Page 25 of The Right Kind of Wrong

But now? As Blake put her hands on the sides of her hips and Monroe watched as her fingers pushed gently against the bare skin peeking out between her shorts and her top? Well, she wasn’t thrilled by her body’s less-than-neighborly response.

She held her breath, nostrils flaring, and she didn’t know if it was actually getting hotter in this godforsaken town or if the lack of oxygen was making it harder for her to focus.

Because if there was one thing Monroe didn’t do, it was leer. Especially not at someone like Blake Bettencourt.

In high school, Monroe had already known she was a lesbian. It would have been her worst nightmare to be caught staring at the pretty, popular girl, her secret written across her face. And it wasn’t expressly why she’d left Cypress Falls—that was for art school, truly—but it didn’t hurt to know she’d be heading for a more accepting place, where her sexuality hopefully wouldn’t be an issue.

As a teenager, Monroe had been painfully shy, had come from a poor family, and was already weird because she’d rather make art than go to football games. She hadn’t needed to add anything else to the list of attributes that made her different from the other kids.

And yeah, she knew that the town had changed over the years. Progress moved slowly, but it came for everyone eventually. Whether they wanted it to or not.

She’d already been noting the changes since coming back to town.

There had been a few boys in the ballet class last week, for one thing. A pride flag was stickered to a corner of a hip coffee shop on Main Street. Walking through the park during the Wild West Fest, she’d seen a few—not many, but any was more than she’d expected—same-gendered couples holding hands. And, it was an assumption, given that she didn’t know how they identified, but she didn’t know if their little corner of the world had started having conversations about nonbinary identities yet.

She was smirking at the thought when Blake’s eyes turned toward her again. “Something funny?”

Monroe knew that her cheeks were flushed, a combination of the heat and having Blake’s attention on her. She shook her head. “Just thinking about progress, that’s all.”

Which wasn’t exactly a lie.

Blake laughed, a loud, raspy sound that pinged at something inside of Monroe, to have been the one to cause it. “Well, I’m sure that some things have changed since you moved away, but I can’t promise it’s as many as you’d like.”

Monroe sized Blake up, wondering what about her had changed. “How has Cypress Falls been treating its townspeople over the last decade?”

She wasn’t expecting Blake to take a step closer or to lean her arm against the hood of the truck. “Maybe we can have a drink on your gorgeous patio and I can tell you all about it?”

Monroe felt a little thrill zip down her spine; she was walking a dangerous line. She could tell herself that it would be nice to have a friend in town. Or that Blake could be a great source of information to catch her up on what Cypress Falls was like these days.

But when the, “When’s good for you?” fell from her lips, she knew it wasn’t for neighborly reasons.

All she could hope was that Blake couldn’t tell.

And maybe she didn’t know what exactly Blake herself was looking for either—very likely not the romantic company of a woman—but still, confusingly, Monroe could see a glint in her eyes, could feel it through her own body when Blake said, “How about now? I just got home from work, so let me just take a quick shower and I can pop over?”

“Sounds good,” Monroe finally responded, not liking the slightly breathy tone in her own voice.

Or the fact that, as she walked away, Maisie in tow—begrudgingly, of course, with the girl mollified only by the knowledge that Blake would be coming over—she could feel Blake’s dark eyes following them into the house.

“Maisie, can you pick up your toys, hon?” Monroe asked, zipping around the house on a speed run, trying to make it presentable.

“Yah,” Maisie said, even as she was taking her sweet time eating the celery sticks and peanut butter Monroe had quickly cut up when they’d walked inside.

On second thought, Maisie not touching anything with her sticky hands was really for the best.

Generally, Monroe tried to tidy up during the days, but since Maisie’d gone back to daycare, she’d been taking advantage of the little bit of free time she’d been afforded, and it wasn’t spent cleaning.

She’d known, in the abstract, that kids were exhausting, but having the responsibility of another living person’s well-being had Monroe crawling into bed every single night like she’d run a marathon.

One of those ultramarathons even, the ones that took days and hundreds of miles to complete.

Plus, living at Sylvia’s, she’d long forgotten what it was like to vacuum common spaces, and there had never been the issue of toys littering the floor and creating tripping hazards.

Sylvia’s palatial estate was incredibly aesthetically pleasing, but it was devoid of human touches, never something Monroe would describe as “homey.”

Right now, though, a little less lived-in could be helpful, since it was sort of necessary that she not break her neck while trying to be Maisie’s guardian.

Monroe had blearily found that out the hard way one recent morning, when she’d almost fallen face-first over a pile of building blocks that had migrated right into the middle of the living room walkway. The fear of Maisie truly being left with no one, should that happen, had at least kept her cleaning regimen in line.