Page 5 of Passing Notes

I propped my feet on the porch railing, took a huge burning hot sip of coffee, and waited for something to happen.

Bring on the freakin’ inner peace.

Even though it was empty now, I still loved my house. Two stories, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a huge backyard. The fact that I’d ended up in the middle of Green Valley, owning a house on Clearview Lane, was ridiculous. Especially considering the way I had blown out of town nearing on fifteen years ago, determined to never come back.

The image of Nick sitting there in his truck, all sexy and handsome with his adorable, floppy, dark hair and gorgeous square jawline—looking even better than I remembered, for Pete’s sake—flashed through my mind and I forced it right back out. Thinking of him would be the opposite of peaceful. Seeing him had knocked the air out of my lungs and launched me straight back to the morning after high school graduation and the sad, pathetic hours I’d spent at the bus station waiting for him to meet me before finally being dumped with a note.

I remembered calling his house days later, desperate to find out how he was doing, only to have his mother tell me he was fine. He was happy, all moved into his new apartment at college, getting ready to start football practice, and living next to a cute girl with possibilities. She had hinted broadly that I should leave him alone. Something about her tone had made me wonder if she had somehow found out about us.

Enough.

His family would never accept me, no matter what I’d made myself into. I’d had nothing back then and he’d had everything to look forward to.

I picked up my knitting and watched as a moving truck backed into the corner lot next door. It had been empty since last weekend when the Middletons, my elderly next-door neighbors, had moved out to cruise the country in their RV. Maybe I should buy an RV and get the hell out of here...

Nah, I liked this porch too much and I had finally gotten my yard exactly the way I wanted it. Old lady porch life was the way to go. I just had to figure out exactly what that entailed, beyond being a busybody, of course.

I didn’t think I was old enough yet for bird-watching; so far, I found it boring and I couldn’t tell the different species apart. I perked up. Maybe I’d get an interesting new neighbor to observe, for science and boredom and my own amusement.

Maybe a lonely hot guy would move in, and we could start up an illicit friends-with-benefits affair. Or perhaps I could just surreptitiously watch from my balcony when he would inevitably take a skinny-dip in that awesome pool in the backyard.

How convenient would that be?

So far, the alone part of my life was terrible, but I felt it would ultimately become survivable. After all, I did have family and friends to hang out with, so I wasn’t actually alone-alone, just lonely sometimes. It was the horny part that was becoming an issue.

The dry spell was real.

A man in a moving company polo shirt stepped out of the cab of the truck with a grin.

I smiled back as he slid open the garage and headed inside.

“Alexa, volume up!” I shouted through the open window behind me.

“True inner peace begins when we allow ourselves to acknowledge our pain.”

“Oh, fuck off,” I mumbled as I stabbed my knitting needles into the ball of yarn. “Alexa, stop!” My mood was too bleak for this crap today and it was all frickin’ Nick’s fault—as if I needed another reason to hate him. I’d been acknowledging my dang pain all morning. Maybe it was time for a new podcast.

God, how I wished I really did hate Nick.

I chucked my knitting across the porch with a low scream of frustration. “Damn it.”

My across-the-street neighbor, Leonard, strolled outside through his open garage, gardening gloves on and hands full of supplies, at exactly the right time to see my outburst.

He was hot, and I watched him frequently. But he was also a total weirdo—not that I had room to judge when I was currently in the middle of my reign as the Wackadoodle Queen of Clearview Lane.

I couldn’t decide if he was trying to have a better yard than mine, or if he was just very into gardening; either way, he wouldn’t win. Mine would always be better.

He lived with his mom, Janice, who used to be the band director at the high school. I remembered her from when I went there. Janice was good people. Sometimes she brought me brownies and joined me on my porch for a chat. Being a lonely object of pity sometimes came with baked goods, which was a bonus I had never expected but one I could get behind.

“Mornin’,” he called, lifting his chin in my direction as a knowing smirk slid across his face.

I narrowed my eyes and shot back a smirk of my own. “Hey.”

Was he judging me?

So what if I was out here every day?

So what if I frequently yelled at my Echo Dot? I could do what I wanted on my own damn porch.