“It’s full of secrets, right?”
“You know what? It really is. We get some characters, that’s for sure.”
“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?”
When the server set her margarita down, Lily took a big sip. She discarded the idea of telling him about Dr. Ross, since it felt too sad and private. “When people don’t pay their fees, their property is auctioned, which is awful, and I hate it. But one time we opened a locker that had been rented for nearly five years. Then the man went to prison and stopped paying. When we opened it, the unit was full of taxidermied cats. Stuffed and mounted with glass eyes and everything. Probably forty of them.”
“Wow, that is truly, truly disturbing.”
“It was. But the weirdest part was that the only other thing in that space was a creepy Victorian doll. She was sitting on a stool, and all the cats were facing her.”
“Jesus, I’m going to have nightmares now!”
“I’ll just say I was extremely glad there were two people from the auction site there with me. And they took the cats! Made more than a thousand dollars on them. I will never understand people.”
“And the doll?”
She laughed at his attention to creepy detail. “They took that too, thank God. People pay good money for old toys.”
“Even obviously haunted ones?”
“Especially the haunted ones.”
He shuddered a little, making her laugh again, and she realized this was surprisingly easy, talking to him, relaxing into the moment.
“So have you found anything creepy in your uncle’s belongings?”
He coughed hard at that, seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head. “Just all the normal stuff, really. Lots of old documents. Pictures. That sort of thing.”
“Is your uncle the keeper of family history?”
“You could say that. My mom is still alive, but he’s the only one left on my dad’s side.”
“It’s great that you’re doing this. It’s usually something that falls to women in the family.”
“One of my best friends has hit that place in her life. She’s got three kids and a mom who’s moving in with her.”
“So tough. I see so many customers like that, moving stuff out to make room for an aging parent. Or storing things like your uncle has done.”
“You witness a lot of life in transition,” he said.
That was very true. Maybe that made her comfortable, knowing she wasn’t the only person just filling in the gaps until her life resolved itself.
“So,” he said. “It’s Saturday night. What do you do for fun around here?”
“Don’t ask me. You’re out on the town, and I was just running errands, so you probably know better than I do. You said you spent some teenage summers here, right?”
“Right. So . . . cow tipping? Wait a minute.” He snapped his fingers. “Didn’t there used to be a drive-in theater? I swear I took a date there once.”
“That’s where the business park is! The drive-in sat vacant for a long time. As a matter of fact, I think when you were here . . . Almost twenty years ago? That was an attempted revival. It didn’t work, and someone bought the land to bring in business and revitalize the area. Of course, that didn’t work either.”
“The American dream,” he said, and they toasted.
The server brought their food, but Alex didn’t let it drop. “So you never said what you do for fun.”
Lily stayed silent, trying to decide what to say and what to hide. But he was leaving town soon, which was the only reason she’d even agreed to dinner, so she let herself speak. “I have a son. I was married a long time ago. He’s twelve now, so that’s basically my free time in a nutshell. I am amazing at old Nintendo games and Wii bowling, and I have a black belt in nagging about homework. What about you? Any kids?”
“No kids, but I was married once long ago myself.”
“The American dream,” she echoed, and they clinked glasses again, laughing.
Lily actually felt good. He was easy to talk to, and she imagined it was a skill he’d nurtured at his job. She even found herself stealing glances at him as they ate. He wore a blue plaid button-down, but he’d rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, and she liked watching the muscles of his forearms as he moved. She no longer believed in love, trust, or romance, but she wasn’t a robot.
“Do you run?” she asked. “Or ride a bike?”
His eyebrows rose and disappeared beneath that thick wave of hair. “Yes, I ride. How’d you know?”
“You look the part. Lean muscles.”
Blushing, he smiled like a little boy at that, and delight fizzed through Lily’s veins.
“Thanks. Do you ride?”
“No, I get all my exercise doing maintenance, I guess. And I’ve been busy with classes the past few years.”
“Classes?”
“I’m almost done with my BA in accounting. I plan on being a CPA.”
“You’re going to abandon your Neighborhood Storage post?”
“I am absolutely going to abandon my post.”
After her $15,000 raise, Lily had been able to enroll in an online degree program. Now she was one semester from finally graduating, and she was already studying for the CPA exam.
She’d been in school for accounting when she’d met Jones, after all. It had been their first commonality, something to talk about. She still loved it. A silly career to love, maybe, but numbers made sense, and they never betrayed you. Her deepest, unspoken desire was to get into forensic accounting and catch problems.
Problems like her ex-husband.
“Do you have family here too?” He raised his beer to drink the last of it.
“Not anymore. My dad was from here.” She left it at that.
“And your mom?”
Lily shook her head. “I haven’t seen her in a very long time. When I was eighteen she took off for Florida with a new boyfriend, and frankly, it was kind of a relief to be on my own. Then she spent a long period falling into crazy political crap on Facebook, so . . . I guess I didn’t cut her out so much as mute her.”
She left out the part where her mom had mocked and shamed her at the worst moment in Lily’s life, getting petty revenge for all the times teenaged Lily had berated her mother for the men she chose. Oh, I’m the one who makes bad choices, huh, Lily? I’m the terrible mother in this family?
She shoved that thought away. She’d learned to stand on her own two feet, and there was nothing to be done about the rest. She found herself staring forlornly into her empty margarita goblet.
“If you want to have another, I’ll be happy to drive you home,” he suggested.
“I can’t. Everett is at dinner with a friend, but he’ll be home soon.”
“So no sopapillas either?”
“Oh,” she responded, mouth actually watering at the idea. She hadn’t had sopapillas in years.
Alex winked. “Sopapillas it is.” He immediately flagged down the server, though she noticed he did it politely, like a man who’d worked in food service at some point. He seemed like an all-around great guy. Cute and polite and smart. She felt a little sad looking at his smile.
“This was nice,” she said. “Thank you for asking me.”
“Thank you for saying yes.” His eyes crinkled so perfectly when he smiled.
When the sopapillas arrived, she drizzled on too much honey and took a huge bite. “You’re a genius,” she said with an impolite mouthful of food. “So good.”
Alex was describing a documentary about privacy in the internet age when her phone buzzed with a text. As she quickly wiped off her hands, her mind flashed to Everett and that invisible low-level worry in every parent’s mind when a child was out. But when she flipped her phone over, it was a text from Barbara. The kids wanted to stop at the library, so I’m giving them thirty minutes to browse; then we’ll head home.
Lily sent back a thank-you with five full exclamation points, then looked up to find Alex’s lips curved up. She realized she was grinning. “Sorry. Everett and his friend are out for burgers and they wanted to stop at the library. I’m just feeling very pleased about that.”