Sunsets (9 page)

A man with long brown hair, wearing a tattered work shirt was bent down under her window, fiddling with something on the wall.

“What are you doing here?” Alissa demanded, ready to heave the chair at him and run.

“Hey!” he cried, seeing her armed and dangerous. “Don’t shoot! I’m doing you a favor.”

He turned and she looked carefully at his face, something
she knew you were supposed to do before filing a police report. Then it hit her that she had seen that scruffy face before. She lowered the chair and put her hand on her hip.

“What in the world are you doing here?” she said, confronting the green-eyed computer guy.

Brad Phillips stood up and shook the hair out of his eyes. He said, “I live here.”

“You do not. I live here!”

“Okay, you like specifics? Fine. I live there.” He used both hands to point toward the common wall between the two sides of the duplex.

“You live next door?” The coincidence sent her brain spinning. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

“Wiring your wall,” he said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Genevieve told me you wanted to put your desk under the window. That outlet would never let you run a light and phone or fax machine off the same juice. So I rewired it.”

He calmly brushed past her and headed for the front door. “You know,” he said without looking at her, “you might consider thanking me instead of threatening to throw furniture at me.”

“Thanks for fixing my electricity,” Alissa muttered, her heart still in a flutter.

“I don’t mean thank me for the electricity,” Brad said, slipping his feet into the Birkenstocks. “Thank me for getting you this duplex.”

“Excuse me? You didn’t get me this duplex.”

“Oh yeah?” Brad said, sticking out his chest as if she had just challenged him and he was up for the duel. “Who did?”

Alissa had no answer.

“I’m the one who left the note.” He tipped an invisible hat
to her and said. “Welcome, neighbor.” He opened the door, about to go, then turned and said, “You know, if there’s ever anything I can do to help, just holler. Or better yet,” he said, nodding at the dining room table, “why don’t you just, you know, throw a chair at me or something?”

“I thought you were a burglar!” she said defensively.

“Do I look like a burglar?”

Alissa looked him up and down and let her expression answer for her.

He looked her up and down.

Alissa cleared her throat, took her hand off her hip and for a silent moment they stood there, forcing themselves to breathe the same air.

Brad spoke first. “Genevieve tells me you’re moving in tomorrow. You need any help?”

“It’ll have to be Sunday,” Alissa said. “I have something going on tomorrow.”

“So do I,” Brad said. “Why don’t you move in tonight? Jake’s working, but I’ll help.”

“That’s okay,” Alissa said.

“What? You already have help?”

“No, but …”

“You’re not packed?”

“I’m packed,” Alissa said, irritated at his pelting questions.

“Then move in tonight. It’s better at night. Cooler.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, deciding she didn’t have the energy to fight this guy. “We can at least start.”

“Now, don’t let me put you out any,” Brad mocked. “I’m only trying to help out here. You don’t have to say thanks or anything.”

“You have a thing about people saying thank you, don’t you? What? You need a lot of praise? A lot of affirmation from your peers?”

“I just think people should have a few manners and say thank you every now and then.”

“Oh, manners,” Alissa said with a deep laugh. “And you are going to teach the world about manners? You, the man who cuts in front of people at Starbucks?”

“I didn’t cut. You were stalling.”

“I was thinking.”

“Thinking?” Brad said, flipping his hair behind his ear. “At Starbucks? What is there to think about? It’s coffee.”

“I have the right to think about what I want to order without being harassed by some impatient customer.” Alissa stated. She couldn’t believe she was talking this way. Ever since she had stepped into this duplex, it was as if she were a different person. No, it wasn’t when she walked into the house. It was when she saw Brad. He pulled all the raw edges of her emotions to the surface and yanked on the loose strings one at a time.

“Do you want to get your stuff? Or should we stand around here all night and fight?”

“Fine,” Alissa said throwing up her hands. “Let’s go. We’ll have to rent a trailer.”

“No we won’t,” Brad said. “I have a truck.”

“I’ll drive my car, and you can follow me over,” Alissa said. “If you can keep up, that is.”

She climbed into her sedan and glanced at Brad in the rearview mirror. She couldn’t understand how she had so quickly moved from being sweet, polite, slightly hesitant Alissa to an all-feelings-out, in-your-face, who-do-you-think-you-are-anyway Alissa.

Avoiding the bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic at 5:45 on a Friday evening, Alissa led Brad to her condo via a dozen side streets. She decided the personality transformation was due to the emotional exhaustion she felt after an intense, full week at
work and then coming home every night and staying up until midnight or later packing.

In all her rushing around, she had barely eaten anything all day either. Hopefully something was left in her refrigerator.

When they arrived at the condo, Alissa didn’t have to check the refrigerator. The minute she unlocked the door, Brad got to it before she did. “You have any special plans for these plums?” he asked.

“No. Is there anything else in there?”

“No other recognizable real food. Just yogurt, cottage cheese, celery, carrots and—just a sec.” He opened the milk carton and took a sniff before drinking right from the carton. “No more milk,” he said. “Anything in here?” He opened the freezer and found it empty except for two Weight Watchers frozen dinners she had bought earlier in the week and hadn’t had time to eat.

“Are you on a diet or something?”

Alissa felt her face blushing, and she tried to avoid his question.

“So let’s just get it out in the open. I’ll bet you were one of those beauty queens. In high school.”

“Excuse me?” Alissa leaned against her kitchen counter. She really couldn’t believe this guy.

Brad chomped off the end of a carrot. “In high school, you were so beautiful you didn’t know what to do with it so you used it to your advantage until it got you in trouble.” He snapped off another chunk of carrot. “Then you decided to kill off the beauty queen part by adding pounds. But she’s still there, you know. So here you are at what, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six,” Alissa grudgingly offered.

“Twenty-six, and you’re still trying to find a balance between who you are on the inside and the curse you were handed at birth.”

“The curse, huh?” Alissa folded her arms across her chest.

“The beauty. You’re beautiful, you know. It can be more of a handicap than being born with a physical defect. The beautiful women never know if people, men in particular, are nice to them because of their looks or because of who they are on the inside. So the women with the beauty handicap spend their pre- to mid-life years distrusting men. That’s you.”

Alissa unfolded her arms and put her hands together, applauding Brad in jest. “Oh, thank you, great Freud. How has the world gotten along all these years without your wisdom?”

Brad shrugged and tossed the top of the carrot into the sink. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it? So, what do you want to move first? The furniture or the boxes?”

She was steaming mad. This guy had to go. “You know what? I’m going to change my clothes, and when I come out of that room, I want you to be gone.”

“See? Right there,” Brad said, opening the freezer and pulling out two of the microwave dinners. “You don’t know what to do with someone who is honest and trustworthy. You run, you push them away. Now what would be the point of my leaving? You’d have to see me again. We’re neighbors. What do you want? Chicken piccata or vegetable lasagna? Forget I asked. You can have the lasagna.”

As Brad was ripping open the boxes and tossing them into the microwave, Alissa stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door. There was nothing she could do with her anger. Everything was packed so she couldn’t find anything to throw. Plus, she had nearly thrown one chair today. How many chairs did she have to threaten this clown with to get rid of him?

Okay, calm down, Alissa. You can do this. You’re a professional. You’ve dealt with worse than his kind at work. Take a deep breath. You’ll be fine. Change your clothes, eat some vegetable lasagna, and
haul some boxes over to your new home. You’ll be fine. You can do this
.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and wrapped her hair on top of her head, holding it in place with a silver barrette. Washing her face helped, even though all her towels were packed and she had to dry off with toilet paper. She sat on the edge of her tub, letting all her fired-up emotions burn themselves out.

Feeling calmer and more in control, she walked out the bedroom door and found her microwave dinner waiting for her on the counter. Brad was gone. And so were half the boxes she had stacked up in the living room. She had no idea how he could have hoofed it to his truck with so many boxes so fast.

Silently eating her lukewarm vegetable lasagna, Alissa decided what to do next. As long as she was going to move everything tonight, she might as well clean out the rest of the kitchen cupboards and empty the refrigerator. She still had to clean the condo to get her deposit back. But she could do that Sunday.

Going at it with all the energy she had left, Alissa filled the last four packing boxes with goods from the cupboards and then emptied the refrigerator.

When Brad walked back in her open front door, she looked up, wondering what this encounter would bring. Brad plunked a Big Gulp on the counter. “Peace offering,” he said. “Diet Coke. Okay?”

“Thanks.”

“See how nice that is?” Brad said and then drew a long slurp up the straw of his drink. “I do something nice, and you say thank you. That’s nice.”

Alissa should have kept her mouth shut, but the statement tumbled out. “I hate diet drinks. But thanks anyway.”

Brad flipped his hair behind his ear and said, “You’re kidding.”

“No. It’s the artificial sweetener. I don’t like it.”

“Well, that’s your problem. Do you know how much sugar is in a regular Coke?”

“You’re saying I have a weight problem?”

Brad’s eyes widened in disbelief. He slapped his forehead and said, “I come here, I look in the fridge. All you have are carrots and diet frozen dinners. I try to be nice so I buy you a beverage that corresponds with the contents of your refrigerator. This does not take a brain surgeon. But no, you eat diet food but don’t drink diet drinks. Okay.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Alissa said. He didn’t perk up so she added the magical, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Brad said. “What goes next? The rest of the boxes or the furniture?”

Alissa felt he had closed her off. Maybe that was a good thing. At least they wouldn’t be at each other for the rest of the night.

And they weren’t. They worked in tandem, quickly, quietly like two old jogging buddies running the track silently in sync with each other.

Just to be nice, Alissa drank about a fourth of the diet Coke. It wasn’t bad.

They delivered the last load of stuff to the duplex at twenty after midnight. She thanked him out in front of the duplex. He said, “You’re welcome” and went inside his half of their domain. Alissa entered her jumble-tumble duplex and was glad Shelly wasn’t there to see the mess.

So that’s that. I have the ideal home and roommate, but my neighbor is impossible. I’m going to plan right now to see as little of him as possible
.

Alissa barely got her bed made in her new room before she fell into it and slept a dreamless sleep. She hadn’t set an alarm, so she was shocked to find it was after ten when she woke up
the next morning. She had needed that rest. But now she had less than four hours to clear the house a bit, find some nice clothes, and shower and dress for the wedding.

Like a worker bee on a mission for the queen, Alissa dashed around the place, unpacking clothes, filling her drawers in the bathroom with her cosmetics, and reshuffling the boxes in the kitchen. She and Shelly hadn’t talked through which dishes to keep. Since they both had complete kitchens, Alissa was going to propose they keep their favorite things, even if they had duplicates, and store the rest or have a garage sale.

She didn’t think much about Brad as she scrambled around the house. He was going to be one of those unavoidable nuisances. Everything else about her new friends and new home was perfect. Almost too perfect. But Brad took care of that. He was the negative that balanced out the positives.

Showered and dressed in a slimming navy sundress, her hair down and curled, Alissa slid her contacts into her eyes and finished applying her makeup. She felt excited about watching Rosie come down that aisle to at last be united with her dear Chet.

Alissa grabbed her car keys and wallet and swished out the front door. The door to the other duplex shut the same time as hers. There stood Brad, dressed in black slacks, a white shirt, and striped tie, with his hair slicked straight back and his face shaved. He obviously had a hot date.

Brad lifted his sunglasses and looked at Alissa. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said.

They stood there awkwardly glancing at each other, and then down at their shoes and over at their cars parked on the street.

“Well, I have to go,” she said.

“Me, too,” Brad said, flipping his sunglasses back in place.

They walked down their tandem walkways and split to go to their cars. Alissa unlocked her door and said over her shoulder, “Have a nice time.”

“You, too,” he called back. “I don’t know how much fun I’m going to have.” He slipped into his truck, rolled down the window, and called out, “I’m going to a wedding.”