Page 23 of If This Was a Movie

I sigh, knowing Jaime is not going to like this at all. “Yes? No? I don’t know.”

“I don’t like how this sounds,” he says with a grunt.

“A water line broke in my building, flooded my place and the dance studio,” I say, deciding to get right to it is the best point of action.

“Fuck,” the man of few words says, somehow encapsulating everything I’m feeling in one simple word.

“Yeah. And, as I’m sure Ava has told you, Evergreen Park gets crazy during Christmas. So considering how much I’m going to have to shell out to fix my place, I don’t want to spend a ton on a hotel for an indefinite stay. Luckily, a uh…friend of a friend offered me a place to stay in an in-law suite behind his house. I just want you to look him up to make sure he’s not going to murder me or something.”

“No,” Jaime replies instantly.

“No, you won’t look him up?” I ask, confused.

“No, you can’t stay with him. Jesus, I thought that was common sense—not sleeping in someone’s house right after you meet them.”

“Technically, I’ve slept there before,” I say without thinking.

“What? What did she just say? You’ve got that face!” Ava shouts in the background and instantly regrets it.

“How have you slept there before?” he asks.

“She what?”

“Look, I’m not really interested in—” I start.

“Is it the New Year’s guy?” Ava yells.

Why do I tell my friends anything at all?I ask myself.

“What?” Jaime asks his fiancée.

“That guy she slept with on New Year's that has a family! Is it him?”

“Ava wants to know if?—”

“I heard. Tell her yes, and it wasn’t his wife; it was his sister.”

“You are not staying somewhere where a man was caught sleeping with his sister,” Jaime says.

I look at the ceiling of the bathroom and pray for patience as I hear Ava scream in the background.

“He didn’t sleep with his sister,” I say with as much patience as I can put in my words. “I saw him with a kid and a woman at the store, and I came to the apparently incorrect assumption that he had a family and he was a cheater. It turns out the woman at the store was his sister.”

“And the kid?” I sigh, knowing the answer is going to require an explanation that I don’t want to give, mostly because I can’t give that answer. I have no idea why Nate didn’t tell me he had a kid, but if I’m being completely honest, I can see why a single guy might not be willing to info dump that kind of thing right off the bat.

“It was his kid. Can you background check him or not?” I ask, letting some of my irritation seep into my words.

“Whose kid was it!?” Ava asks.

“His. I’m gonna do a background check, and I’ll have more information then,” Jaime says to my best friend before directingthe rest to me. “Yeah, I’ll do it. Can you get me his full name and address?”

“I can send you a photo of his license,” I say.

“His license?”

“He knows who you are and told me to call you and give you his information. The background check was his idea.” There’s a beat of silence before Jaime speaks, and I can almost hear the approving nod I know he’s making.

“Got it. Yeah, send it to me. I’ll do a preliminary one now, which should let us know the basics tonight, and start a deeper one after. I’ll probably have the full results in the morning. Though, I’m gonna guess he’s probably fine if he’s got a kid and gave you his license to run him.”

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