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LYLE Michaelson, our new social media manager, walked into my small office with a nervous smile on his face. I was in the middle of answering emails.
It had been two days since I put the lock on my garbage, and I still felt justified about it. My garbage can wasn’t even full this morning—the way it should have been when I was the only one using it.
It made me happy, dragging my garbage can to the curb early that morning. Thursday was garbage pickup day, so I unlocked the combination lock and left the can next to my curb. Not-Hot had already left for work by the time I put it out there, so I didn’t have to worry about him sneaking his trash in there at the last minute. He had been filling both of our cans for the past couple weeks. How did someone make so much garbage in a week? That was what I wanted to know.
I shook my head, trying to get rid of distracting thoughts of my neighbor. Lyle was talking, and I wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m sorry, Lyle. Could you start again?” I reorganized my pen holder while I waited for him to repeat himself.
“Did you like the schedule I showed you?” He straightened his crushed tie and brushed back some imaginary hairs. His thin build reminded me of a high schooler that still had a growth spurt waiting for him. He carried himself as though he wasn’t sure if he should be walking on the floor.
“It looked great, Lyle. Adjust the target audience after your A/B testing, and we’ll continue reaching out to influencers, but the schedule looks great.”
Lyle smiled and pulled himself up to his full height. He looked as though I had nominated him for a Nobel Prize. Maybe Susan was right and he needed some time to adjust to a new job. He obviously did well with encouragement. Those million questions he’d been asking must have been nerves, because the social media campaign he’d outlined for me showed that he knew what he was doing.
“Thank you,” Lyle choked out. “It means so much coming from you.”
I smiled. “We always appreciate excellent work.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Um, are you busy Friday?”
I appreciated his initiative, but the office was officially closed on Fridays. Sometimes, Susan and I would work at the office on Fridays, but we didn’t really advertise that fact. It was our chance to get stuff done in a quiet office. “Are you worried about accessing the accounts from home? I’ll email you all the passwords again if you need them.”
“No, uh, I have the passwords.” He tugged at his tie. How he didn’t hang himself every day, I’d never know. “I was wondering if you had dinner plans.”
I blinked. Darn that Mrs. Vandenmeyer. Susan had mentioned that Lyle might have had a crush on me. She was right.
Thank goodness for my cactus. “I’m having dinner with Landon that night.”
Lyle looked taken aback. “Oh, I didn’t know. I thought you were single.”
“A lot of people think so, but Landon and I spend a lot of time together.” My cactus and I were very close, especially when I didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, or ruin a work environment.
“Okay, well, I’ll just go back to work then.” Lyle frowned as he quickly stepped out of my office and closed the door behind him.
There was nothing wrong with Lyle. Only that he was an insecure, twenty-three-year-old kid that I wasn’t interested in. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or lead him on in any way. Now that he assumed I had a boyfriend, I could go on being friendly to him, and he’d get over his little crush on me. Aunt Tricia was brilliant with the whole cactus idea.
I pulled my phone out of the drawer and texted her a quick thank-you for the hundredth time. No, I didn’t have a trail of broken hearts I was leaving behind. I didn’t think I should have wasted time going on dates with people I was not genuinely interested in. I knew that, someday, I would meet that person—that one person—and I’d know he was the one.
There would be stars, fireworks, and the heavens would open up for an angelic chorus.
Okay, maybe not quite like that. But I did expect to have some sort of gut feeling that he was the one. My mom knew that my dad was the one for her the moment she met him. It took Dad an hour to decide he wanted to marry her. They had four kids together and are disgustingly happy twenty-seven years later.
I planned on holding out for that type of relationship. Thanks to Landon, I was able to do that without offending people.
For the rest of the workday, Lyle kept to himself, and I left right after work to stop at the gym for forty-five minutes before I headed home.
After the gym, I made my mental to-do list on the drive home: water my hanging pots, wash my car, and pressure wash my driveway. I had noticed how dirty it was when I was waiting on Not-Hot Neighbor to test out my locked garbage can. Being the house closest to a park with a baseball field and sand pits meant that the dust seemed to find its way to my house first.
It might have been a little sad to admit how much I loved improving my house. Instead of making friends, I was caught up in planning out my flower beds and landscaping my backyard. My social life was pretty much nonexistent. People took energy, and when work was done, I liked to go home and enjoy peace and quiet while I did projects around my house. My house was especially quiet since it was a dead end, and there were only four houses on my street: Dave’s, Karen’s, mine, and the garbage thief across the street.
I turned into my driveway, but my garbage can sat smack dab in the middle of it. The garbage service was usually careful about leaving it closer to the curb. Putting the car in park, I jumped out and pulled the can next to the garage so that I had room to park.
As I walked back to my car, I noticed Not-Hot standing on his porch, watching me with a smirk. Petty as well as being a jerk. Luckily, this time he was wearing a green t-shirt with faded jeans. There were no tan abs on display to distract me.
I pulled all the way into my driveway, then gathered up a few trash items from the car. There was something amazing about sitting in a clean car every morning. It made my brain feel good. Sitting in a clean car was my version of doing drugs—it gave me a rush—which was why I immediately picked up my granola bar wrappers and coffee cup and carried them to the trash.
When I tried to open my garbage can, I noticed something. My lock was no longer there. While my lock wasn’t there, a different lock was. It was a key lock, not a combination lock. I had taken the lock off before I set the garbage can out that morning so that the garbage truck driver wouldn’t have to get out of his truck.
I spun around to where my neighbor stood smirking on his porch. I slammed my coffee cup and wrappers on top of the garbage can, then stomped over to enter the code that opened my garage door. It was on my to-do list to clean out the garage so that I could park my car in there someday.
As the garage door rolled opened, I watched my neighbor step off his porch and cross the street at a leisurely pace. Unfortunately, there was no need to look for cars since we were the last two houses on the street. The road wasn’t a cul-de-sac, simply a dead end with a roadblock sign on the end. Past the roadblock sign was a large open field that was part of the park.
I ducked into the garage and rummaged around until I found the bolt cutters I had stolen from my dad’s garage when I left home. I knew they’d come in handy one day.
When I came back out of the garage, Not-Hot was standing next to my car with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a chunk of pineapple.
“Howdy, neighbor.” He smirked as he took a bite of pineapple.
I narrowed my eyes and gestured with the bolt cutters. “Go away.”
“Whoa,” he said as he held up his hands as if I were waving a loaded gun his way. “I just wanted to come say hi. See if you needed anything.”
I ignored him and began to cut the lock.
The movies made it look so easy. You need to cut through a fence to break into a top-secret facility? Snip-snip and done. Then there was me, who probably would have had better luck using a bulldozer to knock the lock off of a small garbage can.
“Maybe you should turn those the other way,” he suggested as I switched the angle.
I bit my tongue to keep from screaming. How did he manage to get a rise out of me every time we interacted?
“Why don’t you unlock it with the key?”
“You know darn well that I don’t have the key.” Something started to burn in my left shoulder as I tried to press the bolt cutter handles together.
He chuckled as he leaned his back against my car. “You know, if you asked nicely, I’d give you the key. But then again, you probably don’t know how to do that.”
“I don’t need help from rude jerks.” I put all my weight into it. It finally snapped, and I barely managed to catch myself when I tripped on my own feet.
I unhooked the lock and opened the lid to the garbage can. Dropping the broken lock inside, I added the garbage from my car before I turned around to give my neighbor a piece of my mind.
He was tossing something in the air and catching it, over and over again, as though he were having the most relaxing evening.
I took a step closer and jabbed my finger at him, preparing to tell him what I thought about him using my garbage can and changing my lock.
He pushed himself away from the car and leaned down so he’d be closer to my level. “You know, you should have just used the key.”
He dangled a small key between his thumb and index finger.
I tried to make my mouth work. I really did. But I had reached the too-far-gone-and-angry point. There were a million things I should have done, but I was too busy fantasizing about running him over with my car. I stepped closer to him and did my best to look threatening. “I should stuff you in that trash can.”
“You’ve got some steam coming out there,” he said as he pointed at my head. “Have a nice day!”
With that, he jogged across the road, an evil laugh floating my way.
I closed the garage door before heading inside. After his taunting, I would just have to deal with him on my own terms.