I shrugged. I might have been an author, someone who understood words better than most, but I had no idea. “I know what a yam is.”
“So … you live on a Temu potato road?”
I pressed my lips together in an effort to keep from laughing. It didn’t work. Laughter burst forth, and Hayley joined in. Hayley was a romance writer. We’d met in college, both joining a fiction group that was full of some of the most nonfunny people to ever put fingers to keyboards. Bree James and Hayley Clifton had not mixed well with Jim Pile, a literary fiction writer who believed every sentence should be toiled over for a full hour. Jessica Midgen, a women’s fiction writer who had never met a heroine she didn’t want to torture with some kind of cancer, had complained to the group organizers that the group was for serious writers and said Hayley and I were clearly not that. We hadn’t been kicked out of the group, but nobody took us seriously.
On the face of it, we were an odd couple. Hayley wrote clean romance. That meant no swearing, no sex—even the innuendo that the hero and heroine might do it was a bridge too far for her—and no drugs. Basically, her cowboys weren’t supposed to wear chaps for any reason other than horses.
I, on the other hand, wrote steamy paranormal fantasy books where the hero and heroine occasionally needed to solve a pesky mystery or save the world with a fight, but that was always secondary to the boning. I spent more time writing sex scenes than I did anything else, and I was good at it.
Hayley was adamant that I not tell her what I was writing on any given day because she was convinced she would die of embarrassment. Her refusal to even talk about sex had me wondering. She was a lesbian—another thing she didn’t want to talk about—and seemed fine floating through life unattached, other than the group of writers we’d made friends with.
I adored her. Sometimes I didn’t understand her, though.
“Are you really obsessing with the road names?” I asked as I went back to monitoring the movers. They were almost done. I couldn’t wait. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with them—they seemed perfectly fine, thank you very much—but I was ready to flop onto the couch and pretend I didn’t have a million boxes to unpack.
“I don’t think you understand the seriousness of this situation.” Hayley’s expression was somber. “It’s not just Yam Gandy Road. There’s also Peregrine Crossing and Water Witch Crossing.”
I balked. “There’s a Water Witch Crossing? Man, I should have moved to that road.”
She shook her head. “It’s one of those teeny roads. It only has six houses.”
“Bummer.”
She shot me a sympathetic look. “There’s Cotton Crossing.”
“That sounds unfortunate for the South.”
“There’s Lampwick Lane, Rookery Road, and Sweetgum Crossing.”
My smile was back in an instant. “Why do you think they have so many weird road names?”
“I have no idea. You should have figured that out before moving here.”
I waved her off and took the envelope of cash I’d tucked aside for tipping the movers. “Is that everything?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
The man had strode into the room after the last delivery and just stared at me with his hands on his hips. If that wasn’t apay me nowglare, I wasn’t a good judge of character.
“You need to pay the invoice I just texted you before I can leave,” he said in a gravelly voice.
I was caught between amusement and annoyance. “What happens if I don’t pay it?” I had every intention of paying it, but this guy had been zero fun throughout the entire process, and I wanted to know how he would respond. “Do you pack everything back up and take it away?”
His stare remained dark. “No. That would be too much work. We would just break everything we’ve already delivered. Maybe we would set it on fire after.”
I paused, uncertain. “Was that a joke?” I asked finally.
He cocked his head and remained silent.
“Not a joke,” I muttered as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The invoice was in my text messages. I tapped it, looked at the total, and shook my head. “Geez.”
The mover lifted an eyebrow. “What do you expect when you pay people to do what you don’t want to do?”
“Good point.” I paid the invoice. Even though the mover had the personality of my ass, I gave him the tip. It was generous. “Thanks for everything.”
He looked in the envelope then back up at me. For the first time since we’d met—which had happened weeks before in Michigan, when I’d hired the company—he smiled. “Thanks.” Suddenly, he was a happy guy.
All I could do was shake my head. Apparently, I should have given him the tip first. That might have made the two-day trip from Michigan to Georgia more enjoyable. “I appreciate all you did.” I meant it. “This was a big deal for me.”
The man didn’t wait for me to tell my story about starting over. He just spun on his heel and walked out the front door. He didn’t close it behind him.
