by Mariah Dietz
I chuckle. “You get tired of people too?”
One brow goes up as she nods while releasing a deep breath. “I’m so difficult. You’ll learn this quickly, so I may as well tell you.” She flashes a smile that is so honest and genuine it knocks me off balance and rids every sarcastic remark I’d been thinking. “I once stopped eating waffles for three years because I was so tired of eating them,” she admits. “Sometimes I feel like if I had the opportunity to do that with some of my co-workers, I may not see them again for a decade…” This time both of her brows go up, and her head tilts with thought before she purses her lips. “Or maybe ever.” She looks at me as she admits this, and for some reason the level of honesty she’s sharing makes me like her even more. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Rachel. She’s the sister I never had, but sometimes I even need breaks from her.” She shrugs again. “It’s no one’s fault. It’s just how I’m wired, I guess. I’ve always been fairly independent, and then after Hayden was born, I was forced to be. Now I’m probably too independent. It used to drive my ex absolutely crazy.” Her gaze sweeps to the floor, making me question if she meant to bring up the topic or if it’s painful for her to.
“Being independent is a good thing,” I tell her. “And like you said, you’ve had to be. I can’t imagine what it takes to be a single parent. You probably fear nothing.”
Her blue eyes are narrowed with hesitancy as they meet mine, but she smiles, and I know it’s simply to appease me. “The opposite actually. I fear way more now that I’m a mom because I know what I could lose.”
Everything she says dislodges a piece of what Kristy had said.
“So really, you just got tired of looking at things as they were and decided to rip the room apart?”
She lifts a shoulder and scrunches her nose. “Since I’m already showing you all my sides of crazy, I might as well tell you that I can be an anxious mess.”
When I take too long to reply, she continues, “I mean, I’m not like a danger to my health or Hayden’s, or anything like that. I just get stressed out.”
“Why are you so stressed?” My words are cut and dry, and I can tell as soon as they leave my mouth she wasn’t expecting them.
“Hayden’s at his dad’s tonight,” she explains. “This is his weekend, and he asked for an extra day because he didn’t take him earlier this week for one of his days. When he’s gone,” she looks away with her eyes stretched, “Hayden, I mean … when he’s gone, I feel like I’m losing a year of my life because my heart beats so hard and so fast.”
“I don’t understand.”
She shrugs. “Me either,” she admits. “But when he’s away, especially at his dad’s, I just worry.”
My brows delve lower as I consider her words. “What do you think will go wrong?”
“Everything. Things that I know are completely unreasonable. I know there’s no chance most of them would or even could ever happen, but I can’t stop.”
“Give me an example.”
“Like when I hear they’re going to the mall. I know how his dad is with him. He thinks he’ll learn if he gets lost, and all I can think is that a child molester will find him, or an axe murderer, or some woman who will hide him up in a turret where I’ll never see him again.” She looks at me, her cheeks flaming red, and she diverts her eyes. “I told you it’s crazy.”
“And those are just a fraction of your fears?”
A hard laugh breaks through her lips. “A very small fraction. Those three can expand into a million more on their own, not to mention the dozens of other fears, like how he could roll out of his bed that’s way too close to his nightstand and too high at his dad’s, or the fact that they don’t lock their doors at night, or that he’ll stop breathing in the middle of the night, or that he’ll have a nightmare and will be awake and alone all night because his dad won’t talk to him. He just tells him to toughen up and get over things.”
“Do you only feel this way when he’s gone?”
Ella quickly shakes her head. “No, but it’s definitely the worst.”
“What do you do when you start to feel overwhelmed?”
“Lose a few years of life, remember?” Her smile feels like a hoax, but it remains across her face, and for some god-forsaken reason, I find myself doing the same, though my cheeks protest the gesture.
“But what do you do to cope?”
Her eyes round as she looks from me to the mess surrounding us and then back to me. “This.”
“You rearrange your house?”
She shrugs. “Pretty much. I might be the only person you’ve ever met that has rearranged not only their sock drawer, but also their junk drawer, wrapping closet, and laundry room.”
“Wrapping closet?”
“You know, where the gift wrap and bags are all kept.”
“You have a closet devoted to wrapping gifts?”
She gives me a leveling stare, but I swear I see the spark of a smile light up in her eyes. And just like that light in a fire, it spreads so fast I’m caught grinning back at her. “Leave my OCD tendencies alone,” she warns.
“Okay, so let’s try this: the next time your thoughts have you wanting to rip out another already organized room or drawer,” I give her a pointed look, my grin broadening, “or closet apart, come over and I’ll teach you to play pool.”
“I’m terrible at pool.”
“Well, if this happens as often as you make it sound, you might turn into a pro within no time.” I blurt the words faster than I can process them, and my smile shrinks, fearing I may have insulted her.
Ella shakes her head with a small grin tickling the corners of her lips. “I would be,” she admits. “But then I’d be at your house every other weekend and sometimes up to two nights per week.”
“He gets to see him that often?”
“Sometimes.”
Not only is the word vague, but her reaction is as well as she bends to pick up several picture frames that she moves to the shelves and begins to set up. As she carefully selects the right spot for each item, it suddenly feels like I’m being intrusive, like this is her therapy and I’m taking away whatever she gets out of it.
“Are you from here?” she asks suddenly, her back still turned to me. “You don’t have an accent.”
“I was born here,” I tell her. “But moved away when I was in middle school to DC.”
“Really?” Ella turns, a frame still cradled in her hands as she looks to me. “What made you return?”
“My job.” I watch her cross to the bookcase and add the frame there. “Firefighting positions can be tough to find. There isn’t a lot of turnover, and I was young and didn’t have any family that had been in the profession, so when I wanted to begin training and doing more outside of the standard job, I had to rely on people who had known me way back when and hoped I had made a good impression on them.”
“You really think that helped you?”
“I know it did,” I tell her. “This isn’t the smallest town, but when I was a kid it was, and a lot of people remember things. If I’d been caught stealing gum or something stupid, there’s no way they would’ve considered me.”
“I can see that,” Ella says. “This town definitely does seem to be stuck in some of their ways and beliefs.”
Something between a laugh and a scoff leaves me because I doubt she has any clue since she wasn’t here twenty years ago when it really was. “What about you? You don’t have much of a Southern drawl yourself.”
Ella looks over her shoulder at me from where she’s adding novels that are larger than her head to the bookcase, a smile spread across her face making it difficult for me to recall how cold she had been the first time I met her. “What if I told you I was born and raised here?”
“Here?” I ask, confusion marring my brow. “As in here in Silverdale?”
She laughs. “No, but not too far. About four hours northeast of here.”
“What brought you here?” I swallow, waiting to see if any of w
hat Kristy told me was reality.
“It’s complicated,” she tells me, moving her gaze back to another pile of books. “But it was the right decision at the time.”
“Is it still?”
She looks at me, and those blue eyes of hers turn calculating.
“I mean, do you still like living here?”
Ella’s eyebrows both rise, and she sighs deeply. “Honestly, I’m not sure that I’ve ever liked it here. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Rachel is great, my job is amazing, Hayden has a really awesome teacher, but it’s just never felt like home.”
“Have you considered moving?”
“That gets tricky with custody and visitation rights. I don’t want Hayden to ever feel like he has to choose between me and his dad, and I certainly never want to be the one that forces him to decide.”
“Did Hayden handle the divorce well?”
She doesn’t look at me. Keeping her focus on the next row of books, she simply shrugs. “We were never married, but he’s handled growing up with us apart well.”
“But he lives here in town?”
Her shoulders square and her blue eyes narrow, revealing the nerve I’ve struck before she nods.
I want to ask more. Push her into revealing the answers that have stockpiled in my mind. She hasn’t moved. Not an inch since I asked about him being local. And that has me backpedaling, searching for something that will bring us back to solid ground.
“What do you do for work?” I ask, realizing she’s never far from either her computer or phone.
Her shoulders slowly relax, and she lowers her gaze, returning to the task of sorting and organizing her books. “I work for a marketing firm.”
She doesn’t explain anything further, making me chuckle quietly. Ella draws her attention back to me, this time confusion has her eyes narrowing.
“You’re different than most people, you know that?”
“Because I work in marketing?” Her voice rises with question.
“You’re just honest about things. And most people, when you ask them what they do for a living, give you their full title and a list of all their responsibilities as if that somehow makes them more important or superior. You’re just like, ‘eh, I work for a marketing company.’ You probably own the damn thing and I don’t even realize it because you’re so offhand about it.”
Ella grins, and it’s as warm and satisfying as the heat of a flame. “I’m borderline neurotic. It’s easy to make fun of myself.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
11
Ella
My smile fades, but I look to Coen with intrigue, waiting to hear what he’s curious about and equally afraid he’s going to ask me more questions about my ex, causing me to wonder what he already knows. Or thinks he knows.
“Why did Hayden look so sad after his game?”
Pressing my lips into a firm line, I look over the array of frames I just set up. In each one, Hayden’s bright and vibrant smile both fuels and fights the guilt I feel from not knowing. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But, Rachel’s right. He’s a perfectionist, and sadly he does get that from me. I think he was upset with himself that he didn’t throw a curveball…” My words drift off, not wanting to mention my assumption that it was also because Patrick didn’t show up as he had promised, because then I’d be bringing up the exact subject I’m working to avoid.
“You mean he cleans out his sock drawer every other weekend too?”
Releasing a laugh, I shake my head. “No, but he does struggle with wanting to take on too much and be the very best at it.”
“Is that what you want? To be the best at things?”
The impulse to say yes dissolves on my tongue as I consider what drives me into the late hours of the night and prevents me from ever sleeping more than five consecutive hours. “Is it ridiculous that I don’t know why?” I don’t try to patch the unease with a laugh or smile, because that wouldn’t be honest, and for some reason, it’s easy for me to reveal myself and all of my imperfections and shortcomings along with some of these realizations that Coen’s eliciting.
He shakes his head. “Not at all. But I’ve got to tell you, if you want to continue perfecting your grilling skills, I will offer up my assistance in supplying and eating. And for a bonus, I’ll make sure you don’t burn it or your house down.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “That wasn’t me,” I say. “That’s Rachel. She’s the one that didn’t consider the overhang on her deck.”
“That’s right,” Coen says, snapping his fingers. “She seems nice.”
“She’s great,” I say it too fast to make it sound genuine, so I take a deep breath and smile. “Truly, she’s the best. Honestly, if you’re interested in going on a date with her, she’s—”
Coen’s shaking his head so fast it makes me dizzy to watch him. “No. No. No.” He raises a hand and then smiles when he realizes I’m staring at him, likely seeing my discomfort for having just humiliated my best friend. “I’m sure she’s great. The thing is I would never date my neighbor. I actually have a rule against it.”
“A rule?” My tone is teasing, and it isn’t just because I’m grateful he doesn’t seem to latch onto the possibility that Rachel’s interested in him. “You really have a rule for not dating someone who lives near you?”
“You don’t?” he asks.
I shake my head and purse my lips while considering what my hard limits are for dating. “I think I’d be more concerned about them living too far away. After all, credit cards really don’t give that great of miles. Let’s be honest.”
Coen laughs, and it’s deep and comforting and soothing. “I don’t want to date someone in Argentina, just someone that can’t spy on me from their bedroom window.”
I stare at him with mock disapproval. “You’re digging yourself into a hole,” I warn him. “I really don’t think Rachel is the type of woman to spy on you from her bedroom window, and really, why are you so worried about being spied on? Shouldn’t that be the more important matter at hand?”
Coen throws his head back and puts both hands over his face as he laughs before scrubbing his hands over his eyes and cheeks and then over his clean-shaven chin. “Come on. You know!”
“No,” I say, my cheeks aching because they’ve been stretched into a smile that somehow continues widening. “I don’t know.”
His face dips, and I wonder if I’ve embarrassed him, or if he’s realizing how ridiculous he sounds, or if it’s merely a private laugh filled with old jokes and stories that I hope to hear. “I dated this one girl who lived really close to me, and she used to drive by my place all the time to see if I was really at work or lying to her.”
“So, clearly there were trust issues.”
Coen’s eyes grow round. “She was crazy!” he cries.
“All I hear you saying is that you cultivated those trust issues.”
He shakes his head, this time slower while laughing. “She would ask me questions about my yard, and about who was over at my house, and things she’d see from parking outside of my house and watching me.”
My smile is replaced with a frown. “Maybe you should have invited her inside. She probably would have asked fewer questions that way.”
Coen’s eyes shine with laughter, and a subtle scar on his cheek becomes more prominent as he fights back another laugh.
“That is creepy, though,” I admit. “My parents and Rachel have signed me up for different dating things over the years.” I shake my head and think of all the horribly executed and terrible matches I’ve endured. “I might need to adopt your rule.”
“But you’ve got a system now, right? Like you know what you want and don’t want and can just be like bam, bam, bam. Yes, no, no, yes, no chance in hell.”
I’m pretty sure I just giggled, a reaction that generally only Hayden knows how to achieve. “I’m getting better at it.”
With raised eyebrows, he looks at me closely. “Better? Come on. Share your rules with
me. I’ll help you discover the right algorithm.”
“Okay.” I take a seat on my couch so I can focus my attention on what I’ve discovered and learned.
Coen follows me, sitting beside me on the couch, his thigh once again close enough it grazes mine. “Who have you blacklisted?”
“Firefighters.” My answer is automatic and unrehearsed, one I’ve lived by for so many years it’s like my one true anthem.
Coen’s eyebrows rise and then fall just as quickly in an attempt to hide his surprise.
“No offense or anything. I mean, obviously you aren’t interested in me, being that I’m your neighbor.”
“Exactly,” he says. “My one rule, your one rule.”
“Exactly,” I repeat his word. “Plus, I have a son and often self-medicate with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.”
Coen smiles again, but this time it isn’t as bright or as broad, and I wonder if things have just become better or worse between us.
“What else?” he asks.
“Nothing in particular. I try to go into each date with an open mind, and depending on how things go, I kind of have this three-strikes rule.”
“Like baseball?”
“Yeah, except I only let them play for one inning. So by strike three, I’m out. Done. Finito.”
“How do they get strikes?”
“Different things,” I tell him. “Like if they call me by the wrong name, or ask me the same question, or if they don’t like kids, or are trying to make a waitress jealous by taking me to eat while she’s working … you know, the basics.”
He laughs. “What kind of dates have you been on?”
“I once went on a date where the guy showed up with his mother in the car.” When Coen balks, I nod solemnly. “She didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to be out with her impressionable son since I had gotten pregnant as a teenager and might be a bad influence.”
Coen’s eyes grow, humor making him want to laugh but shock and sympathy preventing him from doing so.