dark little sound from deep in his throat that sends another frisson of something unexpected down my spine. Attraction or annoyance? It has to be the latter, because I refuse to let it be the former, which would be great if I believed it, especially since my hand shakes a little bit as I pull out my phone and prepare to take notes.
Nick doesn’t notice, or if he does, he’s too staid—or too much of a gentleman—to mention it, for which I am eternally grateful.
Instead, he focuses on the dumpster. “The first thing you’ve got to do is request the forms. The email address you need to use is at the beginning of the HOA documents—which you should read, by the way.”
“I plan to read them,” I say, defensiveness creeping into my tone. “I just haven’t had time yet, and I want to get a jump on ordering the dumpster.”
“Do you even know how to order a dumpster?” he asks.
“Of course I know how to get a dumpster!” There has to be an app for that. “I’m not completely helpless, you know.”
“Oh, I know.” He rubs at the bruise on his forehead. “After you get the forms, you need to fill them out, and you have to take pictures of where you want to put the dumpster while it’s on your property. Once that’s done, you submit the forms, and you should have an answer in two to four weeks.”
“Two to four weeks?” My voice squeaks as anxiety takes hold.
With all the stuff I have to sort through, there is no way I can wait two weeks.
Nick shrugs. “You can ask them to put a rush on it, but there are no promises.”
I’m no more impressed with that answer than I am with any of the other HOA regulations. However, I’m in the suburbs now, and no matter how many times I click the heels of my red Rothy’s together, I’m not going to end up back in my condo in the city, where no one cares what I do inside.
“Well, thank you,” I say. “I really do appreciate your help.”
“Are you sure you know how to get a dumpster?” Nick asks as he walks me back out through the garage.
“I mean, I don’t exactly know.” I glance at the time on my phone. “But I’ve got a lunch date with a guy who’s a contractor, and I’m sure he will be happy to fill me in.”
“A date?” Nick asks, sounding surprised, like he can’t imagine anyone wanting to take me out.
That shock hits a little close to home. Karl spent too many of the last few years making me feel unattractive, and I snap back, “Yeah, a date. And if all goes well, we’re going to come back here and have wild sex in my tall grass.”
Then I march away, not bothering to check his reaction, not bothering to so much as glance back at him, even though I can feel his gaze following me all the way across the street just as Mikey pulls his big-dick truck into my driveway.