Hard to Get Over

by Jenny Gardiner

  Daphne decided she needed a soothing cup of tea and then she’d do ten minutes of meditation before falling asleep for the night. It was her only hope of actually not waking in a fit of rage every hour on the hour.

  IT SEEMED LIKE SHE’D barely drifted off to sleep when she heard a loud pounding on her door. She pulled her eye mask onto her forehead and saw faint traces of light seeping through the edges of the curtains, so it must’ve been morning, right? She glanced at her phone and saw that it was 5:55. a.m. Who pounds on someone’s door at that hour, unless there’s a fire and they need to get you out?

  She creaked out of bed, and Tortellini, excited that the day was about to begin—like it or not—ran circles around Daphne as she walked along the short hallway and down the steps to answer the front door. She flicked on the light and peered out the security peephole only to see the face of Satan. In the form of that dirty rotten scoundrel Brady McGovern. Keeping the chain latched, she opened the door an inch or so.

  “What are you doing? Why are you bothering me at this ungodly hour?”

  “Good morning, sunshine!” Brady said with an exaggerated grin. Ugh, he did always have a gorgeous smile: nice straight, white teeth and cute little dimples perfectly punctuating his mouth. One of those smiles that finds you in a mad make-out session in the middle of a fraternity party and then the next thing you know you’re having wild monkey sex in the guy’s room. Thank goodness she hadn’t done that with him, but she might as well have under the right circumstances. “I brought you a coffee.” He tried to insert it through the inhospitable crack she’d left exposed.

  Daphne could barely keep her eyes open, and what minimal daylight there was pierced her retinas in a particularly rude manner. This was no way to start what was promising to be a not-so-banner day.

  “How do you know I even drink coffee?” Tortellini was goosing Daphne with her wet nose, in her own way announcing she needed to go outside. The last thing Daphne wanted to do was give this man a chance to inch any closer. But it wasn’t fair to Tortellini to make her wait there with legs crossed.

  “Oh, fine,” she said, unlatching the chain. Maybe her dog would tackle the jerk and he’d spill hot coffee on himself. But then again, maybe he’d spill it on her dog and she didn’t want that. She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  Tortellini tore out of the foyer, blew past Brady, circling around briefly to give him a few nudges with her nose, and ran to the front yard where she quickly took care of business. In the meantime, Brady had insinuated his way into Daphne’s home, shoving a coffee cup in one of her hands and a big box of trash bags in the other.

  Daphne shook her head and wrinkled her brow. “What is this for?”

  He aimed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the adjacent side of the building. “We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do. Turns out old Aunt Violet was a bit of a hoarder. Place is filled to the brim with shit.”

  Daphne gasped. “Shit! How dare you!” Her tired eyes grew wide with outrage. “Violet had a lovely collection of things that made her heart happy. And besides, what is it to you what’s in that house? It all belongs to me!”

  “To you?”

  “Yes, Violet left it for me. She knew I would treat it with tender loving care.”

  “Care? It’s a bunch of garbage that needs to be carted off to the dump.” He took a swig of coffee. “Sorry, my time’s all off. Been up since four. I went online and found several reputable businesses that will haul off junk within days.”

  “Haul off junk?” Glaring at him, she shook her head. “There will be no hauling off of anything!”

  “I took the liberty of filling up a couple of trash bags already.” He pointed toward three large garbage bags filled to the brim along the curb.

  Her eyes grew wide. “You what?”

  He pointed at her eye mask, still perched on her forehead. “Nice look, by the way.”

  She shrieked and began to pace. “Who the hell gave you permission to saunter in here and act like you own the place?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I do own the place.”

  She pulled off her eye mask and tossed it on the nearby sofa. “Half the place. Apparently.” Under her breath she muttered, “Curse Violet for remembering his wretched existence.”

  “I heard that.”

  Daphne lifted a brow and shrugged. “Good. In the meantime, let me make myself abundantly clear: you do not have my permission to throw those things out.” She pointed with unmistakable emphasis at the menacing bags. “You need to drag those back into the house this instant. And make sure you don’t break anything.”

  “But we need to clean this place out. I want to get it listed and sold, so I can go back on the road again.”

  She laughed a short, unhappy laugh. “So like you to screw me and run.”

  He turned his head and squinted. “Come again?”

  “Huh.” She pursed her lips. “Probably the last words I heard out of your mouth before you left me.”

  He gulped. She seethed. It was all coming back to her. He’d stayed overnight at her place after graduation. Sometime before dawn, he’d taken her on the kitchen table, and then in the shower stall. They’d fallen back asleep, and later he woke her as he’d inched down her body, burying his mouth in her pussy and bringing her to climax twice. He’d joked to her about making her come again as she’d drifted back to sleep. Yet he was gone when she woke the next time. From lover to ghost in the blink of an eye.

  “Look, Daphne, let’s let that be water under the bridge.” He ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair.

  Under the bridge my ass. Why do they always want to let bygones be bygones when they’re the offenders? God, she hated that he looked so good. And that he looked so much like he did the last time she saw him in the early morning light, his blue eyes twinkling. Only he was more of a man now, filled out, his shoulders and chest strong and his waist tapered in that sexy way she couldn’t resist. How was it possible that this jerk had, out of the blue, just shat himself into her life like this? It had taken her too long to get over him because of the way he’d abandoned her. It left her so unable to trust a guy. Because, well, who does that? Who leaves without a word, a note, nothing? It would have been downright gentlemanly of him to dump her via text.

  Closing her eyes for a minute, she put herself back to that night. They’d made love. Wait, yuck, that sounded soooo stupid and gullible when she thought of it like that, particularly knowing now that they were simply two horny college kids in the throes of a last hurrah before the real world encroached. “Made love” sounded like they cared, and while she thought they both did, clearly he hadn’t, so in hindsight, she had to think of the whole affair more transactionally. They fucked.

  Yet she knew that to her it was more than that. They had only been dating a couple of months, but still, it felt like they’d been together much longer. Which was all the more reason his abrupt departure stung as much as it did. It was as if they’d been teammates, but she thought they were playing to win while he was merely playing to get traded to a better team. Or something like that.

  “If by ‘that’ you mean you ghosting me after banging me senseless for the better part of graduation night into the following morning, well then, no. I’m not going to view that as ‘water under the bridge.’” She made air quotes as she used a mocking tone. “Maybe it’s cool for you to just fuck and run, but it’s pretty disgusting behavior, and in my book anyone who does that deserves to have a place in the Dickhead Hall of Fame.”

  He scrunched his nose. “There’s no such thing.”

  She shook her head like she was talking to a complete idiot. “Well, there should be. And if there was, you’d be front and center. Your picture would be featured at the box office. On the tickets, for that matter. And there would be a giant statue of you smack-dab in the middle of it. Where you would be memorialized as the asshole that you are.”

  He whistled long and low. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

  “A wo
man scorned? Are you kidding me? I fell asleep thinking I was falling in love with you and woke up to realize that instead I should have always hated you. And now here you are, trying to railroad my dear friend Violet’s home into a sale so you can get on the road again? And while you’re at it, screw me yet again by leaving me homeless? What, is there some woman you need to sleep and run with?”

  “This is not the time or place for this discussion,” he said, a hint of pleading to his voice. Shame that groveling wasn’t going to work for him. The day Brady ditched her was the day Daphne became Hard-hearted Hannah toward him. She had no intention of extending him even the slightest of courtesies: not for his jet lag, not for the loss of his aunt (and obviously he didn’t care about that), not for his need to get back to wherever he wanted to go. But right now, she wanted to get back to sleep.

  “You’re right, Brady. This is not the time or place. Right now, the only thing this is the time for is me returning to sleep. So forgive me, but I’ve had enough of this discussion.” She grabbed her eye mask and pulled it over her eyes, then slammed the door, only then realizing no way would she be able to find her way back to bed blindfolded, so she pulled it back over her head and stormed upstairs, hating the sway that Brady McGovern had on her, even all these years later.

  Chapter Four

  WELL, THAT DIDN’T GO so well. Understatement du jour. Brady shook his head and chuckled to himself as he stood on the stoop, wondering what force of nature had just plowed into him. That was one seriously ticked-off woman and he’d have to figure out a Plan B for this one.

  Meanwhile, how had he never before realized what a turn-on a pissed-off woman was? ’Cause damn, her standing there all enraged at him in her flimsy little nightgown (which was not nearly as opaque as she might have believed but he’d never point it out) had gotten him all sorts of hot and bothered. Especially at the ass crack of dawn with the first glimmer of sunlight illuminating those stiff nipples. Yeah, her words greeted him one way, but those nips welcomed him the way a man wanted to be greeted in the morning. Hello, sailor. Maybe that was why he couldn’t seem to focus on whatever it was she was ranting about. He could only think about how much he’d like to get his lips fastened to those things. Then maybe she’d stop the tirade and go with the flow. Surely a little male-induced pleasure would overcome her ire.

  Although he could hardly blame her for thinking he was a dick. He had been a dick. A calculated one at that, if he were honest with himself. Had he been thinking about her, he’d never have bailed the way he did. But he was a dumb college guy and he wanted put his feet on the pavement and go, wherever, whenever, however. If he seriously thought about it, maybe he’d admit that he’d gotten spooked by whatever was going on between them. They had clicked so easily. The short time they’d dated seemed a lifetime, in a good way. But that had scared him—the last thing he wanted straight out of college was a relationship to anchor him.

  For too long he’d been chomping at the bit to go, and he hadn’t figured out how to enunciate that to her while they were dating. He’d mentioned his plans a few times, and she dismissed them. She was so convinced he’d stop with those fantasies about wandering and find a “real job.” But the last thing he, of all people, wanted was to be tethered to a desk somewhere. He didn’t know how to stay put, and he wasn’t going to have some woman change that, even if he did have feelings for her. He figured she’d catch on at some point but she didn’t. She’d even made some peripheral references to “love” and that made him even more squeamish. Love? Hell no. He was most definitely not getting roped into changing his dreams because she had the erroneous belief they were in love. They’d been in lust, in the best of ways. And they’d had lots of fun together, but love? That would have suggested he was willing to settle down for a woman, and that would have been impossible.

  In fact, Brady truly had no appreciation for the power of romantic love and a life partnership until he lost his parents and realized how much their relationship rooted him, despite himself. They’d packed up and moved so regularly that Brady never did learn how to attach himself to anyone for long. Yet he realized too late what his mother had sacrificed to let his father have a career that required them to pick up and go at a moment’s notice. The experience had given him an appreciation for love and sacrifice that he’d never quite paid attention to or appreciated when they were alive.

  But a whole lot of good that was going to do him now. He needed to come to a meeting of the minds with this chick, and fast. The last thing he wanted was to have to stick around now. Clearly she wasn’t the forgiving kind, and shacking up side by side with Daphne Sweeney would be a serious slice of hell.

  TAKING A PAGE FROM Daphne’s plan, Brady headed back to sleep. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. He’d intentionally chosen to sleep on the sofa rather than in what he had pegged as the master bedroom in case his aunt—or whatever she was to him—had keeled over there. Bad juju to sleep in a death bed like that.

  But that meant lying on an overly soft piece of furniture that was probably built during the Eisenhower administration and trying hard to ignore the tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock. Not to mention the damned hourly announcements the thing made. Whoever thought a grandfather clock was a good idea? Ridiculous. Sleep would forever be elusive with that thing spouting off. He was sorely tempted to disassemble the damned clock so it would shut up, but God forbid he do that and Cranky McCrankypants next door got wind of it. She’d lop off his balls.

  Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and started rifling through some chest of drawers in the dining room until he found a cache of tablecloths. He grabbed about ten of them and started tossing them atop the clock, one after the other, in the hopes of at least muffling the noise. There was a special place in hell for the dude who invented those damned clocks. He bet the inventor’s grandfather never spoke to him again. Standing in the living room, he admired his handiwork: the thing looked like a ghost looming in the corner. Brady hoped that at least the ghost would be a little more subdued.

  BRADY FINALLY WOKE around four, his stomach growling. If he didn’t figure out a car sitch ASAP, or he’d end up gnawing on his hand. In the meantime, he went online to find something Uber Eats would deliver. He’d take a chance and order something for the surly one next door, hoping that food would be the way to her heart. More like to her soul, ’cause it wasn’t like her heart was his problem. What would an irritable woman like her want for dinner, though? He didn’t want to risk making her angry that he got something she hated. But he didn’t dare ask in advance, for fear she’d shut him down. He wanted to try to bond over shared plates. History was rife with situations where food had helped to settle differences, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to go with something as mundane as pizza, which felt a little cheap. Chinese delivery seemed cliché. He decided to flip the carryout idea on its head and order Afghani food. If she’d ever eaten it, no doubt she loved it. And if she hadn’t, well, it was high time she gave it a try.

  Chapter Five

  “YOU’RE SURE YOU DON’T mind staying in tonight and watching Netflix?” Daphne said to her friend Binti Swapna who’d shown up with two bottles of wine after Daphne tried to bail on their plans to go out to a bar.

  “Dude, I’m just happy I didn’t have to put on makeup. Besides, you’ve got the most comfortable couch of anyone I know. Staying in will be totally perfect!” Binti set the bottles on the kitchen counter and rifled through the drawer to get the opener while Daphne grabbed two stemless glasses from the cabinet next to the dishwasher. Her friend cut the foil and extracted the cork from the first bottle, pouring them each a glass.

  “You hungry now, or do you want to wait before we order dinner?”

  “I had a late lunch, so I’m good holding off, if you are.”

  “K, let me scoop Tortellini’s dinner into her bowl and get her fed and we can start the show.”

  Tortellini had been drooling nearby, already awaiting dinner, so as soon as she heard the scoop in the
kibble, she was on Daphne’s heels, nudging her ankles to hurry up and feed her. Daphne placed the bowl on the floor and the dog attacked it as if she hadn’t eaten in a month.

  “Imagine if we went at it with a meal like that,” Binti said, laughing. “Like the waiter serves your food and you inhale it, using your hands and mouth.”

  “Right? How hilarious would it be to devour food so fast you didn’t even chew it? People would be so mortified.”

  “I like food too much to not savor it.”

  “Yeah, true dat.”

  They plopped down on either end of the large sectional sofa, the dog in between them, and started the movie. Not ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. Tortellini jumped up from the sofa and careened to the foyer.

  “Honestly, my doorbell has rung more times in the past day than in the past decade. Who is bothering me this time?” Daphne got up, padded to the door, and peered through the peephole.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. You again?”

  “Who?” Her friend stood and walked toward the door.

  “Oh my God, I haven’t filled you in yet. It’s this horror of a guy I had the grave misfortune of dating in college till he ghosted me the day after graduation. And the worst coincidence ever—you know how I told you that Violet left the house to me and some random distant relative?”

  Binti tucked her straight black hair behind her ears and nodded.