Flirting with Forever: A Hot Romantic Comedy(8)

I got home and stopped at the mailbox. I wasn’t great about checking the mail every day and it showed. There was a stack of stuff shoved inside, bending the envelopes at the back. I tucked it all under my arm and walked up the driveway.

And I definitely didn’t look to see if the new neighbor was outside.

Okay, yes I did.

To her credit, she was quiet. I’d hardly seen her and there was nothing to indicate she was going to be an annoying neighbor. No loud music or constant guests clogging up the street with their cars. Her yard needed some help, but she’d inherited that problem, so I couldn’t really blame her for it.

There was no sign of her, despite the nice weather. She was probably at work.

Pushing her out of my mind, I went inside and set the mail on the counter. Evidence of Riley’s after-school snack was on the kitchen table, but I didn’t see her downstairs.

“Hey, Ry?”

No answer.

Probably headphones.

I went upstairs and rapped my knuckle on her partially open door. “Riley?”

She sat on her bed, resting against a couple of pillows propped up behind her. School books were spread around her comforter and she had a spiral notebook in her lap. She popped out one of her earbuds. “Oh hey, Dad. What are you doing home?”

“I had some time. Figured I’d come home for dinner.”

“Cool. What are we having?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I hadn’t gotten that far. “I don’t know. Should we go see what’s in the fridge?”

“Sure.” She closed her book and followed me downstairs.

I opened the fridge and eyed the contents while she leaned against the counter.

“Do you have homework this weekend?”

“Nope. Already got it done.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You really came home on a Friday and did homework first thing?”

She shrugged. “Now I don’t have to worry about it all weekend.”

“How’d you get so smart? Most adults don’t have that figured out.”

“I get it from Grandma,” she said without missing a beat.

I grinned. “That’s probably true.”

My mom had watched her a lot when she was little.

“How’s your PE grade?”

She shrugged. “Okay. I’ll probably get a C.”

“A C? Come on, Ry, you can do better than that. It’s not brain surgery.”

“At least I’m not failing.”

“Yeah, true.” I decided not to push too hard about the PE grade. It was nice having an actual conversation with her. And to be real, a mediocre grade in middle school PE wasn’t the end of the world. “Can you live with spaghetti?”

“I love spaghetti.”

I took out a package of ground beef. Riley found a jar of spaghetti sauce and a box of pasta in the pantry. I started browning the meat and she set a pot of water on the stove to boil.

She picked through the mail I’d left sitting on the counter and held up a magazine with a woman on the cover. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know. Reggie probably put the wrong mail in our box again.”

“Oh, it’s for Nora.”

“Who’s Nora?”

“The lady next door.”

That caught my attention. “The one who moved in last weekend? How do you know her name is Nora?”

“I met her.”

“When?”

“The other day after school. She was outside and invited me over.”

“Excuse me? You’re not supposed to go into other people’s houses unless I know about it.”

“I didn’t. I sat on her porch.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Why? I go over and talk to Phil and Donna when they’re outside. That’s basically the same thing.”

I broke up the meat with a spatula and stirred it around as it started to sizzle. I didn’t have a good reason for this to bother me. She was right, sitting on a neighbor’s porch wasn’t against the rules. And there was probably nothing wrong with it. But still, I didn’t know this woman and something about her just being there was getting under my skin. I wasn’t so sure I wanted her making friends with my daughter.

“Just be careful. We don’t know anything about her. People aren’t always what they seem.”

“Yeah, I know.” She shuffled through the rest of the mail. “There’s a bunch of her stuff in here. Do you want me to take it over there?”

I glared at the mail, as if it were responsible for being put in the wrong box. “No, I’ll take it to her.”

She shrugged again and set the mail down. “Okay.”

I handed her the spatula so she could keep the meat browning and quickly sorted through the mail, separating mine from the neighbor’s. Nora Lakes. Pretty name. I’d have to tell her about Reggie. He’d been doing our mail route for something like a hundred years. Although he was the nicest guy, his accuracy at mail delivery had gotten worse over the years. We were all used to it. It was normal to see a knot of neighbors all exchanging mail, making sure it got into the right hands.

Hopefully he wouldn’t keep giving me Nora’s.

“I’ll be right back.”