AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Sherry takes the barstool next to me at the diner, letting out a painful wince as she forces her arthritic limbs to climb onto the seat. It’s morning, a few days after my fake date with Tyler. I haven’t heard from him since that night, and I may or may not be hanging out at the diner a lot more than necessary just in case I happen to run into him.
“How’s the coffee this morning?” she asks me, nodding toward my almost empty cup.
“It’s good,” I tell her with a polite smile. This is the first time I’ve seen her outside of the inn, so she either hired a new employee to watch over things in her absence or there’s no guests currently staying in the Salt Gap Inn. I’d bet on the latter.
“I’m glad you were able to move into Tyler’s place. Do you think you’ll be staying in Salt Gap long?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her as I finish off my breakfast. “Miranda and I don’t really have a plan yet.”
“But you’re enjoying your time here?” she asks me. From anyone else, I’d consider this a nosy question, but coming from Sherry it just sounds like the woman is looking for validation that her beloved town is worth our time.
I nod. “Absolutely. I should look into getting a job though because I’m not enjoying unemployment as much as I thought I would.”
This puts an excited look on her weathered face. “I was hoping you’d say that.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it as her eyes light up. “The Halloween Festival is in a couple weeks and I could use another set of hands. To be honest, all my helpers are up in age and things would get set up so much faster if I had more young energetic people.”
She doesn’t exactly give me a choice, so I agree. After breakfast, I have a set of Sherry’s handwritten notes that take up both sides of three napkins from the diner. I decide to take them home and transfer my massive to-do list onto real paper before these get ruined. Or used as napkins. Miranda waves to me from across the diner as I slip out into the parking lot. She’s been so massively busy lately, I barely get to talk to her at work. Which is fine, because the girl doesn’t shut up at home.
My cell phone lights up from its place in my cup holder and I almost swerve off the road in my excitement to look at the screen. But there are no new messages. And no calls. It just lit up to warn me that my battery was getting low. My heart does this stupid heaving beat of disappointment. Tyler wasn’t trying to get a hold of me.
What kind of guy says he’s not going to stop trying and then stops trying?
Maybe I heard him incorrectly. Maybe that’s not what he said at all. Maybe all of this anticipatory heartache could have been prevented if I had only paid more attention to him that night, three days ago, when he was standing on my front porch.
Besides, I’m not even supposed to care about this. I’m not supposed to be crushing on anyone. This wasn’t in the plan. My heartbeat quickens as I turn onto the dead end street of my new home. An unmarked box van is backed into my driveway. I can’t imagine a burglar stupid enough to rob me in broad daylight, but I’m wishing I knew the phone number to the Salt Gap Police Department, if there even is such a thing. A mental image fills my mind: an elderly man dressed in uniform, sitting on a rocking chair in front of an old western-style jail cell.
The van isn’t actually parked in my driveway, a slightly comforting fact I realize as I slowly drive closer to my apartment. It’s parked in the forked part of the driveway, where it turns to the vacant apartment connected to mine.
Two portly men in sweat-drenched clothing carry boxes from inside the truck and load them onto the front porch, my front porch, but on the other side. Looks like Tyler has found a tenant for the other duplex. I didn’t even know he was looking for one. And who would it be? There were hardly any people in Salt Gap and they all seemed to have lived here forever. Did two other runaway women stumble upon the town’s bullet perforated street sign and decide to stay as well?
I park on my side of the driveway and sit in my car, pretending to stare at my phone so I can get a look at the new tenants. Hopefully they aren’t as bad as all the neighbors I had to share the elevator with back in Houston.
A woman walks out of the duplex’s front door, her blonde hair messy with bits of it sticking to the sweat on her face. She wipes a hand over her forehead, her face dull with exhaustion. She doesn’t look anywhere close to as adorable as she is at the diner.
“Where do you want these?” one of the men asks as he hauls a shelf with little curved slots for wine bottles on his shoulder.
Elizabeth thinks for a moment. “The kitchen, I guess.”
She waves at me as I step out of my car and I act as if I hadn’t spent the last few minutes eavesdropping on my new neighbor. She dances across the porch as I walk up to my door and grabs me in a hug, leaning across the small railing that separates her half of the porch from mine.
“I’m so excited that we’re going to be neighbors! Miranda is crazy excited too. It’ll be a girl’s only duplex!”
