by Serena Bell
“You were definitely adopted.”
“Can you two quit it and come unload the truck? I told Liv I’d be back for dinner.” Chase’s arms are crossed.
Brooks rolls his eyes. “Wouldn’t want to do anything that would keep Chase from having boring married sex.”
Chase laughs. “Spoken by a guy who has no idea what it’s like to have the best sex of your life every fucking night.”
That used to be me. Married, with a plentiful supply of reliable—and often great—sex. Great, now I’m horny and sad. It’s so weird these days what’ll still set me off, almost two years after Lucy’s death. Some days I’m fine, and others—
It didn’t help that Brooks and I spent all of yesterday packing up the house where Lucy and I lived together. I thought her parents had taken most of her belongings—the ones I hadn’t held onto and hidden away—but as I filled boxes, I kept finding her stuff. A sock of hers clinging to the guest towels. A binder she’d assembled with pages she’d ripped out of magazines and catalogs—recipes, photos of rooms she liked—
So many fucking things she never got around to.
If I’ve learned anything the last two years, it’s how to put one foot in front of the other. That’s what I did yesterday, and that’s what I do now. “Chase is right. Let’s get this fucker done.”
Of course, Jonah chooses that moment to exit Chase’s car and come running up to us. “Dad,” he chastises.
“Sorry. Let’s get this thing done.”
Doesn’t have the same impact.
Jonah pauses, and I watch, wincing, as he absorbs his first sight of house, no doubt comparing it to our old house, which, while smaller, was in great shape. “Dad,” he whines.
“Don’t start, Jo.”
“It’s a dump.”
Brooks puts his arm around Jonah. “It has a lot of promise.”
Chase snorts quietly.
“We’re going to fix it up until you won’t recognize it, bud. You and me,” I tell him, looking down at his pale, sullen face, framed with a fall of straight black hair. He has Lucy’s eyes, bright blue, and my chest aches.
“Why do we have to move?”
“You know why, bud. Remember, I explained? It was time for Nonna and Pops to move back to Florida—” My parents had come to stay for more than a year after Lucy’s death, to help us out. “—and that catalog, The Reclaimed House, wants my furniture, and so we needed to be closer to Gram and Gramps so they can watch you while I build. We’ll have enough money by the end of this year to buy an even nicer house than our old one, near Gram and Gramps. And I’ll let you help pick it.”
“I know, but—” Jonah wrings his hands, a habit he started after Lucy died. It’s painful to watch. I touch my fingers to his and he stops.
If Luce were here, she’d know how to get him to break the habit.
Of course, if Luce were here, he wouldn’t do it.
“Come on, champ,” Brooks tells Jonah. “Let’s find the boxes that go in your room and we’ll get you set up.”
For what it’s worth, that’s typical Brooks, too. No one worked harder in the weeks before and days after Lucy’s death to try to make things easier for Jonah.
Over the next couple of hours, there’s not much conversation as Brooks, Chase, and I unload the truck, stack boxes, and do our best to arrange furniture. Brooks, true to his word, spends most of the time helping Jonah unpack. After a while, Jonah loses interest and begins exploring the backyard, and then making forays along the sidewalk to check out the rest of the neighborhood, which is a lot nicer than the house we’re living in. I’m pretty sure the people who lived here the last three years didn’t do any upkeep at all.
“Stay where I can call you,” I caution him.
Brooks and I are carrying my kitchen table into the house when a voice calls to me from the next yard over. “Hey you! Young man!”
I look up to see my new next-door neighbor on the right side, a prune-faced white-haired lady standing on her front stoop, holding a jar.
“Which one of you is the new renter?”
We set down the table, and I raise my hand, feeling like a kid who’s about to get in trouble in school.
“That’d be me, ma’am. Sawyer. Sawyer Paulson.”
“Well, Sawyer Paulson, when you get a chance, can you make yourself useful and come help me open this spaghetti sauce?”
“Happy to, ma’am.” I cross my yard and unscrew the top of the marinara bottle.
“I’m Doris Wheeling,” she says, accepting the open jar and lid back. “I’ll try not to harass you, but even with that jar-opening thingus my son-in-law bought for me, I couldn’t get this open.”
“Happy to help anytime, ma’am.” I scrounge in my pocket and find one of my furniture-making cards, frayed but serviceable. “Call or text my cell if you need jars opened.”
She points behind me. “I think your son has found a friend.”
Sure enough, when I turn around, Jonah is kneeling in the bushes beside another boy around his age, inspecting something that from a distance looks like a small frog or a big bug.
“That’s Elle’s boy. Madden. They’re your neighbors on the other side. It’s just the two of them. You might offer to help her with her jars, too.”
Did Doris Wheeling just make that sound really, really dirty?
“I um, I could do that.”
“Anyway, thanks, Sawyer,” Doris says.
“Any time.”
She heads back into her house.
I walk back over to where Brooks is fidgeting with his phone. On his count of three we hoist the table aloft and carry it inside.
“Couldn’t you build this shit lighter?” Brooks groans.
The kitchen table is a heavy piece, made with reclaimed beams from old barns, fitted together to form a mosaic pattern. I’m pretty damn proud of it, so I don’t bother to answer Brooks, just lighten my grasp slightly to put more of the weight on him.
“You suck.”
I lighten my own load a fraction more and smirk at him. “Remember, we share fifty percent genetic material.”
ELLE
Hattie turns the wedding invitation over in her hands, eyeing it with loathing. “Do you want to burn it?”
I bite my lip. “I do, kind of, but I’m afraid I’ll regret it later, when I come to my senses and realize I have to RSVP.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You’re not seriously thinking about going.”
“If I don’t go, don’t I look like a total loser?”
I can tell from Hattie’s expression that I’m about to get an earful. “You’re seriously asking me that? He lied to you. He cheated on you. He left you. He only let eight weeks pass between your divorce becoming final and sending you a wedding invitation, and you’re asking me if you look like a loser if you don’t go to the wedding? Hell no, you’d be a spokesmodel for every woman in her right mind. ‘Fuck that, Big Asshole, no fucking way I’m going to your wedding.’ Unless—”
She tucks her long, dark hair behind her ears and looks thoughtful. “Unless you can go with a really hot date. Then it might be worth it.”
I scoff. “Sure. I’ll just pull one of those out of my back pocket.”
“Let’s think. I’ve gotta know someone…”
Hattie, in fact, knows everyone, but the truth of the matter is that we live in the ’burbs, where single men are few and far between.
She sets the invitation back on the coffee table, and I push it as far away from me as I can. When I saw it in my stack of mail, it only took me a split second to recognize what it was. My hands and feet went ice cold and I couldn’t breathe. Then I opened it and saw their names side-by-side, gold text on ivory card stock, below a gold-leaf bride and groom. I almost threw up.
Thank God Madden was occupied playing with the n
ew kid next door. I stumbled back to the house and called Hattie, who was over here ten minutes later with a bar of dark chocolate and a bottle of red wine.
Since Elliott left, Hattie’s been my rock—she and our friend Capria, who couldn’t be here today because she’s at some kind of select soccer playoff thing with her oldest daughter. Hattie and Capria are both divorced, too.
I’m ashamed to admit now that before my life imploded, I didn’t give other people’s divorces much thought. Not like when someone’s spouse dies and everyone brings food and writes sympathy cards. I don’t think I would have admitted this aloud, but I think I secretly believed divorce was a faux pas you should try not to draw attention to. Now that I’m on the other side of that equation, having gone through my own divorce, I know better. My personal opinion? People should bring you food and flowers. You need your friends more than ever when your marriage falls apart.
When Hattie and Capria heard that Elliott and I had split, they brought meals and wine and chocolate and lots of hugs. The first thing Hattie asked when she showed up at my door was, “Are we celebrating or mourning or a little of both?”
“D, none of the above: righteously pissed and nursing wounded pride,” I told her, and she laughed and hugged me again and said, “I remember that phase, too.”
I’d had literally no idea that divorce came with such a wide spectrum of emotions.
Hattie has drifted toward the window. “I hope your new neighbor fixes that place up. It’s such a dump. Oh, cute. Madden and the other boy are playing some game with a football and a Wiffle ball bat, and Madden is laughing.”
“Score.”
Hattie knows that Madden’s been having a really tough time since the separation. He misses seeing his dad on a daily basis. Sometimes he’s angry—snapping at me for no reason or being sullen—and sometimes he’s sad, moping around, unable to settle into any activity. I do everything I can—board games, movies, outings—but some days are just bad. I’ve been hopeful that having a new neighborhood friend his age might help bring him out of it.
“It’s supposed to be a single dad, right? Single dad and kid?”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard. Haven’t seen the dad yet, though.”
I head toward the window to peek out at Madden, when Hattie says, “Oh. Oh, my.”
“What?” I nudge her over to make room.
“You need a hot wedding date, right?”
Two very hot guys are moving furniture into the house next door. One is tall and broad-shouldered, with a full beard and mustache—very mountain man. The other is boy-next-door handsome, with rumpled light-brown hair and one of those perfectly proportioned male bodies—not too tall, not too short, not too muscly, not too skinny.
“Well, hello. You think one of those guys is my new neighbor?”
“There was another one, too. You just missed him. Tall and dark. Your type.”
“Shut up.”
She’s still staring out the window. “You ever think about calling that guy?”
She’s referring to the totally-out-of-character rebound sex I had right after the divorce papers were signed. I picked him up in a bar, which is so not my thing, but my friends had convinced me it was time to get back on the horse, and they were probably right. The guy I hooked up with was tall, dark, and broody, as unlike my ex-husband, Elliott, as it’s possible to be, which may have been a factor in why I said yes when he offered to buy me a drink. And why I kept saying yes.
“He made it very clear he doesn’t go back for seconds. And besides, I was such a dork that night, there’s no way I could face him again.”
“Too bad.”
Hattie knows: The sex was amazing. “It was just the circumstances. The things that made him hot as a bar pickup wouldn’t translate to real life. He’d probably turn out to be a jerk.”
“They always do.”
“Amen to that, sister.”
Moment of silence for ex-husbands…
Hattie snaps her fingers. “I have a brilliant idea. Let’s bake cookies, and you can take them over tonight. Then you can meet your new neighbor…and wedding date.”
I have to admit, it would be really nice to have a date to Elliott’s wedding. My showing up with a hot date won’t even ripple Elliott’s pond, but showing up by myself—or chickening out completely—would be humiliating. And even if Elliott doesn’t give a crap what I do with my sex life (a fact that still stings), I want him to at least confront the fact that I still have one.
Sort of. Aside from that one act of rebound sex, it’s been a barren year. But the rebound sex did make me determined to get back in the saddle. It reminded me that sex is too damn good to give up, even if I do plan to give up counting on men for anything other than orgasms.
“Anyway, regardless, we should make your new neighbors cookies. I mean, what’s the alternative? You want to sit here and stare at the invitation?”
“Hell no.”
“So? Let’s bake.”
We’re elbow deep in cookie dough when I hear the back door flap open with enough force to smack it into the opposite wall. I sigh. Madden. I’ve asked him a million times, but—
He’s not the best at being careful with stuff. I’ve mostly learned to take it in stride.
“Mom! Mom! This is Jonah! He’s moving in next door!”
The two boys, muddy from the knees down, explode into the kitchen. Jonah’s got longish dark hair and brilliant blue eyes and looks vaguely familiar, like I know him from Madden’s school. Eve—my realtor friend—didn’t know where they were moving from, so it might be in-town.
“Mom, can Jonah sleep over here tonight? He likes to play Battlefront and baseball and football and I’m going to teach him how to play my Jukem card game. And can we watch Cars 3 and will you make us popcorn?”
That might be the longest and most enthusiastic speech that Madden has made since Elliott moved out, and there’s no way I’m saying no.
“Sure, if it’s okay with his dad. Hi, Jonah. It’s really nice to meet you. Welcome to the neighborhood. I’m Madden’s mom. You can call me Elle, as long as your dad is okay with you using first names with grownups. And this is my friend Ms. Rivers.”
“Hi,” says Jonah politely. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Come on come on come on, let’s go play Jukem,” says Madden, and he and Jonah exit the kitchen in a flurry. I call after them, “Shoes off!” but it’s probably too late. That’s okay, I need to vacuum anyway.
“That was so stinkin’ cute,” Hattie says. “How crazy is it, how fast they make friends? A sleepover, and they’ve just met.”
She smirks at me, and I throw a wad of paper towel at her.
ELLE
After Hattie leaves, Jonah and Madden are playing peacefully in Jonah’s new front yard, so I pack up a foil-covered plate of cookies and carry it over to Mrs. Wheeling’s house. Mrs. Wheeling is eighty-six years old and has more energy than I do. When I show up with the cookies, she is making a lasagna for the family of a friend who has died.
“Our new neighbor opened the jar of sauce for me,” she informs me. “I didn’t really need the jar opened, but I was trying to take his measure. He seems like a nice man. And it won’t be the worst thing in the world to have a man with biceps like that mowing his lawn out there.”
That’s Mrs. Wheeling for you.
“Which one is the new neighbor? There were three guys out there earlier.” I try very hard not to sound too interested, because Mrs. Wheeling will for sure pick up on it if I do. She was very kind to me for about a week after Elliott left, but ever since then, she’s been doing more to try to get me laid than either Hattie or Capria. I was totally unsurprised, the first time I was in her bedroom, helping her reach something on a high-up closet shelf, to discover that her bedroom bookshelves are wall-to-wall romance novels. And not the ones with wh
ite picket fences and beaches on the cover, either. The kind with heroes with bare torsos and swim trunks hanging so low they reveal glistening hip-dip.
“The Heathcliff one,” Mrs. Wheeling says, and my traitorous stomach dips. I do so appreciate the merits of tall, dark, handsome, and broody. I have no intention of indulging myself in neighbor sex—too messy—but Mrs. Wheeling might have a point about the value of good-looking neighbors in the yard. “Are you bringing him cookies, too?”
I nod.
“An excellent opening move.”
“It’s not a move,” I say. “It’s a gesture of neighborly warmth.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You believe whatever you want to believe. Have you seen his biceps?”
“I haven’t,” I admit.
“You have a treat in store.”
“You could bring him cookies,” I tease.
“They’d call me a cougar,” she says, beaming with delight.
I ask after Mrs. Wheeling’s son in Eastern Washington and daughter on the East Coast and her grandchildren (who are too far away), and then I say goodbye.
“Have fun delivering cookies.”
I love Mrs. Wheeling.
When I reach the new neighbors’ yard, Jonah and Madden latch on to me like I’m the pied piper, even though they already had two cookies each at my house. They know that in all likelihood they’ll be able to sucker Jonah’s dad into giving them two more each.
Even though I have Jonah with me, I knock on the front door. The Penske truck is gone—returned, I assume—and there’s a car parked out front, but a different one from earlier. It’s a Mustang GT convertible, which I only know because Elliott used to always show me photos and say it was going to be his midlife crisis car. Too bad he didn’t buy that car instead of sleeping with his ex-girlfriend.
Oof.
Periodically it’s like getting a soccer ball kicked straight into my stomach, a fainter echo of the the day when Elliott told me that he was leaving because he was in love with someone else.
A very specific someone else.
Jonah opens the door and yells inside, “Dad!”
I can see a narrow wedge of the house, including the staircase, so my first view of my new neighbor is of his bare feet as he descends. Then the hems of his jeans. Then his thighs. Okay, yeah. Mmm. And then—
