The Deadbeat Next Door

by Katharine Sadler

  “Nope.” He stood and swayed toward me, his eyes dilating and his face paling. He didn’t look good.

  “I think you should stay here tonight,” I said. “I want to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

  His smile grew. “I’ll be fine. I don’t feel dizzy at all.”

  “You look a bit off. Are you sleepy?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Well, I’d feel better if you stayed here tonight,” I said. “If anything happened to you…Please, just stay. I’ll make dinner and you can watch whatever you want on T.V.”

  “Well, when you put it like that,” he said. “How can I refuse?”

  “Great. Can you walk on your own or do you need to lean on me?”

  He smirked. “I think it’s safer if I walk on my own. Lead the way.”

  I walked to the kitchen, looking back over my shoulder every three seconds, and got him seated at the kitchen table. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water? Orange juice?”

  “A beer would be good,” he said, amusement lacing his gruff voice.

  “I don’t have beer,” I said. “I could run out. What kind do you like?”

  He grabbed my hand in his big warm one and electricity spiked through me like I’d been struck by lightning. “I don’t think you should leave me right now,” he said. “Water will be fine.”

  “Good.” I pulled my hand from his. “Great.” I filled a glass with water and ice and placed it in front of him. “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t aiming at you when I threw that trowel? I was having a really bad day and I just…I overreacted. Usually, I’m terrible at throwing and hitting my target. If I had been aiming for you, I probably would have missed.”

  “Remind me never to play darts with you.”

  “You’re taking this awfully well. Shouldn’t you be mad at me?”

  His expression softened. “Hard to be mad when I’ve got a beautiful woman taking such good care of me.”

  My cheeks heated and I swallowed down the lust that shot through me. I’d almost killed the man and now I was lusting after him? I was insane. “Okay,” I said. “Well, good. Um, what would you like for dinner? I’ve got a wide array of TV dinners or I can make, um, spaghetti, but I don’t have any sauce…” I really had nothing else. I hated to cook and I wasn’t very good at it.

  Cody’s smile dropped and something like disgust took over. “If you’re trying to kill me, that would be a good way to do it. You eat like that every day?”

  I shrugged. “I eat a lot of dinner salads and sandwiches. I could make you a sandwich…Except I’m out of bread and, well, salad. I usually go shopping on the weekends, but I…I just didn’t get around to it.”

  “How about we order a pizza?” he asked. “I’ll pay.”

  “I’ll call it in.” I crossed the room and grabbed the wall phone. I dialed the number for the pizza place from memory. I had no intention of letting him pay for pizza after I’d nearly killed him, but I didn’t need to tell him that. I’d just answer the door and pay when it was delivered. I hung up and turned to see Cody smirking at me.

  “What?”

  “I just haven’t seen a landline phone since I was at Norma Jane’s for tea yesterday.”

  I crossed to the stove and put the kettle on, tea was just exactly what I needed. A calming chamomile would be perfect. “I have a cell phone,” I said. “But, I prefer the landline, it seems more reliable.”

  Cody watched me like he was trying to dissect me with his eyes. “Would you like to go in the living room and lay down?” I asked, grateful I’d at least managed to get a couch, after deciding I needed to update my decor and getting rid of every piece of furniture I owned.

  “I think it’s better if I don’t get too comfortable,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to fall asleep if I have a concussion.”

  “Oh, right.” I felt like an idiot. “Should we take you to the doctor?”

  “I’m fine.” He seemed confident about his condition, but could a person with a concussion tell he had a concussion, or did he always think he was just fine until he keeled over from a traumatic brain injury? “It’s okay, Carrie. Really. Why don’t you sit down there and tell me about your bad day? Tell me why you were crying?”

  His smug attitude and his teasing from earlier came back to me and reminded me of what a jerk he’d been. I took a seat across from him at the table, just to make sure he didn’t die on my watch. “I was planting onions.”

  He frowned and leaned forward a bit. “I’m sorry if I came across as a jerk. I was worried about you and I didn’t want to pry, so I teased you. I was just trying to make you smile.”

  “‘Cause that worked so well.”

  He sighed. “It didn’t work at all, but you got riled and that was better than seeing you sad, so I pushed your buttons a bit. You’re awfully cute when you’re mad.”

  I leaned back in my chair, my earlier anger at him reigniting. “I’m not cute when I’m mad, you asshole. I’m mad. And I had every right to be. You don’t just intrude on a stranger and start harassing her when she’s clearly upset.”

  “You’re right,” he said, shocking me so much I nearly stopped breathing. “I behaved badly and I’m sorry. Can we try again? You look sad, what’s bothering you?”

  And I realized that even if he’d led with that, I still would have gotten angry, because I hated for anyone to see me cry. I hated for anyone to see me vulnerable. I was the rock, the one other people depended on. I’d helped my parents through their sorrow over the death of my sister and I’d been the strong one for Harrison. I didn’t need help, or sympathy, or prying questions, because I was strong and could figure it all out for myself. “I’m sorry I overreacted to your teasing. Thank you for trying to cheer me up.”

  He leaned back in his seat. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you aren’t allowed to be sad or get angry or act irrationally every once in a while. I’m your bonehead neighbor and you don’t care what I think of you, so tell me what’s going on. Who made you cry?”

  “No one made me cry.” I wasn’t going to tell him anything. I was going to get up and get my purse and find cash for the pizza. But I didn’t. The words were out before I realized how much I needed to say them. I told him about Kayla and I told him about Harrison and I told him how sad it made me not to be able to help either of them.

  “You can’t make choices for other people,” he said. “You haven’t failed them. You’re here for them if they need you, without judgment and with nothing but love, that’s the only thing you can do for them.”

  I felt a bit better after talking to someone else about my troubles and I wanted to believe he was right. “But maybe I could have done more,” I said. “If I’d seen how sad Harrison really was—”

  “No. You can’t do that. If Harrison didn’t tell you how sad he was, it was because he didn’t want to talk about it. You can’t force someone to be happy, you can’t make someone open up to you, and you can’t make someone make good choices. Focus on what you can control and just love them.”

  “But I can be sad that they’re lost and sad,” I said, a tear slipping out of the corner of my eye.

  And suddenly, Cody was there and I was in the air. He settled me on his lap and wrapped his arms around me in a tight embrace. “You can be sad,” he said. “That’s what caring about someone else is, being sad when they’re sad and worrying about them, and that’s okay. That doesn’t make you weak, it makes you a good person.”

  Before I could figure out how I felt about his arms around me or his words, the doorbell rang and I was in the air again. He left the kitchen and, by the time I got to the front door, he’d already paid for the pizza and shut the door on the delivery person.

  “I was going to pay,” I said. “It’s the least I can do for hitting you in the head with a trowel.”

  He shrugged. “I paid. You can owe me something else for hitting me in the head with a trowel.”

  “That’s not okay,” I said. “It’s me
who has no food in her house, you shouldn’t—”

  He swayed on his feet a bit. “Can you take this? I feel woozy.” I grabbed the pizza from his hands and he sat on the couch with a thump. A big part of me suspected he was faking in order to get his way, but what if he wasn’t?

  “I think we should take you to the hospital.”

  “No,” he said, lifting a hand. “I feel better now. Maybe I should just avoid quick movements for a while.”

  “Okay. You sit and I’ll bring you a plate and a drink out here.”

  I hurried to the kitchen and plated up a couple slices of pizza and carried them out with his water glass. He rested the plate on his knee, but he didn’t eat until I was back with my own pizza. “What happened to all your furniture?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I got rid of it. Most of it was stuff I’d inherited from my parents when they moved south and it wasn’t my style. I needed a change.” A change from the 1970s.

  “And your style is no furniture?”

  I felt my cheeks heat. I’d just broken down in front of the man moments before, I couldn’t admit I had no idea what my style was. “I’m just replacing pieces as I have the money for it. Do you want to watch T.V.?”

  He took a bite of pizza and waited, like he knew I was holding something back. I really didn’t like the way he was able to get inside my head, to understand things about me that I wasn’t sure I understood myself. “Sure, why not?”

  I put my plate down and grabbed the remote from the floor, where it rested now that I had no tables in the room. Luckily, I’d hung the T.V. on the wall. “What do you want to watch?”

  “There’s probably a game on,” he said.

  “On a Tuesday night? I’ve only got the local channels, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to find any sports.”

  He didn’t look at me like I was crazy, or widen his eyes like I was an alien species. “We could just talk,” he said. “I don’t watch much T.V. unless it’s sports.”

  My heart raced at the idea of spending any more time talking to him. He already knew more about me than I liked and I didn’t need to know more about him, because I was getting the sneaking suspicion he wasn’t the Neanderthal I’d thought he was. I wasn’t sure why I wanted so badly to keep him locked away in the asshole box, I just knew I felt safer with him in there. “Or, we could watch a movie.” I hopped up and walked over to the case on the floor near the T.V. and VCR. “I’ve got a million movies. Do you like older movies or newer movies? Comedies or action movies?”

  “Um, I like all kinds of movies. How about you surprise me?”

  Surprise him? Was he going to read something into my choice of movie? If I picked an older movie, he’d discover my eccentric love of everything from an earlier age. He’d accuse me of being a little old lady in a young person’s body like Harrison did. No. It would not do. I picked up my binder of movies and carried it over to him. “Why don’t you pick?”

  He put his plate on the floor and took the binder from me. He opened it and started to flip through it. He groaned and put a hand to his head. “It’s giving me a bit of a headache trying to read these titles,” he said. “Just pick one of your favorites. Something funny.”

  I didn’t like the way his head injury was allowing him to win every debate. A good reason not to physically injure anyone in the future. I took the binder from him and flipped it to the section I’d marked as comedies. I grabbed one of my favorites and popped it into the DVD player.

  I took my seat as the opening scenes of the movie began, with Fred Savage as a sick little boy in bed and Peter Falk bursting in as the grandfather there to entertain him.

  I felt Cody’s eyes on me and turned my head, mouth full of pizza, to see him giving me a confused look. I chewed and swallowed. “You’ve never seen the Princess Bride?” I asked.

  “The Princess Bride? What is this? I wouldn’t have pegged you as a fan of fairy tales.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief that he’d finally been wrong about me on at least one point. “Just watch the movie and keep your mouth shut.”

  “As you wish,” he said. I spun back to him to see him laughing at me.

  I considered throwing my pizza at him, but that hadn’t worked out so well for me earlier, so I settled on glaring at him. “I don’t like talking during movies,” I said, pretending he hadn’t just hoodwinked me.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “Because I know every word to this movie and I’m going to speak along.”

  I may have been guilty of speaking along myself a time or two, but only when I was watching the movie alone. The opening scenes with Wesley and Buttercup flashed on the screen and Cody, true to his word, recited every single freaking line. “Stop that,” I said. “I’m not kidding. I like silence during movies.”

  “What’s the fun in that?”

  “The fun is that I get to enjoy hearing the characters speaking the lines.”

  “Huh. Doesn’t sound like much fun. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stay awake unless I talk, I’m feeling really tired.” He faked a massive yawn.

  “I’m sitting right here. Go ahead and go to sleep. I’ll make sure you don’t die.” I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t let him fall asleep, but I was totally calling his bluff.

  “How about a little wager,” he said.

  “What kind of wager?”

  “Let’s see who knows the lines best. You have to speak them before the character says them, and if you get them wrong, you lose.”

  I so totally wouldn’t lose. “And ruin the movie?” I asked. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because if you win, you get the benefit of me leaving you alone for the rest of the week.”

  “And if I lose?” I asked.

  “You have to spend time with me every day. I’ll even cook you dinner every night for a week.”

  I really wasn’t seeing the downside to this deal. I didn’t want to spend more time with Cody, but it might be worth it to get a decent dinner every night. “And if you win?”

  “That would mean you lose, so you’d have to spend every day with me, which would be my prize. If I lose, I have to cook you dinner every night, but I’ll leave it on your doorstep so you won’t have to see me.”

  “You’re going down,” I said. He was an idiot for not trying to get something from me if he won, but I wasn’t about to point that out to him, especially since I was going to win. I ignored the flood of warmth in my chest at his suggestion that spending time with me would be something he’d enjoy. I told myself it was just part of his teasing.

  “Looking forward to it,” he said with a wink that I also chose to ignore. “We start now.”

  An hour and a half later, my cheeks hurt from laughing so much and I was pretty sure I’d lost, and I didn’t care. “How do you know the movie so well?” I asked.

  He looked up from the paper where he’d been keeping track of our points. “I’m from a big family and movie night was a huge deal. This was one we watched a lot.”

  “What’s the final verdict?” I’d been keeping track of the score on my own sheet of paper, but I wanted to hear what he’d come up with.

  “I won by ten points,” he said. “That what you have?”

  “Yeah. I guess I’ll be joining you for dinner tomorrow night, you better cook something good.”

  “Always.” He pushed to his feet and stretched. “Thank you for a lovely evening, but I’d best get home before it gets too late. I’ve got an early morning.”

  “Doing what?” As far as I’d been able to tell he didn’t go to a job every day and just sat around at home all the time.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you over dinner.” He headed for the front door.

  “You can’t leave,” I said. “I need to check on you during the night, make sure you’re okay.” I got up and followed him to the door, but he spun right before he reached it and faced me, so close that my breasts brushed his chest and a zing of heat rushed to my happy spots. I took a step back like I’d been burned a
nd he smirked like he knew exactly what I was feeling. What the hell was I feeling? What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Are you asking me to spend the night with you?” he asked in a husky voice. My whole face heated along with the rest of me and I figured I must look like an idiot blushing like that.

  “I’m asking you to stay the night on the couch so I can check on you every hour and make sure you’re still alive.” I took another step back from him, but he followed, crowding me and making it hard for me to breathe.

  “No,” he said. “I’m fine and I’m not going to sleep on the couch when I have a perfectly good bed at home.”

  “So take my bed.” I dropped my eyes to his chest to avoid his intense gaze, but the sight of his t-shirt stretched over those tight pecs made me a dizzy. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “I won’t chase you out of your own bed when I’m perfectly fine. The only way I’ll stay is if we share the bed.”

  Oh, why had I turned the second bedroom into an office and given away Harrison’s bed? Why was I a complete idiot who didn’t foresee the need to have a man I’d nearly killed sleep over? I was sure he was right and he was fine, but what if he wasn’t? What if I’d hit him harder than either of us realized and he died in his sleep. I’d be a murderer, and I wouldn’t do well in prison. I didn’t like small spaces or aggressive, angry people. “We can share a bed as long as there’s no touching or nudity.”

  “Who said I wanted to touch you or get naked?” he asked, taking two steps away from me and frowning like he hadn’t been all up in my space and making sexy eyes at me a moment before. “I just want to sleep in a bed. Where is it? This way?”

  He headed down my narrow hallway without waiting for an answer and found my room with no trouble at all. I followed him into my bedroom and stared, speechless, as he pulled off his shirt and turned to face me, all those muscles and ripples and hardness on full display. I didn’t like too many muscles on a man I reminded myself as my pulse picked up speed and my body lit up like it was ready to play. I was not going to play with Cody Reynolds. He was a guy who clearly spent too much time in the gym and didn’t have his priorities in any sort of mature order. I needed a man who was ready to settle down and have a family. A responsible man. A man with…My thoughts trailed off as Cody unbuttoned his jeans and slid the zipper down. Was he swaying as he moved? He did a little spin and put his hands on his hips and my eyes darted back up to his face, a face that was laughing at me. “Enjoying the show?” he asked.