by J. L. Berg
How far down does it go?
I caught up to her and we walked silently, side by side, around the building along a little pathway that led to a small garden tucked between the office buildings.
“The dentist next door thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted to plant a garden back here, but I think he likes it now. I catch him back here, eating his lunch every once in a while.”
I took a look around and admired the way she’d grown vines to creep up the building, creating an intimate atmosphere that made me almost forget where I was.
“It’s great,” I said.
She motioned toward a chair, and I took a seat, watching her do the same. My foot started tapping like a jackhammer in anticipation of what she might say.
Was there something wrong with Noah?
Had I done everything wrong?
Shit, I’m a terrible parent.
I felt her hand on my knee, and I steadied.
“Whoa there. You look like you’re about to explode,” she said.
“Sorry, I’m nervous.”
She smiled. “You have nothing to be nervous about, Jackson. Noah is a great kid, a perfectly normal kid.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding for probably months. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Parents tend to forget that kids can be affected by stress just like adults can. Moving, leaving his friends, puberty—it’s a lot for a young boy to take on. He’s just confused and acting out.”
“That’s what I kept telling myself, but I was so worried—”
“That you weren’t enough?”
“He told you?” I asked.
She smiled warmly. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that his mom has been out of the picture for a while. He didn’t mention her once.”
“She left when he was a newborn, and she hasn’t been back since.”
Rather than saying I’m sorry or giving me those eyes that most people do—the sad ones that people always thought passed for empathy, but they were really just more pathetic than anything—she just leaned back in her chair.
“Don’t ever think you’re not enough. He’s doing great.”
“So, are you saying he doesn’t need therapy?” I asked.
She laughed. “I’m telling you that Noah is simply stressed, and like all stress, it will pass. He needs to learn how to work through it. Whether you choose to let me help with that or not is your decision, but I would never pressure you into therapy.”
I gave her a dubious look. “You’re not a very good saleswoman, Miss Prescott.”
“If I were in this for the money, I would have become a psychiatrist. But then, I wouldn’t have this garden, would I?” She raised her arms and tilted her head toward the rays of sun filtering down between the buildings.
This New Age counselor looked like a Greek goddess, and she’d planted a garden behind her office.
What else would this woman surprise me with today?
~Liv~
Considering my last patient had gone late, I wasn’t at all surprised when my phone started buzzing seconds after I’d walked through my front door that night.
“Hi, Mia,” I answered, shuffling around the bags of groceries in my arms.
“You didn’t even bother checking caller ID, did you?” she pressed.
I could hear the slight edge of laughter in her voice.
“Nope.” I set the cloth grocery bags down on the counter before rubbing my wrists where the straps had dug into my skin.
“Am I really that predictable?” she asked.
I stared at the bags boasting the words, I recycle. I’m awesome, in bright, bold green font.
“Mmm…yes,” I answered. “But I still love you.”
“Well, if I’m that predictable, why did I call?”
“The hot dad,” I said in a deadpan voice.
“Damn it!” she shouted, causing me to laugh. “I really am predictable. Oh well, I can live with it.”
“Live with what?” a deep male voice asked in the background.
“I’m predictable,” she said, answering Garrett’s question.
“That thing you did last night wasn’t predictable,” I heard him say in the background, his voice taking on a rough tone.
Mia’s shrill laughter came blaring through the speaker, and I briefly pulled my phone away from my ear.
“Ew-uh…come on! I’m, like, right here!” I begged as a growl echoed through the phone.
Seriously? A growl?
“Down, boy.” She laughed. “Let me talk to Liv. I’ll be off the phone in a few minutes, Garrett!”
“Five minutes.”
Those two words were so heated that I almost had to fan myself.
Lucky bitch.
“Okay, and then I’m all yours,” Mia finally said breathlessly.
I laughed. “You called me, remember?”
“What? Oh, right! The hot dad!”
“Yeah. What about him?” I said, playing it off with a bit of nonchalance.
“What about him? He was gorgeous, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off of you.”
Really?
“He was probably staring at me like a person would look at a rare bird in the zoo. I was just something exotic and different.”
“There was that definitely. I’m used to seeing people look at you in that way, but no, this was different. He was into you—or at least, he was attracted to you.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” I asked.
“No, absolutely not. You can be attracted to someone but not be into that person. The sexy celebrity on the cover of this weeks’ People Magazine? Yeah, he’s attractive, but I’m not into him.”
Note to self: Go back to store and buy People Magazine.
I found myself nodding even though she wasn’t around to see it. “Okay, I get that. But none of this matters. I don’t date my clients.”
“Most of your clients are under the age of eighteen,” she scoffed.
“You know what I mean—no entanglements. It’s unethical.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she answered. “But you have to agree, he was hot.”
A wicked grin escaped my lips. “He was the sexiest damn thing to ever walk through my door,” I admitted.
“Good. Well, at least he’ll make good eye-candy for a while.”
Other than a noncommittal, “Mmm,” I didn’t answer.
Mia had signed a nondisclosure to work in my office. She understood that what happened in my office stayed there, but I would still make sure to keep all my clients’ personal business to myself. Whether or not Jackson and Noah would come back to me was up in the air, but explaining that to Mia would require giving her more information on Noah than I was willing to divulge.
“Hey, you never told me about your new neighbors,” she said, obviously catching on to my silence.
“There’s not much to tell. I haven’t met them yet. But I plan to—soon.”
“That sounds ominous.”
I huffed out a frustrated breath. “They destroyed Mrs. Reid’s flower garden between our houses.”
“The one you’ve been maintaining for her?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s awful. Who would be so careless? What are you going to do?”
“Put my groceries away. Have a relaxing nice dinner, and then I’m going to march over there and introduce myself to the smoldering asshole.”
“Smoldering?” she questioned.
“Never mind.”
~Jackson~
I was never going to move again—ever.
I’d die old and fat in this little old house with that creepy toilet themed wallpaper, and shag carpet. My ass was never leaving.
How did two people accumulate so much shit?
Just when I’d thought I cleared through a decent amount of boxes, I’d turn around to find more waiting for me. Were they multiplying?
“Hey, Noah! You want to offer a hand here, kid?” I hollered up the stairs as I arc
hed and stretched my sore, stiff back.
There was no answer.
“Noah!”
“What?” he yelled back.
This was what life had become in our house—screaming between floors.
“Come down and help unpack some of these boxes!”
He miraculously appeared at the top of the stairs with his phone in hand. “Do I have to?”
“No, it was just a suggestion. Carry on,” I remarked sarcastically.
He rolled his eyes and trotted down the stairs.
“Do me a favor, and put the phone away for ten minutes. Do you think you could manage that?”
“Yeah, okay,” he answered as he swung his dark blond hair out of his eyes.
“So, how was your meeting with Miss Prescott?” I asked as I cut open another box labeled Living Room.
“It was okay.” He sat down next to me and started shuffling through a box.
Kids are so descriptive.
“Okay? Just okay? You nearly bounced out of there like you’d just visited an Xbox convention.”
“She’s just fun to hang out with. She’s easy to talk to I guess.”
“Well, what kinds of things did she talk to you about?” I pressed, pulling a few knickknacks out of tissue paper and placing them on the mantel.
“I don’t know. Stuff.”
“Like?”
“Like, just stuff, Dad, okay?” He popped up to a standing position, shoving his palms in his pockets.
I held my hands up, waving my white flag, as I tried to calm him. “Okay, no more questions. Sorry.”
“I’m gonna go back upstairs,” he mumbled.
I nodded, feeling defeated, as I watched his lanky frame flee from my presence.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to remind myself of what Miss Prescott had said earlier that day. Everyone handled stress differently—even kids. I had to believe he’d come around, and I’d eventually see a glimpse of the carefree boy I once knew.
I began to break down the box I’d just unloaded when the doorbell echoed throughout the house.
That was something else to add to the list of things that needed to be fixed.
My grandmother couldn’t have gone with a standard buzzer or even one of those normal ding-dong chimes. No, she had gone all out and bought the most annoying doorbell ever created. Every time the little button was pressed, a classical symphony would play through the tiny electrical speaker. If Mozart knew his music would one day sound that horrid, he probably would have burned every last sheet of paper he owned.
“Coming,” I called, putting the blade back into the X-Acto knife. I set it down on the couch and jogged over to the door just as silence finally filled the house once again.
Grabbing the ornate handle, I pulled the door open and found myself face-to-face with an armful of flowers—and legs that went on for days.
“Do you have any idea how much time I spent on these?” a shrill yet somewhat familiar voice shouted from behind the flowers.
“Um…”
“Don’t you have any respect for the former owner of this house?” she asked.
That piqued my interest. “What do you mean?” I reached out my hand and slowly lowered the flowers to try to find the face that matched the long legs I’d been admiring.
I got about halfway when recognition blossomed across the mystery woman’s face.
Flowers and soil crashed to the entryway, and I found myself gazing down at the raven-haired beauty I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.
“Miss Prescott? I didn’t realize you made house calls…and brought flowers,” I joked, looking down at the mess she’d made on my doorstep.
This further cemented my beliefs that I needed to stick with my plan of finding a nice, normal girl-next-door type. This was what happened when I sought out something different and exotic. I ended up a single father with a pile of dead flowers at my front door.
“You!” she exclaimed. “You’re my new neighbor?”
Confusion suddenly spiraled through me, and I looked around the neighborhood like it would spring forth some clue I hadn’t noticed. “You live…here?” I asked.
She turned slightly and pointed to the house directly next door. “Right there.”
Our eyes met, and I felt the blood draining from my face. “We’re next-door neighbors?”
“It appears so.”
“Fuck me,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Why don’t you come inside? We obviously have some things to discuss.”
She glanced down at the flowers strewed all over my front stoop and proceeded to step over the mess with her head held high. I couldn’t help the slight chuckle that escaped my parted lips.
“Oh, shut up,” she said. A tiny grin appeared as she passed me.
“Sorry about the mess. I’m starting to think I might never unpack everything.” We passed through the entryway into the living room and I watched her eyes take everything in.
Swimming in their depths were genuine emotions I had yet to understand. Her fingers trailed over the wood trim of the furniture and ornate fireplace mantel lovingly as if they had memories and tenderness. “Why does it all need to be unpacked at once?” she finally asked. “Is there any reason it all needs to be put away right this minute?”
“No.”
“Then, take some time to settle,” she suggested, finally picking a place on the old love seat my grandmother had owned for decades. Once again, her fingers quietly traced the floral pattern, over and over like a prayer.
“I just thought it would be better for Noah if everything had a place right away,” I admitted, not really sure why I was telling this woman anything. She’d just accosted me with plants.
“What Noah needs is you, plain and simple. If you are stressed, he will be stressed. Take a moment, and enjoy this new life of yours.”
“I thought you came over here to yell at me?” I quipped,
“Occupational hazard,” she admitted with a shrug, before adding, “Has he ever been to Richmond?”
“Only when he was younger and then briefly this year for my grandmother’s funeral. This was her house.”
“You’re Mrs. Reid’s grandson?” she asked, her eyes round with surprise.
“Yeah. Why? Did you know her?”
She smiled sweetly, looking downward as if seeking out a fond memory from the recesses of her mind. “Yeah, Mrs. Reid and I were very attached to each other. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for several years, and…well, let’s just say she became like a grandmother to me.”
Her eyes lifted once again, and I watched her wipe away a lone tear.
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I haven’t been around much and I don’t remember much of the funeral. It’s all a blur.”
“I wasn’t there,” she answered. “My practice, as well as most of my clients, was still fairly new. I hated the idea of having to cancel on them. I felt terrible about missing the funeral.”
“I’m sure she would have understood,” I offered, finally moving across the room to take a seat across from her. Leaning forward, I folded my hands and took a deep breath. “Sorry about the flowers,” I said. “I’ll replace them.”
She waved her hands in front of her, shaking her head. “No, it’s all right. I’ll take care of it.”
I nodded and watched her fiddle with the bracelets around her wrist. They caught the light from the lamp, sending shimmery streaks across her face and skin.
“I guess this puts a kink in our former relationship, doesn’t it?” I finally asked.
She looked up at me, and I was once again startled by her natural beauty. Her rich dark brown eyes were the color of cocoa, and her hair fell across her shoulders like ebony waves of silk. The desire to reach out and touch her was nearly beyond my control, yet I somehow managed to stay put.
She might be the girl next door, but she was definitely not my girl next door. I needed normal and Liv with the vibran
t tattoo and crazy flower beds seemed to be anything but.
“Unfortunately, yes. I’m sorry. I think it would be wise for you to seek other counseling options for Noah, if he is still in need of them. Having me next door will only confuse him of my role in his life. If I had the choice, I’d rather be his neighbor and friend than his counselor.”
I chuckled briefly. “You just really don’t like to be paid, do you?”
She laughed. “It’s not about money to me, Mr. Reid. I’ve had money, and it does nothing for the soul.”
“Call me Jackson, Miss Prescott.”
“Only if you call me Liv.”
“Deal.”
“And what do you do, Jackson, to feed your soul?” she asked, her sculpted dark eyebrow rising in challenge.
“I’m a lawyer,” I answered.
She grinned as she rose from the love seat. I followed her to the door and watched as she stopped and turned toward me.
“That feeds your wallet, not your soul, Jackson. Figure out the difference.”
As I clicked the lock in place, her parting words swam around in my head, reminding me of a time when I’d sworn to make the world a better place. Through my law degree, I was going to change the world one client at a time.
Unfortunately, single fathers didn’t have time for such lofty dreams.
~Liv~
I loved Saturdays.
There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. When the weather warmed up like it did during the summer months, there was nothing better than waking up to a window full of sunshine and a day full of opportunity.
Before I’d started my own practice, my life had been less structured. My schedule had been up in the air and never the same. I enjoyed the regular schedule that having my own practice provided. I did, however, miss running errands at eleven thirty on a Tuesday morning when no one else was out but tired stay-at-home moms and other random people like me. Now, I instead had to do my shopping late at night, or risk going on the weekends when the lines were out the door, and patience was nearly nonexistent.
But not today.
Today, I had nothing planned but some serious time with my latest paperback and a little sunshine.
After grabbing my purple robe off the back of my door, I loosely wrapped it around my body. I walked downstairs and ran my hand along the polished wooden banister, loving the way the old grain felt against the pads of my fingers.
