My smile fades, but I look to Coen with intrigue, waiting to hear what he’s curious about and equally afraid he’s going to ask me more questions about my ex, causing me to wonder what he already knows. Or thinks he knows.

“Why did Hayden look so sad after his game?”

Pressing my lips into a firm line, I look over the array of frames I just set up. In each one, Hayden’s bright and vibrant smile both fuels and fights the guilt I feel from not knowing. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But, Rachel’s right. He’s a perfectionist, and sadly he does get that from me. I think he was upset with himself that he didn’t throw a curveball…” My words drift off, not wanting to mention my assumption that it was also because Patrick didn’t show up as he had promised, because then I’d be bringing up the exact subject I’m working to avoid.

“You mean he cleans out his sock drawer every other weekend too?”

Releasing a laugh, I shake my head. “No, but he does struggle with wanting to take on too much and be the very best at it.”

“Is that what you want? To be the best at things?”

The impulse to say yes dissolves on my tongue as I consider what drives me into the late hours of the night and prevents me from ever sleeping more than five consecutive hours. “Is it ridiculous that I don’t know why?” I don’t try to patch the unease with a laugh or smile, because that wouldn’t be honest, and for some reason, it’s easy for me to reveal myself and all of my imperfections and shortcomings along with some of these realizations that Coen’s eliciting.

He shakes his head. “Not at all. But I’ve got to tell you, if you want to continue perfecting your grilling skills, I will offer up my assistance in supplying and eating. And for a bonus, I’ll make sure you don’t burn it or your house down.”

Laughing, I shake my head. “That wasn’t me,” I say. “That’s Rachel. She’s the one that didn’t consider the overhang on her deck.”

“That’s right,” Coen says, snapping his fingers. “She seems nice.”

“She’s great,” I say it too fast to make it sound genuine, so I take a deep breath and smile. “Truly, she’s the best. Honestly, if you’re interested in going on a date with her, she’s—”

Coen’s shaking his head so fast it makes me dizzy to watch him. “No. No. No.” He raises a hand and then smiles when he realizes I’m staring at him, likely seeing my discomfort for having just humiliated my best friend. “I’m sure she’s great. The thing is I would never date my neighbor. I actually have a rule against it.”

“A rule?” My tone is teasing, and it isn’t just because I’m grateful he doesn’t seem to latch onto the possibility that Rachel’s interested in him. “You really have a rule for not dating someone who lives near you?”

“You don’t?” he asks.

I shake my head and purse my lips while considering what my hard limits are for dating. “I think I’d be more concerned about them living too far away. After all, credit cards really don’t give that great of miles. Let’s be honest.”

Coen laughs, and it’s deep and comforting and soothing. “I don’t want to date someone in Argentina, just someone that can’t spy on me from their bedroom window.”

I stare at him with mock disapproval. “You’re digging yourself into a hole,” I warn him. “I really don’t think Rachel is the type of woman to spy on you from her bedroom window, and really, why are you so worried about being spied on? Shouldn’t that be the more important matter at hand?”

Coen throws his head back and puts both hands over his face as he laughs before scrubbing his hands over his eyes and cheeks and then over his clean-shaven chin. “Come on. You know!”

“No,” I say, my cheeks aching because they’ve been stretched into a smile that somehow continues widening. “I don’t know.”

His face dips, and I wonder if I’ve embarrassed him, or if he’s realizing how ridiculous he sounds, or if it’s merely a private laugh filled with old jokes and stories that I hope to hear. “I dated this one girl who lived really close to me, and she used to drive by my place all the time to see if I was really at work or lying to her.”

“So, clearly there were trust issues.”

Coen’s eyes grow round. “She was crazy!” he cries.

“All I hear you saying is that you cultivated those trust issues.”

He shakes his head, this time slower while laughing. “She would ask me questions about my yard, and about who was over at my house, and things she’d see from parking outside of my house and watching me.”

My smile is replaced with a frown. “Maybe you should have invited her inside. She probably would have asked fewer questions that way.”

Coen’s eyes shine with laughter, and a subtle scar on his cheek becomes more prominent as he fights back another laugh.

“That is creepy, though,” I admit. “My parents and Rachel have signed me up for different dating things over the years.” I shake my head and think of all the horribly executed and terrible matches I’ve endured. “I might need to adopt your rule.”

“But you’ve got a system now, right? Like you know what you want and don’t want and can just be like bam, bam, bam. Yes, no, no, yes, no chance in hell.”

I’m pretty sure I just giggled, a reaction that generally only Hayden knows how to achieve. “I’m getting better at it.”

With raised eyebrows, he looks at me closely. “Better? Come on. Share your rules with me. I’ll help you discover the right algorithm.”

“Okay.” I take a seat on my couch so I can focus my attention on what I’ve discovered and learned.

Coen follows me, sitting beside me on the couch, his thigh once again close enough it grazes mine. “Who have you blacklisted?”

“Firefighters.” My answer is automatic and unrehearsed, one I’ve lived by for so many years it’s like my one true anthem.

Coen’s eyebrows rise and then fall just as quickly in an attempt to hide his surprise.

“No offense or anything. I mean, obviously you aren’t interested in me, being that I’m your neighbor.”

“Exactly,” he says. “My one rule, your one rule.”

“Exactly,” I repeat his word. “Plus, I have a son and often self-medicate with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.”

Coen smiles again, but this time it isn’t as bright or as broad, and I wonder if things have just become better or worse between us.

“What else?” he asks.

“Nothing in particular. I try to go into each date with an open mind, and depending on how things go, I kind of have this three-strikes rule.”

“Like baseball?”

“Yeah, except I only let them play for one inning. So by strike three, I’m out. Done. Finito.”

“How do they get strikes?”

“Different things,” I tell him. “Like if they call me by the wrong name, or ask me the same question, or if they don’t like kids, or are trying to make a waitress jealous by taking me to eat while she’s working … you know, the basics.”

He laughs. “What kind of dates have you been on?”

“I once went on a date where the guy showed up with his mother in the car.” When Coen balks, I nod solemnly. “She didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to be out with her impressionable son since I had gotten pregnant as a teenager and might be a bad influence.”

Coen’s eyes grow, humor making him want to laugh but shock and sympathy preventing him from doing so.

I shrug to show him it was nothing, and then try out a laugh that feels appropriate for the situation. It doesn’t quite fit, but it’s better than having him feel sorry for me.

“I once went on a date with a woman who made me Skype with her family. I thought that was bad.”

“It was,” I tell him.

“So do you date a lot?” Coen asks, earning another shrug from me.

“More than I realized, apparently.”

He looks at me for a couple of seconds then one side of his lips tip upward, revealing a new expression that begs to be interpreted as calm and relaxed, yet somehow makes me feel anything but. “What does that mean?”

“Okay, so this is going to make me sound totally ridiculous,” I warn him.

His smile stretches to both corners. “Go on.”

“So my mom and Rachel set up an online dating profile for me, and I told them I wanted nothing to do with it. Well, then my mom played this guilt trip on me because she paid a ridiculous amount to be able to see every guy that showed interest in me, and didn’t just set me up with one site, but several. She and Rachel have been going through all of these guys, and they have been my preliminary screening process and setting me up with their favorites.”

Coen pulls his neck back. “So you aren’t even deciding who to date?”

“I told you it sounded bad.”

“Ella, you’re letting your mother decide who to date, and you’re surprised you aren’t liking them? Really?”

“My mother and my best friend.” The words don’t sound even slightly convincing or logical. I roll my eyes before huffing with defeat. “But I signed in yesterday and decided I’m going to give it a valiant effort.”

His brown and golden eyes focus on me, going over my features with such attention that I feel more exposed to him than if I were standing here naked. “What changed your mind?”

While telling buried truths to Coen has been cathartic and even easy, Patrick is a subject best left alone for so many reasons, and there’s no way I’m going to tell him he’s thoroughly confused my emotions. “I even found someone that seems pretty normal,” I say instead.

“But what?”

My brow knits with confusion. “’But what,’ what?”

“You have a ‘but’ in there.”

“I don’t,” I say.

He smiles, his eyes taunting me, calling me a liar.

“I don’t!” I cry.

“Yes, you do. I can see it in your face.”

“You don’t know me well enough to know when I have a reservation.”

“But…” He extends a hand to me, waiting for me to fill in the blank space.

My shoulders droop. “It’s nothing. Really.”

Still he stares and me and waits silently.

I sigh deeply, annoyed with him for not letting me end on a win. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but,” I exaggerate the word for his benefit. “it bothers me a little because he answers the questions I ask, but he never asks any of his own.”

“Most guys would think they had found a unicorn in the reverse situation.”

I chuckle. “I’m sure it’s nothing, it just seems weird. Like is he not as invested in the process? Does he only care about what I look like? You know?”

“Not as invested in the process?” He’s teasing me, and sadly it’s working. “You mean you think he has someone else going through the preliminary process?”

“I didn’t want to sign up for online dating! I don’t even want to get married.”

“Ever?” he asks.

I spend too much time thinking about his question. I should give an automatic response to him, one of the rehearsed ones I’ve been using since I became pregnant at seventeen. “It scares me to bring men around Hayden,” I explain. “Between worrying that they could be child molesters or abusers, I feel like I already don’t trust them, and then fearing they won’t be accepting of him or love him like he is their own—it all gets to me. It becomes this weight because if anyone deserves to be loved fully and completely, it’s my son.”

As if on cue, Shakespeare raises her head and barks once before settling back down.

“I don’t trust people to drive my truck, I can’t imagine how difficult it is to trust someone with your child.”

“It’s impossible.”

Coen attempts to grasp the magnitude of my fears and doesn’t ask me anymore questions. Instead, he picks up a stack of books I hadn’t yet decided on a space for and begins placing them on the bookshelf on the right side of the TV in no particular order of author, size, or even genre. “I can see my mother trying to set up an online dating profile for me. The fact that I’m thirty, single, and Catholic sends her to mass daily.”

Coen has this way of talking that makes me laugh harder than I can explain, even to myself. The way he enunciates certain words, and pauses at the right moments, and his word choice and flow, they all make him a storyteller, and I feel confident as he continues that I could listen to him list off the ingredients of dish soap, and I’d be laughing and enjoying myself.

“Are you an only child too?” I ask.

“Oh, God. No. If I were, I would be that guy with my mom going on dates with me. No, we’re Italian, except for my German name, which my dad still refuses to acknowledge me by.”

“What?” I cry, laughing harder.

Coen nods. “Seriously. He calls me Junior, though his name’s Marco.”

My side hurts because I’m laughing so hard, and Coen’s smile grows. “People will be like, ‘How’s Coen doing?’ and he’ll be all, ‘Junior’s great.’ But he always has to replace my name with Junior if they use it.”

“So how many siblings do you have?”

He releases a breath through his teeth and shakes his head. “Too many.”

I place a hand over the stitch in my stomach.

“There are six of us.”

“Six?” My laughter stops, but my cheeks are still in the same U-shape.

“Four sisters and one brother,” he says. “Thankfully there are three of us who aren’t married, so my mom,” he pauses, “she has to split her time praying and plotting between us.”

“So what you’re telling me is that you’ve gone on plenty of dates scheduled by your mother too.”

“Guilty.” With his index finger, he reaches up and scratches his temple. “But usually my blind dates happen at the family dinner table, so…” A silent laugh makes his smile grow. “I’m the one who people are talking about when sharing their worst dates.”

We’re both rolling with laughter, and I don’t even care that he just placed my classics next to my favorite paranormal books that he’d likely tease me for if he was paying attention to their titles.

Seconds before the short hand falls on the two, I climb into bed, my lips still in a permanent smile, my cheeks still aching, and my living room still not finished because Coen and I had continued sharing stories of our childhoods and our jobs, and families, and while some simply made the time pass too quickly, others left me distracted, absorbed by his words and the stories he painted with them. There were also times, we both chose to stop talking because something we were sharing warranted the time and respect.

I ensure my phone is to the highest ring volume and place it on my nightstand before falling asleep.

Mornings without Hayden home always make me feel like I’m missing twenty steps. My entire routine revolves around him, and when Patrick takes him, I find myself packing an extra sandwich I won’t eat, and wondering if Hayden brought all his gear for baseball, and talking to Shakespeare because there’s no one else in the house.

On days like today when I don’t have to go into the office, it’s even stranger because I have nothing to hurry up for. Nothing that forces me to put on a bra or change out of my pajamas so I don’t look like an irresponsible parent when dropping Hayden off. This morning, I don’t even have to cook breakfast. I simply reach into the freezer and pull out a Popsicle that I take with me to the dining room table where my laptop is waiting for me to sit down and begin working. The plastic wrapper alerts Shakespeare, and she trots over with her tail wagging as I open my computer and wait for it to boot up. When it tells me I have twenty-six updates and not to turn off my computer, I sigh and glance at the clock which tells me it’s still early, even with having slept in later than usual.

“Let’s go for a walk, girl,” I tell Shakespeare, patting her on the head. Her tail swishes with excitement, and she follows me up to my room so I can change, foiling my plan of a pajama day. With a sports bra under my T-shirt and a pair of jogging pants I find in the back of my closet that Rachel had given to me as a gag gift, I feel like I’m at least half winning as I step outside with Shakespeare on my heels.

I don’t run. I don’t even jog. I’m not even sure you can consider my pace brisk, but I do enjoy walking with Shakespeare and Hayden. I don’t even mind walking alone with Shakespeare. She serves as my liaison to a few neighbors and my excuse for those who avoid me. I especially enjoy walking in the mornings before the humidity and heat make me feel like an upright puddle, and I question if I could drown from the moisture in the air.

Shakespeare comes to a complete stop when we reach the neighborhood playground. Her tail and ears and the fur on her shoulders all go up, and she growls. If it were dark out I’d likely change my stance on running, but nearly as quickly as she growls, I see the problem. Three boys are throwing rocks at each other and the side of the clubhouse.

“Hey!” I yell. “Stop that!”

They turn to me with varying degrees of surprise that quickly transform into varying degrees of malice and defiance. While common sense tells me that because there are three of them, and they don’t seem even a little worried that I’ve caught them in the act of vandalizing the public space, I should probably be looking to see if anyone else is awake and hopefully paying attention—or at least be reaching for my phone and be calling someone so they could help if necessary. But that would show them I was concerned. It would show them they intimidate me. And if nothing else, these past nine years in this town have taught me that the assholes who live here blow a lot of smoke and talk a lot of lies, but rarely do any of them have any intention of following through. I know this far too intimately to be afraid of these punks.

I square my shoulders, and when one of the boys pulls back his arm to throw another rock at the clubhouse, I grab my phone, but not to call for help. “Smile!” I shout, pulling up the camera and snapping pictures of them.

“Hey! You can’t do that!” one of them yells, taking three steps closer to me. He’s still at least fifteen feet away when he stops as Shakespeare lowers her head and growls. Like the rest of this town, she’s all bark and no bite unless you want to consider her tail a weapon when she gets excited. But they don’t know that, and they’re not going to learn it from me.

“Destroying public property is a crime, you know,” I tell them. “And throwing rocks at each other makes you look like morons, not tough.”

“Did you just call me a moron?” The largest of the three steps forward, making Shakespeare growl her warning even louder.

“You shouldn’t be worried about what I’m calling you. You should be worried about how much trouble you’re going to be in when I send these pictures to the HOA. You guys need to get home and stop acting like a bunch of assholes.”

Each of them sneers as they take small steps to back away, and then before the biggest kid turns, he pulls his arm back and throws a rock that hits me in the chest. They’re running before they can even tell if the rock connected, and I’m grateful because while it was small, it packed enough of a punch that I find myself leaning forward with my hand covering the spot. I’ve gone from feeling empowered to angry in a matter of seconds, ready to chase the kids home and confront their parents for not knowing where their children were and raising such brats.

I huff and force my hand to drop, though I still instinctively want to cover my wound as though it’s visible. Scanning the yards surrounding us, I wait and listen to hear if they’re coming back before crouching beside Shakespeare and rubbing her down. “You’re such a good girl,” I tell her. “You really showed them who was boss, didn’t you? Yes, you did.” She licks the side of my face before I can get far enough back and takes a seat, enjoying the praise and attention.

I wait a few more minutes before heading over to the clubhouse to inspect what damage was done. A window is cracked, the side of the metal grate that surrounds the trashcan is dented, and the plants are trampled, but in total the damage is fairly miniscule. If the kid hadn’t hit me with a rock, I might have considered just turning a blind eye to it and hoping the kids heeded my warning, but since they obviously weren’t deterred, I’m going to be sending an email to our board and let them handle the situation.

Walking home, I grumble with each step, only stopping when Shakespeare begins pulling me in the opposite direction.

“Shakespeare,” I order, giving her leash a firm tug. What began as a leisurely morning stroll has turned into a mess that is going to cost me extra time, a bruise, and being late to work. The last thing I can tolerate right now is her wanting to meet a dog friend or sniff another bush.

She whines and pulls harder, forcing me to turn in the direction she’s trying to go.

“Easy, girl,” Coen says, heading down his driveway toward us. “You’re going to pull your mom’s shoulder out.” Dressed in dark cargo shorts and a white T-shirt, he stops close enough that Shakespeare can reach him, and he pets her, giving her several seconds of his full attention before looking to me.

He looks at me carefully through his brown and gold eyes before standing. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head.

Coen doesn’t stop staring at me. He might be waiting for me to admit that something’s bothering me or looking for evidence that something is. I don’t know, because I’m trying to subtly pull on Shakespeare’s leash so I have an easy excuse to go.

“Do you want to go get some coffee or something? Or walk some more? You can tell me more about that account you’re working on.”

“It’s at a boring stage. You don’t want to hear about projections and charts and graphs.”

“No. I think it’s interesting how you are able to make the projections, and watching your mind go a zillion miles per hour. I can’t multi-task for shit.”

“You’re already a hero. Stop being greedy.”

Coen’s laughter makes my lips curve into a smile, though I try to resist.

“Was that snark or sarcasm?”

“Both,” I admit.

For years, I have had one friend and a few acquaintances at work. It’s what works, what I do, what I know. Having Coen put forth the effort to be nice to me and to Hayden, and even Shakespeare should be a welcome change to the cold shoulders that I’ve come to expect from everyone. And in some ways, it is. I enjoy that we can laugh at each other and ourselves, and I appreciate that he doesn’t take things too seriously, even himself. But when someone severs that belief and hope that you’ve placed in their hands, and then an entire town tramples over it, it’s difficult to not only trust someone but to be willing to do so.

“Who do you think you are?”

I turn in time to see Mrs. Grant making quick strides up Coen’s driveway and feel the rhythm of my heart rate become a drumline.