JENNIE
Two days later, I was still having mini heart attacks every time someone came to the door. V had invited Yolanda, Eleanor's caseworker, to stop by so he could introduce us. He'd just had no idea that she'd show up when I was in the middle of unloading a lifetime of baggage on Lisa Manoban.
The introduction had been brief and awkward. Yolanda handed over a paper copy of the guardianship application, and I could feel her classifying me as a screaming shrew with a taste for too much wine. On the bright side, Eleanor had been mercifully polite and didn't mention how I was torturing her with vegetables in her meals.
I'd over-analyzed the informal meeting to the point where I was convinced I'd barely survived an interrogation and that Yolanda Suarez hated me. My new mission wasn't just to be judged an "acceptable" kinship guardian—I was going to be the best kinship guardian Northern Virginia had ever seen.
The very next day, I'd borrowed Leila's Buick and marched into Richmond's consignment shop. Pack Rats had coughed up $400 for my custom-made, barely worn wedding dress. Then I'd grabbed a coffee from Justice and gone straight home to finalize the back-to-school shopping list.
"Guess what we're doing today," I said to Eleanor as we had our lunch of sandwiches and carrot sticks on the back porch.
The sun was shining, the creek burbling lazily as it flowed past the edge of the grass.
"Probably something boring," Eleanor predicted as she tossed another carrot stick over her shoulder into the yard.
"Back-to-school shopping."
She looked at me with suspicion. "Is that a thing?"
"Of course it's a thing. You're a kid. Kids grow. They outgrow old stuff and need new stuff."
"You're taking me shopping. For clothes?" Eleanor said slowly.
"And shoes. And school supplies. Your teacher hasn't answered my emails yet, so I got a copy of the supply list from Chloe's mom." I was babbling because I was nervous. Eleanor and I had yet to connect, and I was willing to attempt to buy her affection.
"Do I get to pick the clothes?"
"You're the one wearing them. I might retain veto power in case you decide to go for a fur coat or velour tracksuits. But yeah. You get to pick."
"Huh. Okay," she said.
She wasn't exactly jumping up and down and throwing her arms around me like she had in my imagination. But there was a twinkle of a smile happening at the corners of her mouth as she ate her turkey and provolone.
After lunch, I sent Eleanor upstairs to get ready while I reviewed the mall research I'd printed at the library. I was only halfway through the store descriptions when there was a knock at the front door. Fearing it was another "drop-by" from Yolanda, I took a moment to run my fingers through my hair, check my teeth for lipstick, and close the lid on the rolltop desk so she couldn't judge my obsession with notebooks and planners.
Instead of Yolanda, I found the most annoying person in the world standing on the porch in jeans, a gray t-shirt, and aviators. Her hair looked a little shorter. I guessed when you owned a barbershop, you could get a haircut whenever you wanted. It was annoying how attractive she was.
"Howdy, neighbor," she said.
"Who are you and what have you done with blond Oscar?" I asked.
"Let's go," she said, hooking her thumb toward her truck.
"What? Where? Why are you here?"
"Leila J said you needed a ride. I'm your ride."
I shook my head. "Oh, no. I'm not doing this with you today."
"Not playing games, Daisy. Get your ass in the truck."
"As charming as that invitation is, Viking, I'm taking Eleanor back-to-school shopping. You don't strike me as a 'spend the day shopping with the girls' kind of neighbor."
"You're not wrong. But maybe I'm a 'drop the girls off at the mall and pick them up when they're done' kind of neighbor."
"No offense. But no. You're not that either."
"We can stand here arguing about it for the next hour or you can get your ass in the truck." She sounded almost cheerful, and that made me suspicious.
"Why can't I just borrow Leila's car?" That had been the plan. I didn't like when things didn't go according to plan.
"Can't now. She needs it." She leaned around me and called into the house. "Eleanor, get a move on! Bus is leaving."
I heard the thunder of feet upstairs as my niece forgot to play it cool.
I put a hand to her chest and pushed her back until we were both standing on the porch. "Listen, this trip is important. I'm trying to bond with Eleanor, and she's never been back-to-school shopping before. So if you're going to do anything to ruin it, I'd rather take a Lyft to the mall. In fact, that's what I'm going to do."
She looked downright amused. "And how are you going to do that with a piece of shit phone that's too old to download apps?"
Damn it.
Eleanor vaulted into the living room, landing with both feet before rearranging her expression into a look of boredom. "Hey," she said to Lisa.
"Lisa is going to drive us," I explained with zero enthusiasm.
"Cool. How much stuff are you planning to buy if you need a whole entire pickup truck?" Eleanor wondered.
"Your aunt said she plans to buy out half the mall. Figured it was best to come prepared," Lisa said.
I caught the little half smile on Eleanor's face before she led the way down the porch steps and said, "Let's get this over with."
--
My suspicions were further heightened when we got in the truck, and I found a coffee for me and a smoothie for Eleanor.
"What's your game?" I asked Lisa when she slid behind the wheel.
She ignored me to frown over a text.
There was something about the way she hesitated that gave me a bad feeling. "Is Leila okay? Did something happen at Honky Tonk?"
"Relax, Daisy. Everybody and everything is fine."
She fired off a response and started the truck.
We headed east and joined the slog of Northern Virginia traffic. I checked my tidy stack of cash again while Lisa and Eleanor made small talk. I tuned them out and tried to squash the anxiety. Yesterday at the library, I'd logged into my accounts to confirm some budget numbers.
Money was tight. The bar shifts and free rent were helping. But my income wasn't enough to impress any judge in any court, especially not if I added a car payment into the mix.
I had three options: 1. Find a day job while Eleanor was in school. 2.
Borrow against my retirement savings. 3. Sell my house on Long Island.
Inwardly, I cringed. It had represented so much more to me than just three bedrooms and two baths. It was a gratifying step that was part of a larger plan. I'd landed a good job at Mino's family's investment firm, fallen for him, and bought a nice house to start a family.
If I sold it, I was officially saying good-bye to the dream. Then where would I go after my six months of temporary guardianship with Eleanor were up?
By the time we got to the mall, I was marinating in the misery of regrets and failures.
"Thanks for the ride," I said to Lisa, who was now on her phone carrying on a conversation that seemed to consist of monosyllabic questions and answers. I hopped out, still clutching my coffee.
Eleanor climbed out of the backseat and slammed her door.
I expected her to accelerate away, leaving us in a cloud of fumes, but instead she got out and shoved her phone in her back pocket.
"What are you doing?"
"Are you shopping with us?" Eleanor asked. She didn't sound horrified—she sounded excited.
Damn you, Lisa Manoban.
"Got some things on my own shopping list. Figured you ladies could show me the ropes."
We entered the air-conditioned mall, and with a cursory glance in my direction, Eleanor made a beeline for an accessories store.
As soon as she disappeared into the store, I grabbed Lisa's tattooed arm. "What. Are. You. Doing?"
"Shopping."
"You don't shop. You don't go to malls."
She rolled back on her heels, looking amused. "That a fact?"
"You're the kind of guy who wears her clothes until they disintegrate, and then you either start wearing something some female relative got you for Christmas or you order the same exact thing you wore out online. You do not go to malls. You do not shop with girls."
Lisa moved into my space. Those eyes, more gray than blue today, went serious. "You got a problem with me tagging along?"
"Yes! What are you doing here, Lisa? I'm trying to bond with Eleanor. Everything else I've tried so far hasn't put a crack in those walls. She's got a poker face at age eleven because of the amount of disappointment she's already faced. I want to see her smile. A real smile."
"Jesus, Jennie. I'm not here to fuck that up."
"Then why are you here?"
Eleanor knocked on her side of the store window and held up two pairs of earrings to her unpierced lobes. I gave her a thumbs-up and mentally added "Pierce Eleanor's ears" to the list.
"I got my reasons. Just like I got my reasons for not telling you."
"That's not an acceptable answer."
We were almost touching now, and my body was getting confused between the cold air conditioning and the heat pumping off her spectacular body.
"Only answer you're getting for now."
"This is why you're single," I pointed out. "No woman in her right mind would put up with that."
"I'm single because I wanna be," she countered.
I was mid eye-roll when she decided to change the subject. "So you're trying to buy your way in with Ellie?"
"Yes, I am. Girls like presents."
"Do you like presents?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No, Lisa. I don't. I freaking love presents."
It was true. I did.
Mino had half-assed his way through the past few years of Christmas and birthdays, making me feel materialistic when I'd shown any disappointment at the thoughtless gifts in the wrong sizes.
Lisa cracked a half smile. "So, where's the funding coming from for this spree? I know what you make at Honky Tonk."
I craned my neck to make sure Eleanor was still inside. She was trying on a braided headband in pink and purple. It looked freaking adorable, and I itched to go in and drag her to the counter with it.
"Not that it's any of your business, but I sold my wedding dress."
"Things that bad?" she asked.
"Bad?"
"You just sold a wedding dress to pay for your niece's back-to-school shit. You don't have a phone. And you don't have a car."
"I have a phone," I said, digging out Leila's old Blackberry and holding it up in her face.
"The letter E just fell off the keyboard."
Damn it. E was in a lot of words.
"I don't need your judgment. Okay? Today, the priority is school stuff for Eleanor. I'll figure out the rest. So you do your thing, and I'll shower my niece with stuff."
That half smile was back and it was wreaking havoc with my nervous system. "Deal."
I headed toward the store, then stopped short to admire the window display. A wall of hot, hard chest crashed into me.
"Problem?" Lisa asked.
I turned around to face her and gritted my teeth. "You're not going to leave us alone today, are you?"
"Nope," she said, walking me backwards into the store with a hand spread across my stomach.
--
I thought for sure we'd lose her in the first tween store, but she'd stuck through all of them. Including the shoes. She'd even voiced a few opinions when Eleanor asked for them and she'd made faces at her to keep her entertained while she got her ears pierced.
She was glowing. Her frosty "don't care" demeanor had started to thaw on the second pair of shoes and had melted into a puddle when I insisted she get the sundress with pink and yellow flowers. And that was before Lisa had whipped out her credit card when she gasped audibly over a pair of hot pink sneakers with bedazzled flowers.
"Why do you keep feeling your forehead, Aunt Jennie?" Eleanor asked.
"I'm trying to see if I have a fever because I'm definitely hallucinating."
The only alternative was I'd accidentally managed to fall into an alternate timeline in which Lisa Manoban was a nice person who liked to shop.
We ran into Eleanor's friend Nina—with the nice breath and black hair—from school. I was happy to be introduced to her dads, Isaac and Gael, who seemed to accept it when Lisa introduced herself only as our ride.
Nina asked if Eleanor could go to the arcade with them. I gladly said yes and was exchanging phone numbers with Isaac when Lisa pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet.
"Go wild, Ellie," she said.
"Wow. Thanks!"
"Don't buy too much candy," I called after her. "We haven't had dinner yet!" She waved over her shoulder, a gesture I assumed meant she had no intention of listening. I turned on Lisa.
"Why are you still here? You've shadowed us to every store. You keep checking your phone like you're a teenager. And you haven't bought yourself anything. You're very confusing and annoying."
Her face remained stony, and she didn't answer.
"Fine. I guess I'll just finish my shopping."
Since I was living out of a suitcase, I really did need new underwear.
Ducking into Victoria's Secret wasn't exactly a ruse to get rid of her. But I figured there was no way on earth Lisa Manoban would follow me inside.
I was shuffling through the sale bin when I felt a grumpy, looming presence. She was standing behind me, arms crossed over her chest. I rolled my eyes and decided to ignore her.
What I couldn't ignore was the fact that every time a woman entered the store, they stopped in her tracks and stared.
I couldn't blame them. Lisa was unfairly gorgeous. Too bad about the whole terrible personality thing.
I'd narrowed it down to two pairs of normal ol' briefs but kept coming back to sigh over a silky pair with lace cutouts on the side and back when a sales associate appeared.
"Can I get a dressing room started for you?" she asked.
I thought about it. At least Lisa couldn't follow me into the dressing room.
"She'll take these," she said, snatching the briefs out of my hand and pushing them at the saleswoman.
My mouth fell open as she dug into the bin and yanked out three more pairs of the impractical, sexy as hell ones. Pink, purple, and red. Then she grabbed a pair of adorable boxer-style undies with red hearts all over them.
"And these."
She shoved them all at the woman, who gave me a sly grin before marching over to the register.
"Lisa, I'm not buying all those," I hissed at her.
"Shut it," she said and whipped out her credit card.
"If you think for one second that I'm allowing you to buy me underwear—" She cut off my tirade by slinging an arm over my shoulder and covering my mouth with her hand. "Here," she said, sliding her card across the counter.
I was squirming against her until she leaned down. "If this is what it takes to get out of this fucking store without passing out from a goddamn hard-on, I'm buying you the fucking underwear."
By my count, this was the second time she'd mentioned her man parts having a reaction to me. I wasn't a big enough liar to pretend I wasn't happy that she found herself in the same predicament as me: Turned on by the physical, turned off by everything else.
I stopped squirming when she pulled me in front of her. With my back flush to her front, I could feel the irrefutable evidence of her claim. My body reacted entirely without my brain's input and went into five-alarm arousal. I worried that I was going to need to be carried out of the store.
"That was incredibly inappropriate," I said, crossing my arms over my chest as we left the store, her arm still around me.
"You wanted me to buy something. I bought something."
"Underwear. For me," I screeched.
"You look tired," she said smugly.
"Tired? I'm exhausted. We've walked fifty miles in a mall. I spent every dime and then some. I'm tired. I'm hungry. Most of all, I'm confused, Lisa! You're so mean all the time, and then you show up today and buy me nice underwear?"
"Maybe you'll think of me when you wear them," she said, her gaze scanning ahead of us.
"You're the worst."
"You're welcome. We got one more stop," she said, taking my hand.
I was tired. Too tired to fight. Too tired to pay attention to what store she dragged me into.
"Ms. Manoban." A tall, skinny kid with a dark goatee waved at us. "We just finished up," he said.
We were in a cell phone store. I dug my heels in, but Lisa merely pulled me forward to the counter.
"Good timing, Ben."
"Here she is," the kid said, sliding a brand-new phone toward me. "It's all set up and in the case. If you need any help downloading your old contacts from the cloud, we'll be happy to help you. Your new number is written inside the box."
Baffled, tired, hungry, a little furious, and a lot confused, I stared down at the phone, then up at Lisa.
"Thanks," Lisa said to Ben, then handed me the phone.
The case had sparkly daisies on it. "You got me a phone?"
"Let's go," she said. "I'm hungry."
I let her pull me out of the store, remembering at the door to give Ben a wave and a "thank you."
We were halfway to the arcade when my brain started connecting the dots. "You walked me all over this damn mall without complaining just to wear me out so I'd be too tired to fight you on the phone, didn't you?"
"Burgers, sushi, or pizza?" she asked.
"Burgers. Lisa?"
She kept on walking.
"Lisa!" I poked her in the shoulder to get her attention.
When she looked down at me, she wasn't smiling and she didn't look smug. "You needed a phone. I got you one. Don't make this into a thing."
"You call me needy. You yell at me for working at your bar and tell me the only part of me worth spending time with is my body. Then you show up on my shopping trip uninvited and buy me underwear and a really expensive phone."
"That about sums it up, minus the only part of you worth spending time with."
"Are you always this…this inconsistent? This confusing?"
She stopped walking and looked down at me. "No, Jennie. I'm not always this fucking inconsistent. And I blame you. I don't want to be into you. I don't want to spend an entire day wandering around a goddamn mall and fighting traffic for you. I sure as hell don't want to watch you try on underwear. But I also don't want you home alone when there's some guy back in Richmond looking for you."
Uh-oh.
"Some guy? Who is it?"
"Dunno. Justice and Wraith are taking care of it. They'll call V in if they need to," she said grimly.
"What do you mean 'taking care of it'?" I had visions of bodies and tarps and duct tape.
"Don't worry about it."
I started laughing and kept right on going. I couldn't help it. I'd spent the last four years in a relationship where I took care of everything. Every dinner reservation. Every vacation. Every load of laundry. Every grocery run. Here I was in town for less than two weeks, and the grumpy person who mostly hated me had just taken care of me.
Maybe someday I'd find someone who both liked me and was willing to share the burden of taking care. Or maybe I would just end up alone like Ruby had always predicted.
"You having some kind of breakdown? 'Cause I sure as hell have better things to do than watch that."
"Oh, good," I said, smothering my hysteria. "Grumpy Lisa is back. What does this guy look like?"
"According to Justice, he looks like some dude named Henry Golding."
"Henry Golding the hot actor or Henry Golding some local biker?" It was a very important distinction.
"I don't know any Henry Golding biker. But this guy showed up at the cafe asking for you. Justice said he about lost it when he saw your sister's mug shot behind the register."
I was never going to live this down.
"You know him?"
It was my turn to be evasive. "Can we get Eleanor and go for those burgers?"