Page 2 of Rent a Bad Boy

She heaves a sigh. “They’ve been giving us thirty days for two years, sweetheart. It’s all bark. Christine on the board hasn’t had a single original thought in at least a decade. The rest of them go along because nobody wants to be the one who actually has to file paperwork, but they also don’t want to deal with her when she doesn’t get her way. Trust me. Nothing is going to happen to your babies.”

I really wish I could believe that. “What if they fine us? Or take it to a judge? I looked it up, you know? There’s actual precedent for homeowners associations winning these cases in this state⁠—”

“Isla.” She turns away from the mirror to look at me directly. Her face softens the way it does right before she says something that’s supposed to make me feel better, but does the exact opposite. “I’ve lived through a husband, a hip replacement, and the eighties. I think I can survive Christine from the HOA.”

Then, because she has the memory of a goldfish, she gives me another twirl with her arms held out to the sides. “Well? Too much?”

I learned a long time ago that there is no correct answer to this question. “You look very... warm. Leg-wise.”

“That’s the spirit.” She blows me a little kiss before grabbing her purse off the dresser. “Honestly, if they actually try anything serious, I’ll just hire somebody to scare them into backing off. A big guy with a scary face, who doesn’t even have to say a word. Somebody with lots of tattoos. Christine would have a stroke just looking at him pulling into the driveway.”

She laughs at her own idea while dropping lipstick and keys into the purse. “There. Problem solved.”

To her, it’s a throwaway joke on her way out the door to meet with a man much closer to my age than hers.

So why am I still sitting here with rhinestones digging into my butt, imagining what she just described? Hire somebody big and scary, who doesn’t have to say a word.

I mean, in theory, it’s not a terrible plan. People hire security all the time. That’s why bodyguards exist. This would just be a very specific, targeted application of the bodyguard concept, right? Instead of aiming it at people who threaten celebrities, we’d aim it at homeowners association members who have a personal problem with the existence of chickens in a fenced-off yard.

I know better than to say any of this out loud, not that Grandma would hear me anyway. She’s already halfway out the door in her leg warmers, blowing me one more kiss and telling me not to wait up. There really isn’t room for me to go, hang on, what if we actually hired somebody?

It’s another minute before the roar of a motorcycle rings out. I need to get a look at this guy. I hurry into the living room and peer out the window in time to watch Grandma practically skip down the pathway and across the sidewalk. The guy is wearing a helmet—okay, so he believes in safety, that’s a good start—and he has inked-up arms thick enough to make my eyes bulge. If he sees anything wrong with Grandma or her outfit, he doesn’t show it.

Then again, I’ve seen her profile. She kind of forced me to go through it and judge all of the photos she used. She’s not exactly trying to hide anything about herself, including her age and her addiction to hairspray, and the kind of clothes she wore when she was my age.

And then they’re gone, and the street goes quiet again. Without Madonna screaming her head off, I hear the soft, contented clucking coming from the backyard. My girls are no doubt ready to settle in for the evening, completely unaware that they are once again the subject of a housing dispute.

I go out to check on them, and as usual, the sight of them makes me smile. I don’t understand how anybody can have a problem with them. They’re not hurting anybody. They don’t make a mess, and they don’t make a lot of noise.

Okay, maybe Brad Pitt does, but come on. A white noise app easily blocks out his morning crowing.

I want to trust Grandma’s read on the situation. She’s lived in this neighborhood for more than thirty years and knows Christine and the rest of the board. To her, they’re familiar, predictable, mostly harmless.

But Grandma didn’t grow up the way I did, getting laughed out of homeroom because some kid decided Isla Pickel sounded like a deli order. She didn’t spend four years of high school learning that the people who seem like they’re all bark eventually find their teeth, usually right when you’ve stopped bracing for it. I’d rather overprepare and be wrong than the other way around.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, girls,” I murmur. Cardigan is roosting on the lower bar of the coop, already half asleep. Marjorie is pecking at something in the dirt, totally focused. Betty and Tennessee are doing their evening lap around the yard like they want to get their steps in before settling in for the night. Starlight is missing for one heart-stopping second before I spot her tucked under the lavender bush.

Brad Pitt is perched on top of the coop itself. He surveys his kingdom with the unearned confidence of a man who has never once paid rent.

“Nobody is taking you anywhere,” I tell them. Maybe it’s not something a normal eighteen-year-old says out loud to poultry, but I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll never be normal. I mean, I named my chickens after Taylor Swift songs. “I won’t let them.”

Brad Pitt only blinks as if he already knew that. Typical male.

Once I’m sure they’re all set, I head back inside and grab my backpack from where I left it by the front door. I have a discussion post due for my Intro to Sociology class by midnight and an exam on Friday I haven’t started studying for. None of that goes away just because Grandma is riding a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, and my chickens are in jeopardy.

Once I’ve set everything up on the kitchen table, I hunt around in the fridge for something to eat. Grandma isn’t exactly big on cooking, which pretty much fits her personality, but there’s cheese and pepperoni and hard-boiled eggs in here. That will do for now. I set my snack down on the table and log in to my school email. It’s a wall of notifications. Underneath that, there’s a group chat, which I don’t actually participate in because... why would I? I go to class, I come home, and I do my homework.

The fact that there have been roughly forty messages in the past twenty minutes catches my attention, though. In the name of procrastinating, I open up the chat to see what’s going on.

Going tonight??

Obviously. It’s Everett’s first game back. I still can’t believe they only suspended him two games for that.

Dude broke a guy’s jaw. Two games is nothing for what he did.

lol. Honestly, I’d let him break my jaw.

Curiosity is what keeps me scrolling. I don’t follow football. I never have. I couldn’t pick a single player out of a lineup if my entire future depended on it. But the name keeps coming up. Everett. Everett is back tonight. Everett is probably going to murder somebody on the field out of pure pent-up rage.