Friendly doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary.
***
This is a bad idea. A very bad idea. But it seemed so good when I visited all the other neighbors.
It’s smart, though. Just go over, say hi to his wife, and then you can all become friends…ish.
And if you chicken out, you’ll have an entire cake tempting you to eat it…pregnancy cravings are real.
I ring the bell and wait.
The boy answers the door.
“Hi.” I lift up the cake. “My name is Greer Hestons. I’m your new neighbor.” That totally didn’t sound stupid.
He looks me up and down really slow…forward…he had to have learned that from his father. Parents of teenage girls around here better send them to an all-girls boarding school. That’s about the only way they’re not going to be losing their minds over this boy.
“I brought your family a caramel apple crumb cake and thought I might introduce myself to your parents.”
“DAD! The hot neighbor came over with food!”
Um…What? That isn’t exactly how I wanted to be introduced.
“Could I possibly talk to your—”
The father walks up behind him. His hair is windblown, and there’s a slight stubble on his cheeks. What there isn’t is a friendly smile on his face. “We don’t want your peace offering.”
I didn’t know we were at war. “Hi, my name is—”
“Don’t care. You don’t belong here. Go home.” He slams the door closed.
What just happened?
My brain just had to have had a meltdown and imagined that. Real people don’t slam the door in their neighbor’s face when they come over to say hello.
This has to be a nightmare. I’m going to wake up any second now.
The door pops open.
See, it was just my imagination.
The boy pokes his head out. “Don’t worry. I like cake.” He takes it out of my hands and closes it again.
It’s official, my neighbors are nuts.
The Nerve
Havoc
How dare that woman just show up at my door like we’re going to be friends? With a cake! Like she’s going to buy my goodwill with some nasty store-bought cake. Why do beautiful women think they can have any man?
“So, what was that all about?” Creed walks in with the cheap bribe in hand.
“You took that?”
Creed glances down at it. “Um, yeah. It looks delicious.”
That’s not in question. She’s rich enough to afford a designer cake. “Food from a poisoned well.”
