Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Epilogue
The Deadbeat Next Door
By
Katharine Sadler
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2017 by Katharine Sadler
All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Carrie
“Have you read The Hunger Games?” Jonas asked. He was seated across from me at Vince’s Italian and Barbecue restaurant, my date for the night. He was a librarian and he was cute in a boyish, Peter Pan sort of way. He should have been perfect for me. He was everything I was looking for in a man. He was employed, he valued education and books, and he loved kids.
“I’m a ninth-grade English teacher,” I said, since he hadn’t asked. He hadn’t asked a single question about me or revealed a single thing about himself, yet. Not during the fifteen-minute car ride, not during the endless bread sticks, and not over our entrees of pasta. “I have definitely read The Hunger Games.”
He smiled, his eyes a bit glazed. I imagined he was in a food coma, having just inhaled his meal, chicken parmesan, in less than five minutes. I wondered if he had a detachable jaw like a snake, because I could imagine no other way he’d managed to fit that much food in his mouth at one time. “I like the part where she’s in the woods and she’s talking to the guy. There’s so much character depth there.”
“Sure is.” I had no idea what scene he was referring to and I really didn’t care. My students could give a better book report with their eyes glued shut. Jonas had, it seemed, read every book ever written and wanted to discuss each of them in turn. I’d tried, at first, to engage in the conversation, until I realized he really didn’t want or care about my opinion.
“The author is quite talented in her ability to juxtapose fight scenes with meaningful character development.”
Awww, he used the word juxtapose correctly in a sentence, I should marry this guy. Except I’d probably murder him in his sleep and spend the rest of my life in jail. The waitress appeared and dropped the check, split at Jonas’ request, on the table.
I grabbed my purse, signed my credit card slip and stood. “Well, thank you for a lovely evening, Jonas. I’m ready to go.”
He stared up at me, his eyes round. He’d been talking and I’d interrupted him. My mother would say my lack of manners was to blame for my single-status. I would argue with her and point out that having sole guardianship of my darling nephew Harrison for most of my early twenties was more likely to blame, but my mother hated to be contradicted, much like my date, so I didn’t bother. “I thought we might sit and discuss books for a bit longer,” he said.
“I’d really rather you just take me home.”
“Okay.” He reached for the check with the speed of a sloth on tranquilizers and signed it like he was encased in glue. When he looked up at me, his blue eyes were lit with a new glow. He really did have the prettiest eyes I’d ever seen. “Would you like to come back to my place?”
“No. I want to go home alone. You seem like a really nice guy, but I don’t want to see you again.” That sounded harsh, but I felt no shame or embarrassment. I’d been on twenty dates in the past eighteen months and every one had been worse than the last. I’d found that being blunt, up-front, and honest was the only way to handle a bad date. It was best not to let the guy think he had a chance of changing my mind.
Jonas’ cheeks reddened and he frowned. He huffed out a sigh and stood. “Maybe you should find your own ride home.”
I considered my options. He worked with my best friend, Dilly, and I could use her as the leverage I needed to get him to stop being an ass and take me home, but I didn’t really feel like spending even a minute longer with him. “That’s fine,” I said. “Have a nice night, Jonas. I’m sure I’ll see you at the library.”
My easy acceptance of his refusal to drive me home only seemed to make him angrier. “Just don’t expect me to clear any more of your late fees,” he said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He and his pretty eyes stormed out and I made my way to the bar. I sat at an empty stool, ordered a martini, and called Dilly.
“I take it the date didn’t go well,” Dilly said, when she answered. She’d had such high hopes for me and Jonas. I should have gone with my instinct, and the fact that I’d never had even a single butterfly flutter in the guy’s presence, and turned down the date.
“He stranded me at Vince’s,” I said.
Dilly sighed. “I told him not to take you out to eat.”
I sipped my martini and swallowed the urge to scream at my best friend, because I knew she meant well. Dilly and I had been best friends since pre-school and she always meant well. “So you were aware of his supernatural ability to fit an entire bowl of pasta in his mouth in one bite?”
Dilly snort-laughed. “He’s not that bad, Carrie. Did you ever think maybe you’re too picky?”
“He talked about books the entire time.”
“You love books.”
“He didn’t even ask me where I work.”
“That’s because I already told him. He was probably just nervous. He’s a really good guy when you get to know him.”
“A really good guy who stranded me at Vince’s.” I bit my lip to stop myself from growling at her. It wasn’t her fault. “Please, just come get me.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen.”
I hung up and put my phone on the bar top. I rubbed my temples and took a sip of my drink. I just wanted to go on one date where I wasn’t counting the minutes until I got home, just one date where I felt some sort of attraction to the man sitting across from me. Was that too much to ask? Okay, so I also wanted to meet Mr. Right and get married and have four kids, so I had to have high standards. Standards were a good thing. Not a bad thing. Never a bad thing.
“Is that what you wore?” I heard Dilly before I saw her. Her razor-sharp laughter and high-volume words were hard to miss. I loved her, I really did, but she had so much energy and attacked every aspect of her life with such enthusiasm, and I wasn’t…I just wasn’t the same. I liked to take my time, to move through life quietly and to draw less attention. Sometimes, she just made me feel tired and decades older than her. Maybe it was because I’d been born twelve years after my only sister when my parents were fifty, or maybe it was because I’d spent the best years of my twenties raising my nephew. Probably a combination of both.
I spun on my stool to see Dilly in a pair of fuzzy pajama pants and a tank top, her hair up in messy bun on top of her head, no make-up on her small, delicate face. To look at her, you’d think she was a china doll, too fragile to touch. And then she’d speak and shatter the illusion.
“Dilly,” I said. “It’s like thirty degr
ees out, where’s your coat?”
She grinned and climbed onto the stool next to me. “I rushed out of the house without it so I could save your ass.” She ordered a virgin strawberry daiquiri - Dilly never drank if she was driving - and spun to face me. “Can we please talk about what you’re wearing? I told you, no sweater sets on first dates.”
I looked down at my slate-colored slacks and my pink sweater set. “It’s chilly and I wanted to look nice.”
“You look like my eighty-year-old grandmother,” she said. “Where are the clothes we bought on our last shopping trip?”
“In my closet.” I sipped my drink and pretended her words didn’t hurt. Dilly had taken me shopping, but she hadn’t listened when I told her I preferred my clothes not to be skin-tight and revealing. She said she was trying to dress me for my age, but she was really just trying to dress me like her. “I like this outfit, I feel comfortable in it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “So, will you see Jonas again?”
I gave her a look. We knew each other well enough that words weren’t necessary.
She frowned. “I’m sorry. I really thought you would like him.”
I softened. Maybe it was time I started saying no to set-ups and blind dates. “I think I’m ready to try one of those dating sites you’ve been harassing me about.”
“I don’t harass,” she said. “I suggest. Graciously.”
“Riiiggghhhhttt. I just want a date who at least pretends he’s excited to be out on a date with me. Is that too much to ask?”
“You said the funeral director was excited to be out with you.”
“He was just excited to have a captive audience to tell about embalming techniques.”
She grimaced. “I’m all for the dating sites, Carrie, but maybe…Maybe you need a break from dating. You’ve had extraordinarily bad luck. I mean I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a maggot farmer, but somehow you found him and dated him.”
“He was actually the nicest guy in the bunch. I introduced him to Harrison and they still get together once in a while to talk bugs.” My nephew wanted to be a bug scientist after college.
Dilly shuddered. “So what was wrong with him?”
“Well, he still lives with his parents for one thing, but the biggest problem was that his idea of a good time was going out and singing karaoke really, really badly. He thinks he’s a great singer and I just didn’t have the heart to tell him he’s not. Plus, there was zero physical attraction.”
“Right.” Dilly spun on her seat so that she was facing me, her knees against my thighs, her face animated in a way that was never, ever good news for me. “You’ve gone out with how many men since Harrison went to college and you decided it was finally okay to have a man over?”
“Twenty.” Was it weird I knew that number off the top of my head? It was probably weird, but I’d been keeping track, because I believed in the law of averages and my run of bad luck could only last so long. The last guy I’d dated and actually liked was Larry Whitmore in college. He’d dumped me after two months because I never had time to do more than have sex and fall asleep on him every three days or so. He felt I was using him, and didn’t believe me when I tried to explain I was just busy with work and trying to get my degree early so I could get a place and have Harrison live with me. Come to think of it, Larry Whitmore was kind of a jerk, too. “You think I’m cursed, don’t you?” Dilly wasn’t a crazy person, or a believer in magic or fairies, but she had a thing about curses.
She nodded, her eyes wide. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Have you pissed anyone off or dumped some poor guy who didn’t deserve it?”
“If I found some guy to date who didn’t deserve to be dumped, I’d marry his ass before he got away.”
She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! You’ve cursed yourself.”
“I don’t think—”
She shook her head. “Love is a delicate, finicky magic of its own, and—”
“You don’t believe in magic.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe in magic like woo-woo fairies and disappearing unicorns.” She waved her hands around to demonstrate fairies flying. “And I—”
“Excuse me,” a man said. He was old enough to be my father.
“No, we don’t need a drink and we’re not giving you our numbers,” Dilly said. “I just want to talk to my girlfriend, here.”
“That’s great,” the man said. “But what I just want to know if you’ll be leaving soon. Your drinks are finished and the restaurant’s got an hour wait for a table, I was hoping to get a seat at the bar.”
Dilly’s eyes widened even more. “Oh, no. Your curse is rubbing off on me.”
I laughed at her fearful expression and jumped off my stool, pulling her with me. “We’re leaving,” I said. “Sorry about my friend.”
The man shrugged and thanked us for the seats.
I dragged Dilly out of the restaurant and to her car. We got into our seats and she started the engine and backed out. “What I was trying to say,” she said. “Is that love is a real-life kind of magic, you know. If you want it too much or you try too hard to grab it, it will slip right through your fingers.”
“So you don’t think I should sign up for dating sites?”
She chewed on her lower lip, thinking it over. “I don’t know. Maybe just give it a couple of weeks. Don’t date or even think about dating, give the bad juju a chance to clear out.”
“You secretly believe in Tinkerbell, don’t you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Fairies aren’t real.” Then she gasped and shook her head. “I don’t mean it.” At the stoplight, she clapped her hands three times and swore she did believe. “Just in case,” she said to me. “I don’t want any deaths on my hands.”
“Of course.”
“So maybe I’m a bit of a superstitious, magic-believing nut,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You need a break. Spend some time decorating your house the way you want it, focus on your job, and forget men.”
She parked on the street in front of my house. “You’re right,” I said. “I could definitely use a break from bad dates.”
Dilly wasn’t listening to me. She was staring though the windshield at my neighbor, Cody, who was strolling down his driveway to his truck, dressed up like he had somewhere fun to go. My traitorous heart picked up its pace like it wanted him. Which was ridiculous. I didn’t want him. He was too tall and too muscley and too…Just too rugged. He was the kind of guy who opened beer bottles with his teeth and had just barely graduated seventh grade. Definitely not the kind of guy to build a life with. “Who is that?” Dilly asked. “And why weren’t you out with him instead of Jonas?” Dilly was a true friend. She was as single as I was, but she didn’t even consider calling dibs on Cody. She looked out for me and had since she’d punched Milly Freedman for stealing my cupcake in kindergarten.
“Because he’s a raging asshole,” I said. “He has no respect for neighbors and he accused me of having no manners.”
Dilly mock gasped. “The monster.”
I gave her a light shove on the shoulder and she pretended to be hurt. “Thanks for the ride home,” I said.
“Of course, baby. You’ll always be my girl.” She leaned in and we exchanged air kisses. I hopped out and waved as she pulled away from the curb.
“Let me guess,” Cody’s rumbly, gruff voice washed over me and made all my joints go a bit loose and melty. He gave great voice. “You’re just coming back from a DAR meeting.” And then he had to ruin it.
I spun and faced him. He smirked. I glared. He grinned.
“No? Librarian’s convention? Cotillion committee? Knitting group?”
Oh, if only he knew how much I’d love to join a knitting group, but there weren’t any in Catalpa Creek, not that I’d found. Dilly said I should start one, but I was more of a follower than a leader. Starting a group meant caring if no one showed up and bringing the refreshments, way too much
hassle. “Are you making fun of my outfit?”
He crossed his stupid muscled arms over his stupid carved chest. “I didn’t say anything about your outfit. I’m just making conversation.”
“I was on a date,” I said, straightening my shoulders and holding my head high. Cody was an ill-mannered, low-class jerk who clearly spent too much time in the gym instead of bettering his life and his situation with a job.
His brown eyes crinkled around the edges when his smile widened. “You date women?”
I stared at him for a moment, before I understood. “That was my friend, Dilly. She was just giving me a ride home. The date was wonderful.” I didn’t feel bad about lying. I owed this man nothing. Our previous interactions had amounted to me a hill of beans, annoying, rude, tasteless beans. The first time we’d interacted, I’d introduced myself and he’d given me his name in exchange, before his phone rang and he turned away from me without a word. The second time I saw him, it was because Norma Jane had called me to tell me that he was mowing his lawn, topless. She has a heart condition and found his shirt-less state too exciting. I suggested she move away from the window, but watching the comings and the goings of the neighbors out that window was one of her great pleasures. So, I asked him to put a shirt on and he must have thought I was hitting on him, because he got really close and said I ought to use the manners my mama taught me and say please. I explained that the request was from Norma Jane, but he insisted on me using the magic word. I did and he put a shirt on. When he was outside power washing his back deck at five in the morning, I asked him to wait until a decent hour and may have been a bit testy. I’m an early riser, but five is ridiculous. He again accused me of having no manners. Which brought us to the most recent incident when he was outside washing his truck with the music blaring. I asked him to turn it down, in an admittedly rude way, and my nephew, who was visiting me at the time, had words with him when he turned the music up, instead of down. Most damning of all, in my opinion, was that he had guests at all hours of the day and night, many of them noisy and drunk. And it was never the same people. He was a revolving door of strangers, mostly women, and I didn’t want to become one more random woman he tried to ‘party’ with. That just wasn’t me. I glared at him and spun to go inside, but he grabbed my elbow and spun me back around.
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