Newton Neighbors (New England Trilogy) (7 page)

Somehow Jessie managed to get her bed made up, but her clothes remained unpacked because four cups of Ely’s home brew combined with one transatlantic flight was enough to induce an eight-hour coma.

It was a good lesson for Jessie. Ely was a fun girl, and it looked like she would be a terrific roommate, but Jessie needed to watch how much she partied with her new friend. Her body was just not designed to ingest moonshine. She was more of a glass-of-wine type of girl, but most of all she was there to study. If her master’s was good enough, she knew she’d land herself a great job and that would help out a lot at home.

The weeks after that first night zoomed by, and Jessie was soon well settled. She wasn’t surprised when Ely found a boyfriend on the football team. He was from North Carolina. “A whole state away from home,” Ely had said, to prove she was broadening her horizons. Jessie loved Josh from the moment she met him. He was basically a male version of Ely—bigger, of course—with the same dark brown hair and adorable Southern drawl. He had cowboy boots, too.

“You’re perfect together,” Jessie said one night.

“He has a friend.” Ely sang this, then hugged herself and started making kissing noises.

Jessie laughed. “Ely, you have the subtlety of a snowplow! I’m here to study and then I’m going home.”

“Well hell, Jessie, that don’t mean you can’t have no fun along the way, sunshine.” Then she used her mantra. “We only got one life.”

When she finally climbed the four flights of stairs, Jessie was relieved that Ely was home now. She needed to vent.

“Thank God you’re here. You would not believe what happened to me tonight,” she said, shaking off her coat.

“That good?” Ely tapped her tablet screen to pause the movie she was watching. “Tell me all about your first night babysitting.” She was lying on her bed, propped up by a mountain of Carolina cotton-covered pillows. “Are American kids that different from British ones? Did you get real brats? You know, it ain’t called Snootin’ Newton for nothing. They’re all little trust fund babies around here.” She waved her arms in the air like she was swatting flies.

Jessie plonked down onto her bed. “So are you, or have you forgotten?”
 

“Yeah, but I’m nice,” Ely said, drawing out the word
nice
like it had three syllables. She did that a lot, and Jessie loved it.

“Yes, Ely. You’re lovely. So were the kids tonight, but I managed to get emergency services out to the house—not once but twice.” She covered her face with her hands, and Ely sat up to pay better attention.

“What did you do, sunshine? What happened?”

Jessie filled her in on everything, and by the end of the story, Ely announced they both deserved a drink—Jessie because of the night she had been through, and herself because her roommate shouldn’t drink alone.
 

Jessie didn’t have a particularly big appetite for drinking, but she knew Ely’s case was a little different. Her roomie liked to party a little too much, which was why her parents had chosen New England. Ely found the nightlife in Miami, Austin, and Atlanta a lot more fun than college life in those three cities, and she’d failed with spectacular success out of all three universities. Her parents were giving her one last chance by sending her to the calmer waters and more studious environment of Wiswall. They had placed her in an all-girl, no alcohol environment in hopes she might, at last, settle down.

Two months into their academic year, there was no sign of that happening. In fact, quite the opposite. Ely had discovered a business enterprise supplying alcohol to all the younger girls in their dorm, and she’d even managed to do a deal with one of the night security men. Now he did the shopping for her in return for a large financial kickback. Jessie wasn’t worried about her friend. There was little chance of her getting her degree, but there was every chance of her starting up and running a very successful business.
 

Tonight, Ely gave her a glass of white wine, and she was glad for it.

Jessie continued. “So, at last, Maria phoned me in a blind panic.”

“Darn sure. What did she say about not being on her cell all night?” Ely asked, acting indignant for her friend.

Jessie shook her head and sighed. “She said it was on silent and she didn’t realize until she checked it at the very end of the night. To be fair, she was in a right state when she called me, but all the fuss was over by then.”

“What about the dad’s phone?”

Jessie looked up. “Rick’s?”

“You call him Rick?” Ely was incredibly perceptive—she claimed she spoke body language fluently. “Was he hot?”

Jessie laughed. “You’re irrepressible, Ely! I have to say he was a very good-looking guy, but he’s old. Oh, and hullo, he’s married, too. But yes, he was quite hot—for an old guy.”

“No way.” Ely was on her feet and refilling their glasses.
 

“Way.” She almost regretted saying it, because now Ely would want her to pursue him.

“This is the first time you’ve even expressed an interest in a man.”

Jessie took a large drink of wine. “Look, he’s attractive—for an older guy—but he’s married, and Maria is beautiful. She’s from Puerto Rico, and she’s got that whole sexy thing going on. She has an amazing figure, and I didn’t see it, but I’m guessing she has a wild temper, too. They both have gorgeous tanned skin—a very good-looking family, in fact. Rick has a strong American accent. Maria’s Puerto Rican accent is exquisite—and did I mention she’s beautiful? There’s no way I want to flirt with her husband.”
 

“Exquisite? You say she talks nice, and here you are using words like
exquisite
in normal conversation?” Ely rolled her eyes. “Nobody talks as pretty as you do, darlin’.”

Jessie put her glass on the floor, sat back on her bed, and hugged her knees. “Oh no, Maria is very beautiful.”

“She can’t be as hot as you.”
 

Jessie shook her head in earnest. “She darn well is. To be honest, she reminded me of JLo. That’s how hot she was. Anyway, Rick might be handsome, but he’s too old and he’s married.”

“You gotta live, sunshine.”

“I am living. I love this course I’m doing. I’m learning tons, and then I’m going back to England. To home, my mum. It’s a good life.”

But Ely disagreed. “You can’t leave the States. Not now. I like you too much.”

“Aw, Ely, you doll! You have no idea how nice it is to hear you say that. All I need is one good friend, and that’s you.”

“You better believe it, and that’s why you can’t leave the US now!”

“We can stay friends even when I move back to England.”
 

“Well, tell me, did they at least give you extra money after leaving you in the lurch like that?”

Jessie smiled. “Oh yeah. I got a hundred bucks. Can you believe it? Not bad for a Saturday night.”

Ely sat back down on her bed and smiled at her friend. “Nice! Want to go shopping in Boston tomorrow?”

“Ely, you’re impossible. No. I’m saving my money. I’m not going to blow it as soon as I get it. Anyway, aren’t you going horseback riding with Josh tomorrow?”
 

Jessie had learned the one thing her roommate missed most about home was her horses—much more than she missed her parents. Josh was crazy about them, too, so they spent most of their weekends at a stable they’d found on the outskirts of Newton.
 

“He’s in New York for the weekend. I’m all yours,” Ely said with a smile as broad as Texas.
 

It made Jessie laugh. “Having missed this evening, I planned on studying all day tomorrow.”

Ely put the glass down on her bedside table and clapped her hands together. “You ever gonna learn, sunshine?”

Jessie shook her head. “Probably not.”

Ely went back to her movie, and Jessie summoned enough energy to take a shower and wash her hair. Even though she was tired, she felt like she smelt of smoke. She knew it was maybe in her mind, but still, she wanted to wash it all away before she fell into bed.
 

As she shampooed, she thought about the evening and how it had unfurled. The Sanchez family had been so nice. Cody was a great kid, and Alice was a delight to care for. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she told her roommate Rick was a great-looking guy, but he was almost old enough to be her dad—if she had a dad. When he drove her home, it was pretty obvious he didn’t see her as a woman. In his eyes, she was still a student—and that was a good thing. Jessie stood under the shower and looked up into the jet stream. The water washed away her shampoo, and her mind flowed back to earlier that night.

The old lady from next door had been a blessing. Mrs. Palmer was a bit of a grandmother type, but she had been so kind to Jessie and the kids—a terrific woman to have as a neighbor. Maria Sanchez was lucky. It was Mrs. Palmer who gave Cody first the codes for the fire alarm, and then a little while later she suggested using the same numbers for the intruder alarm. It worked, bless her.
 

Jessie got all the windows and doors shut and then the fire brigade cleared off. She tried both parents’ cell phones again. When she got their voice mails for the third time, she headed over to Mrs. Palmer’s. The woman had a cup of Earl Grey tea ready and the children content watching
Dumbo
. She explained to Jessie she had a full library of DVDs for when her grandchildren visited. It gave her more time to talk to her own kids if the grandchildren were occupied. She was a wise granny. Todd’s dad, Greg Palmer, was there by then, too.
 

They barely got a chance to talk, because eventually Maria did check in. She was frantic when she phoned Jessie’s cell to get an update on the situation. Jessie tried to calm her and said everything was okay. She said she was at Noreen Palmer’s and would be heading back with the two kids to the Sanchez home as soon as the movie was over, but Maria couldn’t be reassured. She was already in the car and on her way home.

Rick and Maria arrived before Dumbo had even learned to fly. They swooped into Mrs. Palmer’s kitchen on a wave of panic. The older woman tried to de-stress them with tea, but little Alice, who had nodded off again, woke up when she heard her mother’s anxious voice. For a short time, hysteria was restored. The Sanchez family all shouted when they got excited—it was mayhem, but Jessie and Mrs. Palmer worked together and managed to get the movie off, the Sanchez family back into their own house, and the children bedded down. Maria was effusive in her thanks and apologies to Jessie. She wrote down the code for the alarms and gave them to the sitter.
 

All a little late, Jessie thought, but maybe they would ask her to babysit again. That would be good.
 

The more money she made, the better. Jessie was broke. Her mother had very little money, and there were four children still at home. This scholarship was Jessie’s key to future success. She was determined to make a go of her life, and she was on the right path. She turned the water pressure up to wash out the conditioner, and when her hair was squeaky clean, Jessie stepped out of the shower.

She thought about Ely. The girl was extremely perceptive and understood Rick was cute just by the way she’d said his name. Wow.
 

Jessie patted herself down with a towel. If she had mentioned Dan, the fireman, by name, she knew she would have giggled, blushed, or maybe even stuttered. That would have been a dead giveaway for Ely. At least when she spoke about Rick she could hide behind the fact he was old and married. If Ely thought for one moment Jessie had come across a guy who was real attractive and their age—and a firefighter no less—she’d have been out lighting fires all over campus just to get the guy to show up.
 

Dan was cute. He was nice, too, but most of all, he had a charm Jessie found very appealing.
 

Covering herself in moisturizer, Jessie thought about how she didn’t have a boyfriend waiting for her back at home in England. There had been a guy in her first year, but she’d found him messing around behind her back. Since then she had stayed single. There were lots of dates but no relationships. Most guys she met were too immature.
 

Of course, all the ones in her psychology classes were obsessed with trying to analyze her. It was a common flaw with psych students. They felt the need to analyze the world. She had no desire to be psychologically dissected by a boyfriend—or by anybody, for that matter. But Dan was different. He was a real live hero. She doubted analyzing her was high on his agenda. He gave Jessie a pretty good idea of where his interest lay.
 

Jessie rubbed on more cream. She didn’t know for sure, but Dan looked like he was in his late twenties. He wasn’t particularly tall, just a little more so than she—perhaps five foot ten or eleven. Not tall by American standards, but she didn’t mind. That navy T-shirt he had worn had been tight across his chest for all the right reasons. She could tell he was solid muscle underneath. And that falcon tattoo . . . “He must work out,” she whispered to herself as she got into her pj’s.
 

She liked his dark brown hair and long fringe that fell over his forehead, almost blocking one of his eyes. She couldn’t remember which one now, but he sure had a roguish look. His eyebrows were heavy, set over brooding, darker eyes. Jessie didn’t know what color they were yet, but she knew mischief when she saw it. The slight stubble on his chin and around his mouth was very butch. It was a nice mouth, too. They were nice lips, curved up slightly—like he was smiling. Maybe he was just a happy guy.