10

Hello, Neighbor

The week had gone by slowly, and mostly in silence. Mari felt weird about talking to Jack, their every interaction seeming fraught with implications once she’d analyzed them through the filter of what Lisa would think. Whether he was being nice, or maybe just acting nice to get close to her, or being the kind of nice Brad was when he felt bad for a fight they’d had.

She wasn’t sure about anything anymore, and it left her feeling dizzy, so she just kept to herself. Which wasn’t hard. Jack didn’t exactly seek her out to engage in small talk. When they crossed paths at the motel, he’d just duck his head and mumble something that sounded like a gruff, rumbly Alabama version of hello. Or maybe just hi. Or maybe some kind of nonsyllabic acknowledgment that they vaguely knew each other in a professional sense.

It was entirely possible he was simply living there out of thrift, and Lisa was wrong about how the linemen’s housing allowance was paid. He certainly didn’t seem to have any interest in her or in being near her any more than necessary. The only exception had been when she made him brownies at work, but what man didn’t like brownies?

On their one day off, she dreamed of the roar of motorcycles, and when she woke up, his bike was already gone. Jack didn’t return until sunset, his hair tangled when he took off his helmet before he shoved it back into its normal knot—too rough to be called a man bun. And Mari let the curtain fall before either one of them had to acknowledge why she had been peeking out the window.

On the first day of the fifth week, everyone had waited when Marcus brought up the assignments for Wyatt’s crew. She felt odd and squirmy, unable to hold eye contact with anyone. She wasn’t entirely sure Jack wanted her on his crew after the whole bird’s nest argument, but she didn’t want to make anyone else go when they’d be uncomfortable and probably upset Jack in the bargain, when the last thing he needed was more stress. Except she also knew Lisa would worry if she went back to Jack’s crew.

She felt like there was no right decision that wouldn’t backfire on her, and that made her feel so caged it was like being married all over again. So she volunteered for Wyatt’s crew twice as loudly just to drown out all the competing voices inside of her.

Then she spent all day regretting it, because the only words Jack said to her weren’t even to her. They were just in her general direction, when he was blasting one of the guys for chatting her up when he was supposed to be stacking the wooden pieces of cribbing into the work truck.

The evenings, though, were different.

It started weeks ago, the first night after he moved in, when she was watching HGTV. It was fun to have TV again after so long in her truck. Her favorite guilty pleasure was a zombie show, but it came on only once a week, and HGTV had programming all the rest of the days. Simple, sunny shows about house buying and remodeling that appealed to her so much that she, perversely, didn’t want anyone to know she watched them.

But that first night, the sound on her program was weird. Echoey, or hollow sounding. She eventually shut the TV off in frustration, only to get a chill when the sound kept going after the screen went blank. It took her a second to work out that it was coming from the room next door. Jack’s room must be a mirror image of hers, his TV mounted on the other side of the same wall as hers. He was watching HGTV, too.

That made her smile. She had cozied back into her pillows, and flipped the TV back on.

The same thing happened the next night, and the next. The echoing sound became a comfort, as if she wasn’t watching alone for once, even though being alone was what she’d long since decided she wanted. On Sunday, when her zombie show came on, she felt a pang when she flipped the channel. Like she was abandoning him.

He probably hadn’t even noticed. She was just being silly.

That Monday, after she volunteered for a fifth week on his crew, she felt lonely all day . . . until she got home and turned the TV on. Not three minutes later, she heard his come to life, and it made her laugh out loud. They must have been working together long enough to be on exactly the same schedule, as predictable as an old married couple. Or maybe, did he look forward to the echo of that sound just like she did?

She quieted, thinking about it. He was awkward, in his own snarly, terrifying way. He still ate lunch alone on most days. He hadn’t seemed to know how to act when she thanked him for helping with her tire, and he was even more uncomfortable when she paid him back the money for it.

What were the chances he was sitting on the other side of that wall, feeling stupid, like she didn’t want him at her motel? But also unwilling to move as long as Creepy Ricky still occupied a room down at the end of the row. What if he’d come here at least partially because he wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t know how?

She sat with the thought, staring unseeingly at the TV until the show switched and the theme music of her favorite house-shopping show started, on both sides of the wall.

And then she pushed off the bed. When she left Brad, she swore she’d change, let herself have a new life, be the opposite of everything she’d been before. It was easy when it came to picking clothes she actually liked, getting to wear earrings now and again. It felt a lot harder when doing the opposite meant being egotistical or cocky, or putting herself out there to try to make friends. Because what if people weren’t interested, but they were just too polite to turn down her invitations?

Mari stopped to smooth her hair in the bathroom mirror. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she asked herself. “You embarrass yourself?” She snorted. “Been there, done that.”

The minifridge was her last stop before she let herself outside. She didn’t realize her feet were bare until she felt the heat of the gritty sidewalk. Looking down, she winced as she registered her yoga pants and ancient “Geology rocks but biology grows on you” T-shirt. Too late to change, and it didn’t matter anyway. Seduction wasn’t her aim here.

Breaking a cycle. It was as giant and minuscule as that.

She threaded the long necks of the two glass beer bottles through her fingers and rapped the bottom of one on his door.

Jack opened it, his man bun a little mussed and shirt crooked like he’d just pulled it on, a pair of thrashed old jeans hanging low on his hips. Without his sunglasses, his eyes were a deep, dark green, like the color was a secret you only got to see if you looked closely enough. She pulled in a steadying breath and smiled.

“Hello, neighbor. Figured if we were going to watch the same show every night, we might as well save electricity and do it on one TV. Can I come in?”