Ride Steady(58)

This was food for thought should I be lucky enough to give Travis a sibling.

I was chewing on that notion when the front door opened and I twisted my neck to see Tack sauntering through. As he shifted around the back of the bar and came our way, he gave a chin lift to Pete, a nod to me, and a smile to his wife that made my heart flutter in a happy way for Tyra.

“You talk to Carissa?” he asked.

“No!” Tyra cried. “Shoot! With her showing with Travis, I got caught up in baby and forgot.”

“Talk to me about what?” I asked.

Tack made it to Tyra as Tyra looked to me. “Tack and I still own my old place. We rent it out for extra cash. And our renters gave notice about a week ago.”

I didn’t know why she was telling me this, so when she stopped talking, I said, “Okay.”

“Thought you might wanna have a look at it,” Tack said.

“I—” I started but only got that far.

“A little house,” Tyra stated and at that, my heart thumped.

Travis and me in a little house?

How wonderful would that be?

“Two bedrooms,” she went on.

Two bedrooms?

Heaven!

“I redid the kitchen when I was there, which was a while back, but it’s still nice,” she kept going. “And we put new carpet down in the whole place and repainted after the renters before these and our current renters have only been in there a few months. So it’s really nice.”

“I, uh… I…” I stammered.

“We need someone in it we can trust,” Tack told me. “The ones leavin’ jacked us around. Jumpin’ their lease early ’cause they had a kid, got pregnant, need a bigger place. The ones before them got a puppy, didn’t tell us, didn’t pay a pet deposit, puppy messed the place up. Which bought new carpet and paint and a pain in our ass. Not worth the hassle of gettin’ in the faces of a couple buildin’ a family. But need someone steady. Regular. In the family, meaning our family, who we know’ll take care of the place.”

I would definitely take care of their place.

Though, I’d likely have to start selling plasma (and then some) to afford it.

“Well—” I began.

Tyra cut me off again, “Six hundred dollars a month.”

My eyes got big.

Six hundred a month?

That was only a few hundred more than what I was currently paying for the not-so-great place I was raising my son.

A deal!

She took in my big eyes and added swiftly, “Plus free cable.” When I didn’t speak because my excitement made me mute, she threw in, “And electricity paid.”

“I, uh… a house for six hundred dollars?” I finally got out.

“It’s nice. Really nice. In a good neighborhood. And you said you weren’t real big on where you’re staying,” Tyra said by way of answer.

At this point, Tack was holding out his phone. “Scroll, girl. Those are pictures. We can take you ’round whenever. Place’ll be open at the end of the month, which means a week.”

I took his phone and I scrolled through the photos. They weren’t big on the phone but I could still see the place wasn’t nice.

It was very nice. Clean and attractive with personality.

Not something that cost six hundred dollars a month.

And here it was again.

This wasn’t a deal, it was a steal.

And I’d be the thief.

Darn.

I gave Tack back his phone, saying, “That’s really sweet but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you can get more out of it if you rent to someone else,” I explained what he well knew.

“Yeah, and we can get more headaches with dogs and lease jumpers and shit like that,” he returned.

“Not to mention, the expense of placing an ad in the paper,” Tyra put in.

I didn’t know how much ads cost but I did know that whatever they cost didn’t cover what they weren’t making if they rented their place to someone who could afford it.

“And we don’t go through a management company,” Tack added. “So we gotta go through applications, pay for credit checks, drop shit to do showings. It’s a pain in the ass. You take it, we don’t have to do any a’ that shit.”

Okay, well, I could imagine that none of that was fun, not to mention it had to be time consuming and pricey.