The Plan (Off-Limits Romance, #4)(21)

“What’s her name?” Her eyes shift up to mine.

I wait just a beat before I tell her, “Coraline.”

“Oh is it?” she asks, still rubbing Cora. “I approve, yes I do, that’s a good name for a puppy,” she coos. “You’re a very pretty Coraline. I think I’ve heard you called Cora… That’s nice, too.”

I grit my teeth at the love fest out in front of me, wondering if I can go on and get moving. I can’t bring myself to do that, though. Despite my self-protection logic, I should do what’s neighborly, and in this case, that’s help Mar move the giant, broken pumpkin from our walkway.

I step closer, crouching down to grab the biggest pieces.

“Not a good shirt,” she says, between baby-talking Cora.

“Huh?” I look down at myself as I stand with the pumpkin pieces.

“Nipple city.”

“What?”

She nods, ogling my chest. “Your man nips are showing like whoa, and you forgot tightie whiteies underneath your running shorts. That’s why the death of Pete is all on you.”

I blink from her face to the pumpkin. “First of all, this had a name?”

“Pete. I was going to carve him up with a little bow-tie, but…” She makes a sad face.

It’s so preposterous, I laugh. I glance down at my crotch. “You’re wrong about the pants, though.” I know what I look like in my running shorts. I’ve checked myself out in the mirror lots of times, to avoid that very problem. As it happens, I’m wearing briefs.

“Not wrong,” she says, though I notice that she doesn’t look. “This place is swarming with dirty old ladies going to and from that midday prayer meeting thing, and all the busy-bodies who go to those frou-frou re-enactments at the library. Not to mention the slutty moms of young kids going to the finger-paint class at the farmer’s market.” She wiggles her brows behind her glasses. “More and more of them are hearing that the great Gabriel McKellan is in town. I’m just saying, I’d watch out.”

I widen my eyes slightly—my default not-sure-what-to-say look—because, really, I’m not sure what to say to that—so it seems as good a time as any to head toward the trash can, stashed behind her stairs.

Marley follows with her own armful of busted pumpkin. “I do think the shades help,” she says, as she dumps the pumpkin in the garbage. She looks at me, touching her own glasses. “Those make you look less you, for sure. And bonus points for the camouflaging beanie.”

“Jesus, do you charge a fee?”

She smiles brightly. “Just offering a little neighborly input. Since we’re on less hostile terms now. We are on less hostile terms, right? Or was that a drunken hallucination?”

Something warm spills through me. Maybe shock. I shake my head, belatedly. “Not a hallucination.”

I stride back toward the pumpkin guts and get another armful.

“Bless your heart,” she says in an exaggerated twang.

“Yeah, yeah.” I dump the guts in the garbage and offer her a waggle of my brows. “Sorry for the loss of Pete. May he rest in peace.”

With a stupid salute that helps me avoid her soft brown eyes, I tear off toward the cemetery, glancing down at myself as I go.



*

Marley





“Since then, I’ve seen him three more times,” I murmur as we wander underneath an unmanned LuLaRoe tent, petting all the pretty leggings.

“Mmm, these pirate ones.” Kat holds a pair up.

“Festive.”

It’s the last weekend before Halloween, and old town Fate has been transformed into a mini carnival surrounded by craft booths and colorful tents: the annual Fall Festival.

Kat and I have been wandering the median in front of Fendall House, but we’re working our way toward Main Street, where, in the bank parking lot, there’s a Ferris wheel, a go-kart track, and a water-dunk machine that I’m signed up to sit in for work. Freaking disenfranchised children fundraiser. Who can say “no” to that?

“I think I need these pumpkin ones for sure,” Kat says, tucking them under her arm. “You should get the skulls.”

I take them from her. “Yeah—I should.”

“So you didn’t finish. What about the other times?”

I smile, sipping a peppermint latte I bought a few booths back.

“You’re enjoying this.” She glares as we hand our cash to a high school kid.

“A little. That’s my right as someone in the world’s most awkward situation. So anyway,” I go on, softly; Kat and I take our receipts, and start walking again. “After the pumpkin incident, I got up the next day, and there was a pumpkin on my porch. With a sticky note stuck that said ‘Pete II.’”

Kat gapes, and then emits a tiny squeal. I jab her with my elbow as we pass a booth where kids are getting faces painted. “Shh, you hussy!”

“He bought you a new one. Marley,” she coos.

“So anyway, I thought of asking him to carve up Pete II with me, but it seemed like too much, you know? So I haven’t carved him yet at all. I took a Polaroid of Pete II with a baby blanket wrapped around him and wrote ‘thanks for bringing me home, stork,’ but let’s be honest—that was weird as hell. It got stuffed into a drawer. I then decided I would meet him on the morning run—we’re both doing a morning run, or had been, actually since we were together. Can you believe we both kept that habit all this time? But anyway, hear this: he changed his running time. Or stopped running.” I drop my tone another notch as we stroll past a church booth where some kids I recognize from the clinic are playing the harp, and a friend of ours from high school coaches them; luckily, her back is to us. “So a few days ago, I was off for the day because the office was being re-painted, and I watched and listened for him. He’s now jogging midday. When I’m not there to ogle him, I guess. Dear God. Anyway, I took some trash out around the time he was coming back, and I said thank you for Pete II.”