The Boy Next Door: A Standalone Small Town Romance (Soulmates Series Book 3) (10 page)

Chapter 18: Connor

“It’s been way too long since I had fish and chips,” Laney said,
focusing on the paper bundle spread across her lap.

“I’m glad you still like it-”

“Like it?” she said, turning to me with a vinegar soaked French
fry poised near her mouth. “It’s a dream come true.”

I laughed.

“I was so worried you were going to take me somewhere with
silverware.”

“I thought about it.”

She shook her head and eyed her next bite of fish. “Cloth
napkins are so overrated.”

“Is that why you chose to work in the diner?”

She swallowed. “I chose to work in the diner because they were
hiring and I could walk there from my apartment.”

“What’s your apartment like?”

“Do you remember the closet in the master bedroom at Jimmy
Smolen’s house?”

I nodded.

“It was like that, but with cockroaches and black mold instead
of fur coats and designer handbags.”

“Was?”

“I don’t live there anymore.”

I felt a burning sensation in my chest. “You live with Henry.”

“I did,” she said. “For a short while.”

I crumpled the paper from my fish and chips and leaned back
against the bench.

“Have you lived with anybody since-”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I last saw you?”

I nodded. “I had a few roommates in college, yeah.”

“No,” she said. “I mean a woman. Like one you were romantically
involved with.”

“Once.”

“What was her name?” she asked.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

She licked her lips. “It would make me feel better.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t.”

“C’mon, Connor,” she said, taking a sip of Sprite. “My life is a
shambles right now. The least you could do is admit you’ve failed at something
in the last few years.”

“I didn’t fail,” I said. “The pregnancy did.”

She lowered her soda. “What?”

I sighed. “She was a student in one of my classes.”

“At vmiet school?”

I nodded. “We were seeing each other on and off for a while.”

“And she got pregnant?”

“Yeah.” I ran a hand through my hair. “So I asked her to move in
with me.”

Laney crumpled the paper wrapping around what was left of her
dinner and stared at her lap.

“We lost the baby, though- a little girl- and decided to go our
separate ways after that.”

Laney looked at me through watery eyes.

I took a deep breath.

“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t feel better.”

I reached an arm over the back of the bench and stared at the
manicured gardens in the middle of the square. “I’d appreciate if you kept that
to yourself,” I said. “It’s not exactly common knowledge around here.”

“Of course.”

“It was an accident.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“We were being careless.”

She pursed her lips.

“I wouldn’t have moved in with her and tried so hard to make it
work if it hadn’t been for the baby.”

“I understand,” she said. “And I’m so sorry.”

“Life happens,” I said. “At least I learned from it.”

“What did you learn?” she asked, crossing a leg towards me.

“That I definitely want kids,” I said. “Eventually. With the
right person.”

She squinted at me, her eyes searching my face.

“I couldn’t believe how much I wanted that little girl,” I said.
And it was true. Losing her broke my heart for a second time. We were going to
call her Sarah. Because it means princess, and I had every intention of
spoiling her rotten.

“Do you guys keep in touch?”

I shook my head. “No. I think she married the guy she dated
after me, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t love her. I’m just
glad she was able to move on after what we went through.”

“And what about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay, Laney. I got on with it. What choice did I
have?”

She reached her hand for my bundled wad of trash and walked it
to the garbage can across the paved path.

I watched the hem of her little blue dress and hoped sharing
that with her hadn’t been a mistake. “Do you have room for dessert?” I asked,
rising off the bench.

“Maybe after a ramble,” she said. “And thanks for dinner, by the
way.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I hope I didn’t spoil it with my
honesty at the end there.”

She stopped walking and put a hand on my shoulder. “Of course
not. I really appreciate you trusting me with that.”

I felt a pinch in my chest. Didn’t she know there was nothing I
wouldn’t trust her with? That there was a time when I trusted her with everything
from my heart to my unborn children? No matter.

The important thing was that being around her was getting less
painful by the minute, and that could only be a good thing for my heart and my
head.

“So were you thinking Homer’s milkshakes or frozen chocolate bananas
at Eddie’s?”

I shook my head. “Oh my god. I haven’t had a chocolate dipped
banana since I was a teenager.”

“If we’re lucky, they still do the one with the peanuts,” she
said, her eyes following an orange Frisbee on the other side of the park.

“I actually thought we’d swing by Dave’s for dessert.”

“Dave’s?” She cocked her head at me. “Like Dave Dave?”

“Yeah. He’s having a barbeque for some family thing. I imagine
there’ll be an entire selection of desserts there, including his wife’s apple
tarts which are good enough to die for.”

“He’s still with Amber?” she asked.

“He is. They’ve got three kids now. All girls.”

“Wow.”

“The oldest two are almighty terrors,” I said. “But the youngest
is still little enough that she just lays there and looks kind of spooked all
the time.”

She laughed, and the sound shattered the heavy cloak of sadness
I felt I’d flung over us.

She scrunched her face. “I don’t know if Dave would appreciate
me rocking up to his house uninvited after all this time.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But that’s not a problem because you are
invited.”

“I am?”

“I talked to him about it earlier this week. Said you were in
town and that you might come along.”

“Was this before or after I said I’d have dinner with you?” she
asked, her eyes pining mine to the back of my skull.

“Does it matter?”

“It was before, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“You were that confident that I was going to say yes?” she
asked, craning her neck forward. “Even when you knew I was seeing someone else?”

“No. To be honest, I had absolutely no confidence in you at
all.”

Her lips fell apart. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That it’s been years since I was in a position to guess what
you might do.”

“So what would make you ask him?” she asked. “When I’d been
nothing but a jerk?”

I shrugged. “I guess I was just confident in my ability to keep
asking.”

Chapter 19: Laney

There were a thousand more questions I wanted to ask him. Like
what stage of the pregnancy his ex was in when she lost the baby and whether or
not they’d already bought a crib and little pink footie pajamas.

God that must’ve been heartbreaking.

And despite how selfish it was to think of myself in light of
that news, I couldn’t help but notice a shameful feeling bubbling up in me. Was
it jealousy? Was I jealous that he had been that close to someone, that he’d
shared something so intense with someone that wasn’t me?

Obviously I used to think I’d be the one to experience that with
him, that he would press his ear against my stomach and stuff pillows behind my
back, that he would bring me ice cream in the night and bounce my children on
his knee.

If I could even have kids, that is. Half the time I was sure I’d
never be equipped to have a family, especially considering the bullshit parenting
I was subjected to during my upbringing. I mean, I would literally have to do
the opposite of everything my mom did.

And did the world really need my offspring? I just found out
pineapples don’t grow on trees two weeks ago. If I didn’t even know stuff like
that, how the hell did I think I was going to be able to answer the big
questions?

Then again, kids could Google everything these days. Plus, you
didn’t really have to tell them the truth about anything until their ability to
remember kicked in, and when was that- age five? Could I smarten up in that
amount of time?

Whatever.

There was no chance Connor told me that so that I would dwell on
the thought of him impregnating me for the rest of the night. He was just being
honest.

Besides, it could’ve been me if I hadn’t blown it, and things
were messy enough without me going out of my way to stomp through the puddles
of my own regret.

Worst of all, I felt some seedy smug feeling over his admission
that he didn’t love her. I mean, what the fuck was my problem? I broke up with
him.

Had all those years I’d told myself that I wanted what was best
for him been a lie?

Begrudging him any love he might have experienced over the years
was downright cruel. Sometimes I swear I was the worst person on Earth.

We rounded the corner, and I noticed some brightly colored
balloons hovering over a mailbox a few doors down.

“Is that their house?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“It’s really nice,” I said, wondering how the hell they could
afford it.

“Amber’s aunt left her some money when she died that covered the
deposit.”

I nodded. “I see.”

“But the mortgage is still crushing Dave a little more each day
so feel free to make a fuss about the place.”

“Will do.”

We followed the sound of screaming kids and muffled chatter up
the driveway and around the stone house. When the backyard opened up, my jaw
nearly dropped.

It was big enough that Amber had rented a bouncy castle for the
day, and despite the fact that they already had one of those enormous
trampolines, there was still plenty of room to spare.

Best of all, the large trees around the perimeter of the
property were stunning.

I saw a hand shoot up by the grill and Connor waved back, his
hand gracing my lower back as we headed towards Dave.

When we arrived at the grill beside the expansive stone patio,
Dave closed it, hung the spatula on the handle, and stepped away from the heat.

“Well if it isn’t Laney Price,” he said, pressing his cheek to
mine.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s nice to see you.”

“How long are you going to be in town?” he asked, his tone strangely
formal, as if I’d just walked into the middle of a police interview.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“What brings you back?” he asked.

I desperately wanted to mumble some bullshit about being in a
transitional period, but it sounded so lame in my head I froze for a moment.

“She’s got some loose ends to tie up,” Connor interjected. “And
she might extend her stay to paint a mural on the old climbing wall at York
Street Park.”

Dave raised his eyebrows. “No shit.”

I shrugged.

“You must be doing really well to consider taking such a lengthy
unpaid job,” he said.

“And you must be doing really well to be living in this castle,”
I said, pissed at the air of judgement in his voice.

He clenched his jaw as he blushed.

“Congratulations on baby number three, by the way,” I said.
“Connor was just telling me that you’ve become quite the family man.”

“Yeah,” Dave said, wiping his hands on his Kiss the Cook apron.
“The love of a good woman can ruin a person that way.”

“Is Amber around?” I asked, looking over my shoulder. “It’s been
ages since I’ve seen her.”

He scanned the yard and pointed towards a table at the edge of
the garden. “She’s parked next to the white wine over there,” he said. “And I
should warn you she hasn’t moved from that spot all night so-”

“I’m going to pop over and say hi,” I said, stealing a glance at
Connor. “And leave you guys to it.”

After Connor smiled and nodded at me, I headed to where Amber
was sitting with another woman, who was rolling a small stroller back and forth
beside her chair.

Amber stood up when she saw me coming and stomped her heels in
the grass like she was dancing on hot coals. “Laney! Oh my god!”

“You look amazing,” I said, pulling her into a hug.

“So do you!” she said. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

“You too.”

“Would you mind rolling this stroller while I run to the
bathroom,” the young mother who smelled like breastmilk asked. “I’d love to
meet and greet you, but I’m actually bursting-”

“No problem,” I said, reaching for the handle of the stroller.

“So,” Amber said, draining her wine and pouring a glass for each
of us. “What have you been up to? I was just thinking about you the other day.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “Some of the girls and I volunteered to paint the
Glee Club float for the Fourth of July Parade, and halfway through our meeting-
aka wine binge at Jeri’s- we realized most of us can barely even draw a musical
note freehand. Don’t even get me started on the treble clef. Anyway, since you
were always the best at art in high school, you popped into my head.”

I smiled.

“And sometimes- and by sometimes I mean every other day- when my
little girls play dress up and put wigs on, you cross my mind. They mostly have
Disney princess wigs, but they don’t have one that works for Pocahontas or
Mulan yet.”

“Thanks for thinking of me, Amber,” I said, taking a sip of wine
as I rolled the stroller gently in the grass. “That’s really nice to hear.”

“Are you kidding? I think about you all the time,” she said,
leaning forward and batting the lashes around her green eyes. “Well, maybe not
as much as some people-” Her eyes strayed behind me, and I followed them over
my shoulder to where Connor was still talking to Dave by the grill.

“I didn’t realize Dave missed me that much,” I said.

“Not Dave, silly.”

I cocked my head.

“Oh, that was a joke.” Amber tapped her long nails on the base
of her wine glass. “I get it.”

“Anyway, that’s nice of you to say, but I’m pretty sure Connor’s
been preoccupied with plenty of other things.”

She dropped her chin and kept her eyes on me. “Oh come on, Laney.
Don’t be naïve. You and I both know there are only two things that have ever
preoccupied Connor.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“And the other one’s the animal kingdom.”