Of course. Josh was a nice guy. Josh had friends.
U OK?
My life sucks.
?Better get busy unsucking it.
Thanx. A lot. Will get right on that.
Good luck.
How, exactly, did you go about unsucking your life? So far she hadn’t found a way.
She couldn’t mope around the house forever though. She needed to get out and... do what? With whom?
She didn’tneedto do anything with anyone. She could handle being alone. With the new-and-improving her. She decided to take a walk.
The street had been cleared and the sidewalk was slushy, but the houses still looked pretty with thick blankets of snow on their roofs. Her yard and the ones nearest it were torn up from Sunday’s snowball fight, but farther down the street a few lawns were relatively pristine.
She walked by one house where two little girls were in the front yard, building a snowman. She didn’t recognize them and wondered if the family was new to their neighborhood.
“Your snowman’s lookin’ good,” she said to them.
“We’re rebuilding him,” said the littlest girl. “Billy Watkins knocked his head off.”
“That wasn’t very nice,” said Darby.
“Billy Watkins is a poopy head,” the girl informed her.
The older girl cocked her head and studied Darby. “What happened to your nose?”
“I got hit with a snowball.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the younger one.
“Not so much now,” Darby said.
The older girl made a face. “You look ugly.”
A future mean girl. “Yeah, well, one thing I’m learning—it’s better to look ugly than to be ugly,” Darby said, then moved on down the street. A turn around the corner, down a couple more blocks, and lo and behold, she found herself in front of the house Gregory Collier had bought.
Unlike most of the houses around him, he hadn’t put up Christmas lights, but an inflatable green snail with a Santa hat and a house on its back that looked like a peppermint candy was camped out on the lawn. Gregory sure marched to his own quirky drumbeat.
She saw lights on inside. Was he home? She could march up the walk, ring the doorbell, and make her apology. Get it over with and get on with her life. Without Gregory, probably.He would, hopefully, forgive her, but she doubted he’d want to have anything to do with her going forward. Not with her track record.
She couldn’t erase the past. That was a stupid wish. Your past was your past, and you carried it with you just like that snail carried its house. There were no do-overs. But there was such a thing as do-better. If she told him she was working on that, would he believe her?
Was he alone in there? What if Arielle was over?
She stood on the front walk for a very long time, gnawing on her lip. What to do? The light was fading, and porch lights and Christmas lights were blinking on. It was getting cold. She should go home before she turned into a pillar of ice.
The front door opened and there he stood, looking at her. “Are you stalking me?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Well, you’re caught now. You may as well come in.”
Her feet moved slowly, but her heart began to race. She suddenly wished she’d stayed in the house with Jennifer Aniston and her friends.
