Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy)

by Gretchen Galway

  “Good night, Mom,” Bev said, hanging up. What tiny nurturing bone Gail had in her body was only exercised on her older brother and younger half-sister. She should have been used to it, but it still made her want to scream.

  She had screamed once, as a teenager. Her mother brought her to the pediatrician. But it wasn’t like in the old days when people had a family doctor she might have known since she was a baby. Her mother took her to some random young guy who had a dozen patients—most of them in diapers—crying in the waiting room. The nurse took her blood pressure, weighed her on the scale decorated with cartoon stickers, and the harried doctor handed her mother a psych referral on a scrap of paper.

  Bev decided it was easier to move out, go to college, and live her own life as she pleased. Which she had, and would continue to do. You couldn’t change people. You had to learn how to work around them.

  She made her way down a path of flagstones around the left, past the large front entryway and a manicured Japanese maple to the side door. The key was taped to an index card with the lawyer’s note—“Alondra,” the name of the street. She peeled it off, worked it into the top lock and tried to turn it.

  Maybe it was the doorknob key. She jerked it out of the deadbolt and pushed it into the doorknob. No luck. She tried jiggling and twisting, then attempted the other lock again, all with no success.

  Her mother must have had it wrong. Or Bev heard it wrong.

  She found a second path, this one winding down the right side of the house. The sun had dipped out of sight and the long shadows were fading to a uniform dark gray. The cold wind cut through the gaps in her jacket. This side of the house was less trafficked and didn’t have any flagstones to smooth the sloping dirt. Her dress shoes had no tread, and at a sudden dip in the hard earth, she lost her footing and slid down, whap, onto her butt.

  She cried out, pushed her palm into dust, struggling back to her feet. A thorny stick came up with her and caught on her black pants. Though she worked it free as gently as she could the thorn made a hole in the rayon. She tossed the stick aside and slid down another few feet.

  This doesn’t feel right.

  The only door she could find on this side of the house was behind a hedge of squat, sprawling lemon trees that had overgrown the original landscaping. She’d gone to the emergency room in third grade with a two inch citrus thorn imbedded in her heel—still had the scar and no interest in getting punctured again.

  She hiked back up to the front door, regretting she hadn’t tried that first. But the key didn’t even fit into the lock, let alone turn, and she was left in the growing darkness with a pounding headache and an exhausted longing to get inside and sleep. Tomorrow was going to be even harder than today.

  A short post-and-rail fence divided the house from the neighbor’s, a big Craftsman lit up with outdoor and indoor lights, the house spilling over with the sounds of music and people. She crept over to the fence, peered over. If she walked on their side down the hill, she could get around the lemon trees to a landing in front of her grandfather’s side door.

  Eh, what the hell.

  Grateful for her long legs, she swung one over the fence, then the other. Her heart pounded. Here she was, on some Oakland hillside in the dark, climbing into somebody’s yard wearing torn pants. She kept her head up and strode down their side of the fence, not bare earth but mulch and ground cover, towards the lemon trees. Just a few more yards and she could climb back over.

  Then the dogs came.

  They weren’t big, or angry, or even particularly fast. But they were many and they were loud, and heading straight for her like a swarm of yapping, ground-hugging bees. With an athleticism she never managed in normal life, Bev loped down the hill, shimmied over the rails to the other side and stumbled up to the patch of concrete outside her grandfather’s side door. She pressed her back against the house and faced the dogs, struggling to get air back into her lungs.

  The dogs yapped and yapped. Hands shaking, Bev took out her key and turned around to feel the door. Just get inside. But she couldn’t find a lock. Her heart was flopping around in her throat and the dogs were getting louder and this was obviously not the door into the house.

  While the dogs—there had to be twenty of them, none bigger than a loaf of bread—continued to yap, Bev rested her head against the door and wondered how she was going to get back up to her car. Vaguely she wondered why the dogs had stopped at the fence; the high posts were hardly an obstacle for such small animals.

  A man’s voice carried over the din. “What the hell’s the matter with you guys?”

  Bev stood up straight, smoothed her palms over her pants and tugged down her jacket, trying to look not like a woman who had just fallen in dirt and climbed over fences, but a decent, quiet neighbor lady just trying to get into her house after a long day.

  “Somebody there?” the man called out. “Hello? Hey, you guys, easy!”

  Bev pushed away from the door and stepped out from behind the lemon trees. The hill under the house sloped fast into a wild, rocky outcrop—she could never go around the house in that direction. She’d have to admit her situation.

  “Sorry for disturbing you!” she called out. Eyes on the dogs, now lined up like miniature cavalry along the property line, Bev walked a few feet closer to the fence. The man was lit from behind, a tall and powerfully built silhouette that got larger as he approached.

  A woman’s voice called from the house. “Liam? What is it? Don’t let them get into the raccoon den. The mother just had a litter. They can be vicious—”

  “It’s not a raccoon,” the man said from fewer than ten feet away, while Bev imagined several ways she could kill herself. Did he recognize her?

  “Liam, it’s just me,” Bev said, trying to feel relieved it wasn’t a stranger who would need convincing not to call the police. “Bev Lewis. I’m trying to get into my grandfather’s house.”

  He stopped walking and said nothing for a long moment. Then, to the dogs, “Quiet! Friend. Friend!”

  “Who is it, Liam?” The woman came up behind him and bent down to the dogs. “Hush, now. Hush. Such tough guys.”

  Bev waved, at a disadvantage from the house’s floodlights shining in her eyes. The woman who had joined him was tall, pear-shaped, but too hidden by the backlighting for Bev to make out her age or features. “I am so sorry to disturb you.” Bev took one more step towards the dogs, which only set them off again. Drawing back against the house, she raised her voice over the din. “I’m Bev Lewis, Ed Roche’s granddaughter. My key doesn’t seem to work.”

  The woman bent over to calm the dogs. “But that’s the closet for the water heater, isn’t it Liam?”

  “Indeed it is,” he said.

  Bev looked back at the door. Crap. She turned back to Liam and the woman. “I tried the other doors first but they didn’t work either. I’ve never been here, you see—”

  “Ed had a granddaughter?” the woman asked, sounding shocked. “I thought it was just Johnny, Ellen’s son.”

  An unfamiliar ache struck Bev in the chest. “I’m Gail’s daughter. One of two.”

  “Gail?”

  “Ellen’s older sister. She left home really young,” Bev said, wishing she’d taken her chances with the lemon tree.

  “Mom,” Liam said. “Beverly is the new owner of Fite Fitness. Beverly, this is my mother, Trixie Johnson.”

  With the conversation easing their minds, the dogs had broken ranks at the fence and regrouped around Trixie. She leaned over and picked one of them up, peering closer at Bev. “Nice to meet you. I had no idea you existed. We moved up here when it was just Ed. Were you at the funeral?”

  A sense of loss struck Bev full in the chest, and she could only blink into the blinding light and try to keep her unexpected distress off of her face. No idea you existed. “I sat in the back.”

  “And she’ll be living next door for a little while,” Liam said roughly, putting an arm around his mother and pulling her away from the fence
. “Go on back to the house. I’ll take care of this.”

  “But how did she get down there?”

  “It’s none of our business,” Liam said. “Ed’s gone now.”

  “Just make sure none of those raccoons have snatched one of my tough guys.” She moved away. “Nice to meet you, honey. Hope we didn’t scare you.”

  When she was gone, Liam leaned his hip against the fence, crossed his arms, and waited.

  “The key didn’t work,” Bev said.

  “How did you get down there?”

  “The same way I’m going to get back.” Bev braced her hands on the fence post and threw a leg over.

  “You’re lucky my mom’s got a thing for rat dogs, not Rottweilers.”

  “Actually they’re kind of scarier. You don’t expect the cute little things to attack. Like a doll in a horror movie.” She ignored his stare and swung the other leg over. Unfortunately her physical prowess had waned, and she caught her toe on the rail and slumped forward, only to have Liam grab her by the arm and haul her upright on his side of the fence.

  “Thanks,” she said, breathless and mortified. “I’ll be going now.”

  His fingers were tight around her arm. “To where?”

  “A motel, I suppose.” She pulled her arm free and began hiking back up the hill to her car.

  He remained silent, back in the gloom along the fenceline, and she was grateful for it. The last thing she wanted right now was more small talk with an employee who made her feel like a child. A female child.

  But then he was at her side again, effortlessly matching her determined pace. “Come with me,” he said, sounding annoyed. “We’ve got a set of keys that should work.”

  “You?”

  “Neighborly backup.”

  She tripped. “You still live next door?” She’d assumed he was just visiting his mother.

  He turned onto a brick path that led towards the large, bright house. “No. We’ve been—we were—friends with Ed since I was a kid. He was all alone, you know.” She didn’t say anything in defense, but he didn’t seem to be trying to bait her, just stating a fact.

  They reached a wide front porch and went up the steps, and Bev saw Liam and his mother were not alone. Vintage R.E.M. was blasting in the living room, and a twenty-something woman in a ripped t-shirt sat in a recliner reading Organic Gardening and drinking red wine next to a guy in head-to-toe black. His face was red and angry, his gaze on the young woman.

  Liam turned to Bev. “My sister April and her boyfriend . . . ” he trailed off, frowning, then shrugged. “Don’t know his name.”

  The guy glanced up at them, brought a bottle of beer up to his lips, then returned to staring at April.

  “Hey,” April said in greeting, barely glancing at them. She went back to her magazine as if her boyfriend weren’t there.

  “The keys are in the kitchen,” Liam said. “You can come with me or wait here.”

  The silent drama between April and her boyfriend made her uncomfortable, so Bev followed Liam down a hallway, looking down at her shoes, hoping she wasn’t tracking dirt over the glossy oak floors. She picked a leaf off her jacket and tucked it in a pocket.

  “Bev needs Ed’s keys,” Liam said, stepping into a sunshine-hued kitchen and heading straight for a baby-blue armoire in the corner. Trixie was stirring a pot on the stove, and looked up at Bev as she entered. “Otherwise she’ll need to find a motel.”

  Curious to see Liam’s mother in a well-lit kitchen, Bev noted her high cheekbones and white, pixie-cut hair. She wore a patchwork denim apron around her generous hips, hot-pink Crocs, and no makeup.

  “A motel?” Trixie asked. “Why?”

  “Never mind, here they are.” Liam pulled a set of keys out of the armoire’s front drawer and came back over to Bev. “But don’t try the water heater door again. These are for the actual entrances.”

  She held out her hand and smiled tightly. “Thanks for the tip.”

  He stared at her, not handing over the keys, while Trixie came up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder, facing Bev. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about your poor mother. Or about you not existing. The kids come over and we open the wine and the next thing you know I’m a blathering idiot.”

  “Oh, please.” Bev smiled at her. “I’m so sorry I disturbed you.”

  “I’ve been disturbed for years,” Trixie said. “No need to take credit for it.”

  Liam raised his eyebrows and nodded, then Trixie noticed and swatted him on his butt with a wooden spoon.

  He twisted around. “Hey, you got chili on my jeans.”

  Bev’s gaze slipped down to the seat of Liam’s jeans. Trixie just laughed, swatted him again, and went back to the stove. Bev dragged her attention back up to his face.

  “Come back here if there’s any problem with the keys,” Trixie said. “I don’t want to hear anything about a motel.”

  Bev shook her head. “No, really, it’s fine—”

  “Let’s go,” Liam said.

  Trixie reached her hand out to him. “Let me see those first.”

  He frowned, looking suspicious, but handed them to her. She clutched them in her fist and addressed Bev. “Promise me you won’t go looking for a motel,” she said. “I’ve got five bedrooms here and four are empty because my children would rather live in an ugly high-rise in San Francisco rather than with their own widowed mother.”

  “Uh—” Bev said, absorbing the implied loss of Liam’s father with the awkwardness of the invitation. “That’s very kind of you—”

  Liam reached over to take the keys away from her, but Trixie twisted away, hopped on a chair and lifted her arms and the keys over her head. “Promise.” She towered over the room. “You wouldn’t want to be the cause of an unfortunate family altercation.”

  “But—” Bev glanced at Liam.

  “Mom,” he said, voice calm. “She has a house next door. All she needs are the keys that you are, for some unknown, scary reason, not giving to her.”

  Bev was more smitten than scared. “Thanks for the invitation.” She tilted her head back to address her. “But I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  Liam put his arms around his mother’s waist and hauled her off the chair. “Honestly, Mom, I don’t know why I don’t have you locked up.”

  “Hah!” Trixie held her head high while he grunted and dropped her onto the floor. “As if California cared enough to have mental health care facilities for those in need.”

  “Perhaps a vacation to Utah, then,” Liam said. “Keys.”

  Any foil to Liam was a friend of hers. “I promise not to go to a motel,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, hon.” Trixie smoothed down her apron and tossed the keys to Liam. “See you later.” She turned back to the stove and began to hum and stir.

  “Shall we?” Liam asked, hand extended towards the door. He made no move to give her the keys but she didn’t want to argue in front of his mother. She followed him out past his sister and her unhappy boyfriend out into the night and over to her grandfather’s front door.

  “I like your mom,” Bev said.

  “Everyone does.” He pulled out the ring of keys, selected one swiftly and fitted it into the lock. “But you have to be careful she doesn’t take over. She adopts people.” He twisted the key, pushed his shoulder against the door, and stopped.

  Bev sucked in her breath.

  “Huh,” Liam said.

  “You sure that was the one?”

  He turned to face her. “Someone must have changed the locks.”

  “But the cleaning service didn’t have any trouble getting in.”

  “When was that?”

  “I’m not sure. Friday? Thursday?”

  “My bet would be Thursday. That would’ve given Ellen all day Friday to have a locksmith over.”

  “You think Ellen—”

  He was close to her, but she couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “You’ve made a promise to my mother.”<
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  She peered at him, wishing for light. Was he laughing at her? “Why don’t you check the other keys?”

  He was laughing. She’d never seen him laugh before, and the creases in the corners of her eyes and the deep chuckle in his chest took her breath away. She stared.

  “Sorry,” he said, sobering. He tried the other two keys. No luck. “I don’t suppose you have the garage door opener? She probably didn’t have time to reprogram it.”

  “No garage door opener.”

  “Pity.” He leaned his back against the door, crossed his arms over his chest, and said in a cheerful voice, another new side to him she found alarmingly human, “Would you like me to try the side door—the real one?”

  “What is so funny?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe just that your aunt has caused me a lot of grief over the years.”

  “So you’re happy to see someone else suffer?”

  “Just someone related to her.”

  Annoyed with how her heart melted like cheese to see a smile on his face, she held out her hand. “Let me try.”

  He nodded, still looking amused. “Of course.” One of his hands came up under hers and held it steady while the other pressed the hard keys into her palm. Then he folded her fingers around it and squeezed. “Be my guest.”

  Her heart jumped, just because of that one, quick touch of his hands. She jerked free and strode down the left side of the house, berating her body for reacting to him.

  Her body was a bad listener. In college she’d learned not to trust her body’s judgment, the way it got her in one relationship after another with guys who had no interest in the rest of her. And every time, her heart had gone where her body led, got naked with the rest of her, and then, too stupid to know everything is temporary, would break.

  Damn. She was going to have to get out of Trixie Johnson’s offer of hospitality gracefully. Because as she feared, none of the keys worked on the side door either, and Bev had to admit the likelihood that Ellen—through malice or misunderstanding—had changed the locks.

  Liam was waiting for her up near her car when she returned. “The Claremont is the closest hotel,” he said. “No reason for the heiress to stay in a dump.”