Chapter 4

The next morning, the guys showed up a little before ten. Trent couldn’t help but smirk as he wondered if this was an acceptable time for them to be working according to Mel. He showed the guys into the back yard and organized the work before he had to go to work.

Things were going well, and by the afternoon they had cleaned half the yard. The old dead tree was cut down and nearly cut up in sizable chunks. All that was left for them to do was to pull up the tree stump and finish cleaning up the other half of the yard so the grass and various weeds could be cut down and managed.

Just as Trent finished piling the cut wood against the house he heard an unfortunately familiar voice call out to him. Looking up, he saw Marcy waving at him. With a soft sigh, he walked over to the backyard gate.

“Hey Trent, sweetie,” she said with a predatory grin. “I was wondering where you were when I knocked and didn’t get any answer.”

“I’m busy,” he replied tartly, slightly irritated. Out of all the women that had dropped by to visit, Marcy was the most persistent. Though he had tried to politely tell her he wasn’t interested she either wasn’t getting it or she simply ignored him. Several of the men who noticed her stopped working to go over to her.

“Hey boys, I see you’re working hard,” she replied to them, but she kept her eyes on Trent, eying him from head to toe with a hungry look in her eyes. “But you know what they say about all work and no play,” Marcy said with a smile that surely unmanned a lot of men and nearly did several of the guys with him, but Trent quickly recognized what kind of woman she was. Marcy was cut from the same cloth as Nickie.

“Look, we have a lot to get done today. How about we save this chat for another day,” he told her, allowing some of his irritation to show.

She gave him an exaggerated pout. Trent never understood why women thought that facial expression made them look sexy. To him, it just looked childish and silly. “Alright, I can see you’re not in the mood for company,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll see you around. Bye-bye, boys,” she finished with a wink and waved, finally leaving.

‘Not if I can help it,’ Trent thought sullenly and ignored the looks of disappointment from the guys. He’d rather face a python one on one before giving that woman the time of day, and they did have work to get done. There was no way any of these guys would be any good to him if she had stuck around. “Alright, let’s get back to it,” he called out and they begrudgingly got up.

“Hey, Trent,” one of the men, Bobby, called out after a few hours. “You want to tear this bush out or leave it?” Trent walked over to where the older man stood and couldn’t believe it. It was the blackberry bush Mel had mentioned. “A lot of it looks dead already and should be easy to get rid of,” Bobby told him.

On any other given day, Trent wouldn’t have doubted it for a second. He would have gotten rid of the thorny bush and be done with it, but for some reason, now he hesitated. Somehow knowing that Mel had fond memories of the bush, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. “If you could, just cut off the dead parts and leave the living part alone.”

Bobby nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Later that evening, Trent sat on the back steps of the laundry room door admiring his new pristine back yard. He sipped on his glass of instant lemonade as he watched the oncoming darkness of the mid-spring evening when he heard some voices to his right. “You need to get a man in your life so I can have mine back,” a man complained.

“Oh please, you act like I’m hounding you to do stuff every day,” a woman shot back and Trent couldn’t believe it. It was his neighbor! Before he could stop himself, he looked to the right where the voices came from. A light-toned man with light brown hair walked over to a shed, followed by a blonde woman with a similar complexion. What Mel wrote about herself was right. She was far from ugly, and her beauty was a more muted, natural beauty compared to someone like Nickie or Marcy.

“Damn near,” the man complained.

“No, I don’t!” She shot back. “Besides, Harry, you know how much Adam loves when you come home all sweaty and dirty,” she added, crossing her arms. Suddenly, Trent understood what she meant about being stuck in place, despite his conscience telling him to mind his own business. He sat there watching the two bicker and banter between themselves, not realizing they had a spectator.

Mel went inside as Harry proceeded to start up a lawnmower, and Trent couldn’t help but feel a slight ping of disappointment that she left. ‘Ah, hell no!’ Trent swore to himself, looking down at his glass of lemonade. He was not seriously spying on her like she had been doing to him. Mel was rubbing off on him. 

Trent got up from where he was sitting and started to go back into the house when someone suddenly called out to him. He turned and was surprised to see Harry leaning against the fence. “You’re the new guy aren’t you?” 

“Yeah, I am…unless someone new moved in,” Trent replied, walking up to the fence. “Trent Harrison,” he added, as he held out his hand and the other gave him a lopsided smile.

“Harry Lawless,” the other replied and they shook hands. Harry had a surprisingly strong handshake. “You’ve got this place fixed up haven’t you,” Harry added with a tone of approval.

Trent nodded. “It’s coming along.” Despite knowing the answer, he asked, “You lived here long?”

“Nah, I don’t live here. This is my friend Mel’s house. I’m just doing the guy stuff around the house since she doesn’t have anyone else to do it,” Harry said with a shrug. “Well, I better get this started before it gets too dark to see, and Mel throws a fit. It’s nice to put a face to the name, finally.”

‘Same,’ Trent thought as he turned and went back inside the house. He nuked another T.V. dinner, vowing he would try to cook tomorrow. No matter how it came out, it had to be better than the tasteless meal he was eating now.  Once finished, Trent debated on reading more of the papers or not. Now that he had seen Mel and met Harry, it didn’t seem right to keep reading. Trent doubted Mel was dangerous or psychotic. So despite his curiosity, he turned on the T.V. instead.

He managed to distract himself for a few hours, but the papers were still in the back of his mind. The curiosity of what he would read next wouldn’t leave him. Bored from watching old reruns, Trent finally gave in and picked up the next sheet of the stack of papers.

—Well, today was awkward, to say the least. My neighbor showed up in the diner with Mr. Marshall. Of course, out of all the tables, they just have to sit at one of mine!—

Trent remembered going to the diner with his boss about two weeks ago but damned if he didn’t remember anything about the waitress. He needed to pay more attention. Maybe if he had, Trent might have figured out he was being spied on a long time ago.

—I swear, it was the most embarrassing moment I’ve ever experienced. Much worse than the time when Bobby was dared to sing that stupid song to me in the hallway in high school, and that was bad! However, thankfully, I remembered Rach’s tricks for curing a bad case of nerves, the one that she used to fight off her stage fright, and I think I pulled off a pretty convincing “I’m so totally normal and am not spying on you in any way, form, or fashion” attitude, yay me!

I do have to admit I was feeling more than a little guilty, which probably explains my lapse of common sense and good judgment when I decided to tell Christie about spying on him when we were at her place for girlie movie night. When I told her, she spewed her drink all over the place. I should have known better! You’d think after all these years I’d learn that Christie doesn’t do the whole ‘lean on me’ deal very well.

I should have told Harry! He would’ve given me advice instead of Christie’s half-hour of jokes at my expense. She even went so far as to compare me to Norman Bates! Then she stated the obvious and said I should just go over and say hello. I guess I could do that, but I’ve seen and heard Marcy is banging down his door. I don’t want him to think I’m like her so I told Christie I’d think about it. Though, as I’m sitting here and thinking about it, why should I make the first move?

Is this not the twenty-first century? Isn’t this the time where we share equal rights and feminism is here to stay? Why should I have to go over and say hello? Why can’t he take the good sense to notice there’s one neighbor he hasn’t met yet and taken that extra step to ring the bell and say “Hey how are you?” Oh no, I bet you he didn’t think about that…not even once!—

‘Maybe because I was busy, you know, fixing the wreck that was my house,’ Trent argued back in his mind. Boy, she was making a big deal over nothing. He laughed, recognizing it was all just an excuse not to come over. Trent shook his head, only Mel would bring equal rights as an excuse to avoid talking to him. The thought made him pause. He was thinking as if he knew her as if he had some kind of relationship with her to know how she would react or what she would think. “This is getting weird,” he said and set down the paper. He shook his head, but this time at himself, and went upstairs to bed.