“Does it say why?” I asked.
“It says he broke up with Lindsay Taylor and left Nashville.”
“I hate that bitch,” I said drooling with scorn. Abby laughed.
“Shut up. You know you love her first album,” she teased. She was right, of course.
“Oh, wow! No wonder her last album sucked. He wrote all of her songs before they split,” she said as she kept reading.
“Figures. She got famous off him and dumped him. Serves her right to fall on her face without him.”
“No, Teagan. It says in this article that she said she’s misses him and is lost without him. He must have dumped her.”
I wondered what would make a man break up with a huge star like her.
***
A week went by and every day I heard the piece of song over and over again bleeding through my walls. It was driving me crazy. To get out of the house, I had knocked on my other neighbor’s door the day before and introduced myself.
She was an older lady, very grandmotherly, and even had a little girl hanging on her leg when she opened the door.
“Hi, I’m Teagan. I just moved in next door.”
“Hello, sweetie. I’m Mary. This is my granddaughter Sophia. I watch her while her mom and dad work.”
“Hi, cutie,” I said with a wave to the cute little girl. “How old are you?”
She stuck out two fingers and said, “Three.”
Mary and I laughed, and she invited me in for some coffee.
Sophia sat in front of some kind of cartoon and Mary brought me a cup of delicious coffee.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Teagan. Have you met any of our other neighbors yet?”
I shook my head no and sipped the steaming beverage.
“Well, that’s not surprising,” she bemoaned. “The single guy on the end next to you doesn’t talk to anyone. The kids living in the end unit next to me are a couple of young’uns that have no idea how to be neighborly. I’d like to meet their parents and give them a bit of an education in manners, but it’s too late to help.”
I laughed. “Yeah, the guy next to me saw I was moving in and didn’t take a second to meet me.”
She nodded. “Is he still playing the piano?”
I looked up in surprise. “He is. It’s the same part of a song over and over again.”
She smiled. “Mm, hm. The young couple that moved out used to complain about it all the time. It didn’t drive them away, but they were sure glad to get away from it.”
“I was going to knock on the wall and yell, but I thought it might be a little kid learning a song.”
She laughed. “Nope. Just a single guy. Not that I’m nosy or anything, but he doesn’t ever have company over. Something must have broken him because he’s a fine-looking young man. If I were thirty years younger…”
We laughed and little Sophia turned asked, “What’s funny, gramma?”
“Nothing, honey. Just adult talk,” Mary said, which annoyed Sophia as much as that would have annoyed me when I was little. Every kid hates not being in on the joke.
I finished the coffee and said, “Well, it was lovely to meet you Mary and Sophia, but I’ve got to get going.”
“Thanks for stopping by. You’re welcome anytime and I’m always home,” Mary said.
“Me too,” Sophia added making us chuckle.
Later, I was making dinner when I heard the piano start up again. I turned the water off and put on my shoes. It was cold out, but I didn’t put on a coat before marching over to my neighbor’s house. I was going to ask him to stop playing the same thing over and over, and I’d see how it went from there.
I rang the doorbell, then knocked three times, angrily. I could hear the piano playing through the door. It stopped for a moment, then started right up again. I rang the bell again and banged on the door. The piano didn’t stop at all that time. I was angry at the rudeness.
I tromped back into my garage and into my kitchen, where I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote, “Learn a different song!”
“That’ll show him,” I thought as I stomped past his garage and onto his gorgeous porch. I put the note in his mailbox and growled as the piano played on.
***
“It’s February 1st,” Abby said when I answered the phone. I sighed remembering our pact. I had just walked in the door after a bad day, only made worse when I forgot to stop at the store on the way home.
Every year that neither of us had a boyfriend on February 1st, we gave ourselves one week to get a
Valentine’s Day date, or we’d watch sappy rom-com’s together and complain about men.
“Yeah, so I assume no date for you yet?”
“Nope,” she answered.
“Okay, then we have a week,” I sighed. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you over here on V-day though.”
She moaned, “Probably. I gotta run. Talk to you soon.”
I opened the fridge, but I knew I didn’t have anything to make. I had a reason for needing to go to the store. I looked at my mail on the counter and decided to look for coupons before I headed out.
To my surprise, there was a handwritten note and I got pissed when I read it. It said, “I know plenty of songs.”
It wasn’t signed, but it was obvious who left it. What a jerk!
I pulled out of my garage and saw the jerk’s garage door open as I was leaving. I was going to stop and yell at him, but I figured he would just ignore me as usual. I let it go.
When I pulled up at the stoplight at the end of my subdivision, I saw his evil-looking car pull up behind me. I couldn’t make out his face in the darkness, but I was startled when he honked at me as I was staring at him in the rearview mirror. I realized the light had turned green, so I made my way forward.
It wasn’t fast enough for him as he pulled around and sped past me in the middle of my turn. “What a jerk!” I thought again as I watched him speed away into the distance.
***
I was standing in line waiting to order my meat when I heard a voice from next to me, “Looks like we have the same taste in cheap wine.”
I turned and saw Smith Carlisle standing beside me. I stuttered when I gazed into his eyes and looked at his cart when he nodded his eyes towards his wine. He had the same Woodbridge Cabernet I liked.
“Um, I…”
He frowned. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bug you.” He turned and walked over to get a number as mine was called, and I walked to the counter. He must’ve thought I was embarrassed by his cheap wine comment.
I glanced at him as he was talking to the other butcher while I waited for my order to be wrapped up. “Here you go, ma’am. Anything else?” my butcher asked.
“No, thank you,” I said as I grabbed my packages. I turned and saw that Smith was gone. I was annoyed with myself. What a great chance I had blown to meet a gorgeous man, let alone a talented songwriter. I briefly wished my neighbor was as talented, so he could stop playing the same thing over and over.
I went to put the meat in my cart when I saw it was not my cart. Smith must have taken mine by mistake. I looked around and said, “Shit!” I had a full cart of groceries and had to find him, or I’d be stuck getting them all over again.
I looked at his cart and it was full, but it was mostly healthy foods including fruit and vegetables as opposed to my cart, which was full of pasta, frozen dinners, and junk food.
I hurried to the front of the store hoping to catch him by the registers, but I looked around and saw no sign of him. I decided to wait there, knowing he had to come that way eventually. If I were thinking clearly, I’d have just waited by the meat department from where he took my cart.