She was right, and I hated that she was right. I really did.
All of what she’d said was correct.
“You were mean. You didn’t need to be mean.”
“Fine, I accept that.”
“You did that to get back at me for last night.”
“Maybe I did.” She squared off.
“You aren’t out of the woods for that, young lady.”
“Neither are you, old man.”
What the fuck?
The problem here was my girl was me. I could have been talking to myself because everything she said was exactly what I would have said.
I didn’t like that either. It was like she knew what I was going to say before I said it.
“Aria, this is not a joke.”
“I didn’t think…” Her voice trailed off and her gaze shifted to the window. “Oh my God, wowwwwww.”
I turned too, to see what she was staring at.
A massive Neiman Marcus delivery truck was outside, the kind I thought would normally deliver to the store itself. The one truck was enough cause for excitement since I’d never seen anything of the sort in these parts, but when another truck pulled up, Aria gasped. Neiman Marcus was in Charlotte, a good three or so hours away.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a truck from Nordstrom parked behind the second Neiman’s truck.
The drivers began unloading the delivery, and Miss Mouth opened the door to the house. She floated down the steps with the biggest smile on her face. That blonde hair looked like a mass of white gold on her head.
It hadn’t escaped me that she was very beautiful. It had been fucking distracting the previous day, and it was distracting now.
“I didn’t know we had a neighbor.”
I hadn’t either until the day before. That house had been empty for over two years then a month before I’d seen movement, people going in and out to clean and fix up the place.
Then the previous afternoon, she’d arrived: Miss Mouth, my new neighbor who had a mouth on her, who gave as much as she got.
Her mouth with its full, round lips made me think of all kinds of shit I hadn’t thought of in a while.
There she was now across the way, ushering the men inside. They were only too happy to do whatever she wanted. Any man would be just from the sight of her in that romper that showed off her tanned legs and voluptuous breasts, which were real, definitely not like Mindy. Also unlike Mindy, Miss Mouth’s perfect body had curves in all the right places.
I had definitely overreacted the day before. I’d been mad as hell, but I should have dealt with the situation better. Couldn’t take it back now, though. A first impression was a first impression. Miss Mouth most likely thought I was a jerk, even though I’d seen her watching me from her window the previous night.
“That is what I call classy,” Aria gushed, continuing to admire her.
Brooke. That was her name.
“Classy,” I said, more to myself than to Aria.
Brooke was most likely one of those Barbie Doll types with daddy’s credit card.Look at her.Everything about her was perfect from head to toe.
“Definitely classy.” Aria beamed. “Look at all that stuff—Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton. Wow, I wish I had even one thing from any of those brands.”
I looked at Aria and got absorbed in her fascination.
It would be just my luck for my daughter to like the one woman I’d totally
pissed off.
