“You’d be right.”
At some point our faces came closer together and all I need to do is lean forward just a little to kiss her. The moment feels right, and her eyes flutter closed as she leans closer too. I don’t even know if I’m about to kiss her for the garage or if it’s just because I want to.
“Daddy,” comes Roman’s voice from the patio door.
Sandra pulls back quickly, clearing her throat and pressing the back of her hand to her lips, large eyes searching mine. There’s surprise there. Arousal.
“There’s a customer,” says Roman.
“Right, well. I’d best be going,” I say.
“Of course,” she says, standing and brushing the wrinkles from her clothes. “Me too. I still need to finish those gutters. You know, once I climb on top of that big thing you gave me.”
I smirk. “Now who’s the flirt?”
6
Sandra
I spend the rest of my day on the ladder Reid let me borrow--mounting his tool. I laugh softly to myself. Just a few days of living next door to Reid Riggins and he already has my mind nearly as dirty as his. I yank handful after handful of pine needles from the gutters, my mind anywhere but the job. I should be completely preoccupied with the threat of losing my bakery, but that possibility is so catastrophic I can’t even begin to run through what I will do. I don’t know if I have the mental energy to start all over. It took so much to do it the first time around. And how could I drive myself forward when I might just lose it again?
Then there’s Mark and Tara. My first impulse was to call Tara and kick her out of my place, but that would just be a spiteful, useless move. I just can’t believe she’s dating the guy who is pulling the strings behind getting my shop taken away from me. No matter how much I tell myself it’s unreasonable to blame her, I know I’m going to end up confronting her about it. I have to. I can’t just let this settle in my chest and fester.
Above all of that is the crazy, improbable, and absolutely unbelievable fact that I think I might be falling for Reid Riggins. He’s everything I always thought I wanted to avoid in a man. There’s more to him, though. He guards it well, but I’ve started to see glimpses of it. I saw something in the way he looked out over the hills on his back patio, a thoughtfulness and kindness. It made me realize Reid is a rare creature. He’s a man who has found what he wants in life and will fight to keep it.
Most people spend their whole lives trying to find the courage to go after what they want and doubting whether it’s the right path. They second guess themselves, waste time, pass opportunities, and don’t take risks. They end up unhappy because they were too afraid to go after what they really want for fear of failing. Not Reid. He’s already living his dream, and now it’s going to be taken away from him, just like mine. It all feels so tragic, and I burn with a desire to do something about it, even if I have no idea what that something is.
I climb down from the ladder and go inside to cool off. If I think I’m starting to have feelings for Reid, I must be getting heatstroke.
I make a quick call to the bakery to see if everything is going okay without me. The girls assure me they are doing fine and that business is going as usual. Still, I need to make time to get down there and put in the order before Tuesday or we’ll be spending all week apologizing for being out of half our products. Mrs. Parsons would probably burn the bakery down before the city had a chance to demolish it if I had to tell her we couldn’t make her cinnamon rolls in the morning.
For all I know, Reid is finished with my car already, but I can’t quite bring myself to go back over there right now. I just keep replaying the moment when I was leaning in and actually thinking about kissing him. It’s amazing what a little buzz and a lot of stress will do. Now that I have some distance, it all seems like an insane dream, like none of it really happened.
I put him from my mind as much as I can and decide to take a quick walk over to the place I’m renting Tara and Mark. My place. I’m only going over there to check on the property and make sure they are taking care of it, of course. I’m going to keep this strictly professional. I will not say a single word about how Tara is being the world’s shittiest best friend for dating the guy who wants to tear down my bakery. Not a word.
I knock on the door and wait. When Tara opens it, her eyes light up and she moves forward to hug me. “Hey girl!”
“Hey,” I say, grimacing over her shoulder.
Tara is ninety to ninety five percent sweet and loving. She was the first and last person to see me at the hospital when I had the embarrassing line dancing incident last summer and sprained my ankle. She was there with sweets and movies every time I had a rough breakup. She has talked me through some of my darkest moments and been there to share my happiest.
She’s a friend, in every sense of the word. And sometimes friends are back stabbing, heartless--
I force myself to calm down. She probably doesn’t even know. The least I can do is talk to her and feel it out before I start holding a grudge. I owe her that much.
She’s drop dead gorgeous too. Blonde hair, startling green eyes, full lips and a pert little beauty queen nose. She does yoga five times a week and still finds time to go to the gym in between. All of that is absolutely true, but over the years I’ve come to realize there’s just something else about her. Somewhere beneath all that sweetness and kindness is a small, almost imperceptible ball of nasty.
Like one time when we were in junior high, the special education kids used to join us for home economics class. One of the special ed girls, Heather, was carrying a bowl of pancake batter across the room and tripped. Half a bowl full of batter spilled all over Tara, who smiled politely and helped clean everything up. I thought nothing of it until two weeks later. We were passing an art display by the special ed kids, and we both saw Heather hanging up her piece and talking to the teacher about showing her parents when they came for parent teacher night later that week.
I still don’t know if it was her, but I saw something in Tara’s eyes as we passed that gave me a sick feeling. Sure enough, the next day the artwork was torn to pieces and left on the floor. Heather cried for hours and had to be taken home. Tara never mentioned it, but I still suspect it was her. The sweet teacher’s pet with a nasty side. That’s Tara.
My past with her is littered with small memories like that. Moments where her perfect veil nearly slips. Her cheating on Reid was really the first time I ever saw it out in the open. People aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They do shitty things to others for no reason. And whether she has a nasty streak or not, she’s my friend.