Page 4 of Dahlia Made A List

My phone chimed. Minerva leaned back into the chair, smiling at me in the mirror. “Look at my beautiful hair, Dahlia Whitcombe. Look what you did! My word, I love it.”

She fluffed the shimmery lengths, her eyes bright with delight and my heart thumped. I loved the expression of a woman relishing her new look. I worked every day for that expression. I met my own eyes in the mirror, taking in the length of light brown hair hanging over my shoulders, not exactly plain, but with no flash, no personality. Maybe I needed some color. Maybe if I did something as out of character as Ms. Minerva’s blue streaks, I’d have that look in my eyes, too.

“Go,” she said then, interrupting my maudlin thoughts. “Go take care of whatever my grandson needs and then be at the address I gave you tonight. Don’t make me come chase you down and don’t think I won’t, either! I’ll leave your money with Maia. Maia can blow me out, can’t you dear?”

My boss called an affirmative and, gratitude stopped up in my throat, I nodded, gathered up my purse, and headed out the door.

Three blocks later, I regretted leaving the shop without changing back into my Converse. After six blocks, my toes were screaming and the heel of my left foot burned like murder. I turned the corner from Main onto Redbud and straightened my shoulders and my walk. No limping. No weakness in front of the cheating asshole.

A big black truck wedged up against the curb in front of my apartment, and a man half-sat, half-leaned on the tailgate, one jean-clad leg swinging lazily. He wore a ball cap with dark hair curling over his ears and along the collar of a blue and green plaid shirt that looked more than a little lived in.

Wyatt Weston, my gruff, quiet landlord. One of the sons whose forefathers settled the Three Corners region and gave Weston Mill its name. But while his brother and cousins peppered 3C in their million-dollar suits, in and out of town via helicopters and extravagant cars, this brother kept a low profile, in worn flannel and dark denim.

Despite his lived-in shirt and laidback lean on the rear of his massive truck, the man intimidated the crap out of me. Dark hair, dark beard, dark, formidable expression. In my six months in Weston Mill, all of that time renting this place from him, we’d barely spoken. The time the washing machine in the apartment wouldn’t drain, I sent him a text about the problem. He’d called me back within fifteen minutes and arranged to have the machine serviced the same day. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out he used as few words as necessary.

His intensity, the way he held his jaw, the set of his shoulders, tempted me to try and make him laugh. To rip that ball cap from his head and mess up his hair just to see what he would do about it. If he ever showed even a hint of softness, I might have tried it. Regardless of his deceptively relaxed pose, I had the sense not much got past him. Like he would spot a lie at a hundred yards.

Meanwhile my life was nothing but one big, fat lie. Nothing but me pretending I had my shit together, when in reality, I was barely holding back the tide with duct tape and wishful thinking.

And when his eyes landed on me? The tiny hairs along my arms jumped to attention. Excitement edged with just enough wariness to keep me from flirting. Dueling desires to both be seen by him and for him not to look too deep. Fear he would see beyond the lie I wore like a second skin and be disappointed.

Not that Wyatt Weston was my type. Too big. Too quiet. Too serious. And too high up the food chain to notice me.

I edged closer, taking in the scene and skipping over my too-observant landlord. I lived right off Main Street in Weston Mill. Whether you were headed out to the county airstrip or over to Beckley Industries or anywhere else in the Three Corners region, chances were, you’d pass through Weston Mill on Main, making the location of my apartment perfect since I didn’t drive. I could walk for work, for shopping, for whatever my little heart desired.

But that also meant more than a few people noticed the clothes fluttering from the limbs of the crape myrtle in the gentle Virginia breeze this morning. The game console half hidden in the azaleas. The beanstalk-tall, irate man in skinny jeans cursing up a storm as he pulled his crap from a hydrangea. The “front yard” was about ten square feet of grass and landscaped shrubbery between the house and the sidewalk. With the breeze wafting through all morning, Brandon’s lofty button downs and designer underwear had drifted as far as the neighbor’s house, some even out into the road.

“Morning, Miss Dahlia.” Across the street, one of my neighbors, Mr. McCluskey, all of ninety if he was a day, sat on his front porch just as I’d seen him a million times before over the past few months. “Livened up the morning, now, didn’t you?”

Heat exploded in my cheeks, but I managed a half-hearted smile and weak wave. Wyatt heaved himself off the tailgate of his truck with a softwhumpas his booted feet landed on the pavement.He shoved his phone into his back pocket as I approached, my eyes drawn to the way his shirt pulled across his bulky shoulders, not disguising the definition of his massive chest.

“Changed the locks.”

Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, the sheer tank under my white lace dress sticking to my skin. Tendrils of hair clung to my temples, but I tilted my chin up to meet his dark eyes. “I did.”

With a heavy exhale, I pulled my attention from my landlord’s shoulders and pointed it toward Brandon. He hadn’t noticed my approach yet. My ex had his phone to his ear, his mouth moving, but his voice too low for me to make out his words. He must have felt my eyes boring holes into his stupid, faithless head though, because he looked up and caught sight of me then.

“Dahlia!” He stormed closer, bright pink sharpening his cheekbones, his face still handsome despite his outrage. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He hadn’t ended the call with whomever he had on the phone, and I could just make out the sound of a female voice shouting for his attention. I expected to feel at least a little heartache. After all, I’d invited this man into my life, into my home, into my bed. Instead, all I felt was embarrassment. Not about the fact that he’d cheated on me. I’d suspected he was seeing another girl days ago and even on initial discovery, hurt wasn’t the first emotion to trickle through me. I celebrated insisting on condoms. I regretted giving him a key. And more than anything, I wished I made better decisions.

“Well, Brandon,” I said, holding back the urge to roll my eyes at him. “I’d think your stuff all over the yard would make things kinda obvious.”

Just behind my left shoulder, my landlord grunted. Brandon didn’t notice.

“Dahlia, you can’t just throw my stuff outside like this.” He pointed to the box half hidden by azalea bushes and spoke as though the lone adult at a finger painting jamboree. “The game console is probably ruined.”

“I did think of that. This morning, when I was gathering all your things up, I wondered, if I toss this over the balcony, could it be damaged?” I shook my head, as though pondering one of life’s great mysteries. “Then I thought about spending the night alone while you were god knows where. Found I just couldn’t be bothered to care if I ruined your stupid game.”

Brandon stared at me, confusion swirling in his bright blue eyes. He wore a faded green T-shirt, a shirt I recognized after having run it through the washer more than once in the last month. But the important detail that stood out in that moment was that he’d not left home wearing the shirt yesterday. So wherever he’d found to sleep last night, he’d either taken a change of clothes or kept a supply there.

Sometimes, my mouth ran off with me. Today was not one of those times. I waited out his surprise, his confusion. He prided himself on being a student of Stoicism, and he did have a certain aura of quiet. But he was as much a Stoic as I was. The pretension fit his image as much as the skinny jeans and the hobby beer kit smelling up my kitchen.

A woman’s angry voice carried up from the phone in his hand. He dug into his pocket, shimmying enough to get the keys out of a pair of skinny jeans no man should ever don, and held up his key ring. “My key doesn’t work.”

“Your phone does though, doesn’t it, Brandon?”

A muscle popped in his jaw and he finally put the screaming woman to his ear. “I’ll call you back in a minute.”

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