16. Chapter 16

After Jake took his date and her clingy friend home, I walked over to my neighbor's house. There was something not quite right about having a woman sitting in a car outside of my house when I got home. It put me even more on edge that she took off the minute we all noticed her there.

"Hey, did someone happen to set off your ring camera earlier while I was out?" I asked after Mr. Stevens greeted me.

"Yeah, pretty girl showed up. I thought she stuck around to wait for you. The wife and were taking bets on whether you were about to be notified you're going to be a dad."

"Nothing like that, I can assure you. She didn't stick around, so I was wondering if I could see the footage, and have it forwarded to me?"

Mr. Stevens took on a less amused stance then. "This about the job?"

"I'm not sure yet but want to be able to set eyes on whoever it was, just in case."

"All right, Son, give me just a minute and I'll have it all put on a flash drive for you. I'll make sure you get the footage from when she showed up until you came to the door. It'll be better if you go through all that, since I don't know what you're looking for."

Twenty minutes later, Jake was back. He wasn't an idiot. I'd been busy trying to fend of the handsy brat he'd stuck me with all night, but he had noticed the woman sitting in the car before her cell phone went off.

"My neighbor just got me his ring camera footage, so let's take a look."

As soon as the footage started, we saw a woman walk up to the front door. Thankfully, because my front door was to the left of the house and Mr. Steven's front door was to the right, his camera caught a great view of my front stoop. As the blonde woman approached, it was obvious that she was nervous. She was wringing her hands and glancing back and forth between my truck and the front door as she approached.

She knocked, stepped back into the camera's view again to wait, continued to ring her hands and look back and forth between the truck and the door. Then, she moved forward and knocked again. When no one answered, she finally turned to walk away. We watched as her shoulders visibly slumped, but the camera caught the perfect image of her face. I backed it up and paused the frame. Something about her seemed so familiar. Her eyes were round and expressive, the little button nose looked like a cute addition to the perfection that was her elfin features. The tips of her ears even seemed the slightest bit pointy rather than fully rounded.

She was also wearing a pair of shitkickers that made me want to know who the hell she was. It was the button pinned to her oversized bag that caught my attention the most though. It had a logo that was a bit too blurry to make out, but the words were clear. "Ask me how graphic I get."

I snapped a picture of the TV screen and sent it to my brother along with a question.

Max:Is this who I think it is?

I didn't get an answer back from him. Instead, my phone rang. I put it on speaker so Jake could hear him too.

"Where did you get that picture?" Evan asked. His non-answer was answer enough. She had come to see me. My beautiful little Posie had driven all the way here to come talk to me and then she just left before…

"Fuck!" I hissed. Jake stared at me as Evan cussed down the other side of the line.

"She's already ‘so mortified,' her words, not mine. You can't tell her you know."

"Why the hell not?" I asked.

"Listen, Max, I promised I wouldn't tell her you were there, but she was humiliated. If she knew that you were aware she was there, I promise you would never get another letter from her again."

"Wait," Jake chimed in. "That gorgeous girl is your little pen pal? You have some explaining to do, man."

"Why is she humiliated, Ev? I don't understand. I wouldn't have been mad that she came here. Shit, I want to see her." My heart was about to hammer its way out of my chest. Did I want to see her? With all my heart. The timing wasn't right just yet, though. That's the only reason I hadn't made it happen yet.

"Do you remember the first time you ever met Posie?" My brother asked me. His question had Jake leaning in to hear the answer.

"Of course, I do. Her freaking mom had just offed herself."

"Nah, man. Before that."

"Well, we didn't exactly meet the first time I noticed her," I informed my brother.

"Yeah, well, do you remember the situation she ended up sitting through?"

"Yeah?" I questioned as Jake asked, "What situation?"

"I took my girlfriend to my Pops' barn and climbed up to the loft to make out in peace." I chuckled at the memory because it wasn't so peaceful once Pops busted us.

"Dumbass failed to even take notice that there was a sad girl sitting in the corner listening to music with earbuds in and drawing to try to drown out her crappy life."

"Letter girl?" Jake asked. I nodded as Evan confirmed it in words. "Okay, I get where you're going with this."

"Well, I'm glad you do, Jake, but I don't see what that has to do with shit."

"The girl in that car tonight was already there waiting for you to show up," Jake informed me. I'd already figured that much out. When I didn't say anything he continued. "So, she sat there and watched Tasha climb all over you and try to shover her tongue down your throat. It probably felt a whole lot like being transported back in time to when you didn't notice she was there, and you were making out with your girlfriend."

"Bingo," my brother added.

"Fucking hell. I didn't even want Tasha's attention. I had no control over that shit. She had to have seen that pushed Tasha away and told her I didn't want her coming to my house."

"Yeah, she did. Posie told me all about it and didn't leave anything out. The thing is, she has a lot of baggage that her mom left her with. She got it in her head that everyone in town treated her like she was invisible because she was her mother's daughter. Honestly, I don't think she's that far off the mark. So, as she got older, no one bothered to notice her. Do you know that in our freshmen year Posie was moved to the varsity volleyball team? When you were dating Cheyenne, Posie was the leading scorer for the volleyball team three years in a row and they still made Cheyenne the team captain.

"Wait, you're telling me that everyone purposely overlooked that beautiful woman who was banging on Max's door earlier?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. She thinks it's because everyone knows how crazy her mom was. So, imagine how she felt when it looked like she was stalking you while you made out with another woman in front of her without noticing that she was there."

"I saw the car there, but I didn't look too hard."

"I saw there was a woman in the car, but I didn't know she was there for Max," Jake added.

"Tell me she didn't drive straight home after coming all this way, Ev."

"She didn't, but I'm also not going to tell you where she's staying."

"Why the fuck not? I can put her worries to rest. She was more than welcome to be here. I wasn't out on a fucking date. That bitch literally ruined my night in every way." I glared at Jake then because I fully blamed him for putting me in the position to be mauled by the stage-five clinger all night while he tried to charm her friend.

"I already told you, she feels horrible and I made her promise."

"That's not good enough, Ev. I need to go make things right. She didn't do anything wrong. I appreciate the surprise, but if anyone had told me she was coming, I would have been here to greet her."

"I asked if you had anything going on and you said you'd be home all weekend trying to catch some rest and relaxation time."

"That's why you asked what I was up to this weekend?"

"Yup," my brother answered.

"Fucking Christ, a head's up would have been nice."

"Max, I didn't want to give you a head's up. I wanted her to get there and see you hooking up with someone, which is what I thought ‘rest and relaxation' at home meant to you even if you didn't want to spell it out."

"Why the fuck would you want that?"

"She's a Goddamn 22-year-old virgin, for Christ's sake. She needs to get over her crush on you and start dating people who are available to her."

"That Goddess is a freaking virgin who has never been on a date?" Jake's eyes bugged out as his head swiveled back to her image that was still paused on my TV screen. "Are all the men in your town blind?"

"It will make her feel better about the trip if she knows I don't think she's crazy, man," I argued with my brother while ignoring Jake.

"Max, you like her, right?"

"Of course, I like her."

"I mean, if you guys lived in the same town, you'd want to date her."

"Yeah, that's what I've been holding out for."

"Holding out for?" Evan scoffed.

"Yeah, I don't want to start anything long distance. I have at least another year here before I can transfer, if I can find a department with an opening closer to home. She works with you, so she needs to be back there. The timing isn't right yet. I hoped she'd still be single by the time I got back to town, but damn man… Up until I got one of her last letters, I didn't know she hadn't been dating at all. That can't be because of me."

Evan scoffed again. "I mean her stupid crush on you doesn't help, but I already told you how the people in town feel about her. They think she's as crazy as her mom, even though they've never seen her do one outlandish thing. You would think after her Valedictorian speech when we graduated, they would have realized she's a pretty cool chick, but they're all morons."

"Valedictorian?" Jake questioned. "So, she's beautiful, smart, sweet, thoughtful, and has never been touched by another man? I'm about to move to your town and take a job as a fucking paperboy if I have to. What the fuck, Max?"

"It's not time yet," I stated again. My best fucking friend in the world would end up getting punched in the nose if he didn't watch himself.

"And that right there is why I'm not going to tell you where she's staying, and you're not going to use your police shit to find her either. You're going to let her come back home, date people, and try to get over you."

"I'm not going to stop writing to her." I yelled at my brother.

"Didn't ask you to." He sighed so loudly I heard it plain as day through the phone line. "Max, I am going to encourage her to date. She's seen you with two other women now and heard about the horror story you had living with you before too. It ain't right to string her along until you're ready while you do whatever you want. I'm sure there were more women warming your bed along the way, man."

My brother wasn't wrong, but I didn't want to think about some other man in Posie's bed. He was right though. I wasn't ready for her just yet. We both had to be in a place where we wouldn't end up resenting the other for having to give something up. I wasn't ready to go home and move backward in my career and she couldn't work here when my brother and her were used to collaborating from the same room. It wasn't fair.

"Fine. I won't say anything. As far as she will know, she got away with coming here and me never knowing."

"Good," Evan said. There was a long pause and then he spoke again. "Max, if you really want to see if there's something more than letters between you, you might want to make it home sooner than later. Some other guy is going to realize what a great woman she is."

"Do I need to worry about you?" I asked, and honestly, the more I talked to my little brother about Posie, the more I thought it might be a concern.

"Nah. She's my business partner and as much as she thinks this town doesn't see her… Posie has blinders on when it comes to the Carter men. The only one she sees as anything other than family is you."

He sounded a little sad about that, but I couldn't find it in my heart to feel bad about it.