The Enemy (It Happened in Charleston 2)

“You’re coming back Sunday night, right?” Nia asks as I open my car door and get out.

I pause, taking in June’s white bungalow and teal front door. The wooden porch seat looks lonely. Sure, it has a sunshine-yellow pillow on it, making the whole scene look happy, but when I picture June sitting in that chair all by herself, I get the urge to drive straight to Home Depot and pick up another matching one to plop down right beside hers. I’ll put a dark-blue pillow on it. It’ll be my pillow.

I make a half-hearted grunt noise into the phone. “Yeah, Sunday.”

Nia laughs, misinterpreting the cause of my disgruntled sound. “I feel ya. Sunday is too many days away when you’re ready to get back to your kitchen. Don’t worry, though; I won’t let it burn down.”

Yeah, ‘cause that’s really my problem: wanting to get back sooner.

I think if Nia called me tomorrow and said, “So sorry, but I accidentally spilled gasoline all over the restaurant and then lit it up like the Fourth of July,” I would only feel relief. What does that say about me?

Just then, movement catches my eye, and I see June’s front door open. She doesn’t see me across the street when she tiptoes out with bare feet to grab a package off the front porch. It’s only about fifty-five degrees outside, and her spaghetti-strap tank top and PJ shorts provide little in the way of warmth, so she crosses her arms across her chest and shuffles her feet quickly to retrieve the box by the stairs.

If I knew who that delivery man was, I would kiss him right on the mouth for putting the box so far away from her front door. I look around, half-expecting to find him lurking in a bush somewhere with binoculars, having intentionally put the box far away from her door because he knows she’d come out dressed like this.

June is all feminine curves, tan skin, and wild brown hair. She’s not a waif like the women I’m used to seeing come through the gourmet restaurants where I’ve worked. She’s real and soft, and suddenly, I want to break the delivery man’s binoculars into two because I don’t want anyone else looking at her. Mine. Not sure when I became the jealous type, but here we are.

“Nia, I’ll call you back,” I say, keeping my eyes on June and ending the call before she replies. She’s going to add extra salt to my famous hollandaise sauce because she hates when I hang up on her like that.

June must have heard my voice, because when her hands land on the box, her eyes shoot up to me. And then she frowns, those brows pulling so tightly together they are practically touching. I smile and cross the street.

She backs toward her door, saying, “No, no, no! Why do you keep showing up at my house at the crack of dawn?”

“We need to go to the store to get the food for tonight. But June,”— I’m rushing up the front steps to catch her—“I swear, if you shut another door in my face, we’re gonna have problems.”

“We already have problems, Ryan! Go to the store without me.” She turns around quickly before I can look at her face.

I put my hand on the door as she’s trying to shut it. June is the physical embodiment of Katy Perry’s song where I’m concerned. Hot and then cold. One minute she seems into me, texting me she was jealous of the girls I’d bring around in high school, and the next, she’s running away like I’m coming at her with fangs bared.

“Don’t come in my house,” she says as I’m stepping through the front door.

She turns around again and tries to dart to her room, but I catch her arm. I spin her back to face me, but she zeros in on the floor. Apparently, it’s the most interesting floor in the world, because she won’t turn her attention from it. “Look at me, June.”

“No.”

“Why? I don’t get why you’re so jumpy around me.” I understand that there used to be bad blood between us, but that’s gone now, and I know it. We had a good time making donuts together yesterday. She smiled. We flirted. There’s a different reason she’s so hot and cold.

“Because you’re always showing up when I don’t want you to. Would it have killed you to give me even just a five-minute warning?” I’d apologize, but I don’t want to. I don’t regret showing up without calling.

“Surprise is the spice of life.”

She scoffs at my joke. “I disagree.” Now she’s shrinking—physically shrinking—under my gaze. Her shoulders are slumping in, and she’s crossing her arms and tucking her chin down. It’s so opposite from the strong June I know. “Will you let go of me, please?”

“Where are you going to go if I do?”

“I don’t know, Cabo?”

“June.”

She finally looks at me—or rather, let’s me look at her. She also puts her hands on my chest and shoves me. “I just want to go put my makeup on, okay? Quit being such a jerk all the time.”

“I’m being a jerk? By trying to get you to look in my eyes instead of the floor?”

“You can clearly tell I’m uncomfortable, and you’re pushing it! So yeah, that makes you a jerk.”

She stomps away, and I’m not too proud of it, but my eyes catch on her perfect butt for three full seconds before I go after her. Tiny pictures of Nick Lachey are printed all over her shorts, and he’s never looked so hot to me. “You don’t need makeup, June.”

A mirthless laugh escapes her. “Gosh, I hate lines like that. They’re so untrue. You heard it in a romance movie, so you’re repeating it.”