The Pool Boy (Nashville Neighborhood 2)

It had a nice setup, with a kitchenette and full bath, and a bedroom that was separate from the living area. My own apartment, really. If I wanted to, I could come and go through the gate in the fence and bypass the house entirely, which was probably what my friend had done today.

Not that it’d do much good for me to sneak around. The guest house had sensors on it, so my overbearing mother could check the timestamps if she wanted. Plus, we argued constantly about me turning off the location on my phone. I was twenty-four, not twelve. She was a chronic worrier, but she didn’t need to know where I was every second of every day.

My house was decorated like an adult lived there because my mother was an interior designer, but the big screen TV and the loud sounds of gunfire currently coming from it now were more my style.

My friend sat on the couch, focused intently on the game of Call of Duty he was playing . . . while using my PlayStation. Without asking. If he was logged in to my profile, I was going to throw his rude ass out.

“Um . . . hey?” I said pointedly.

Preston barely glanced my direction before returning his attention to the game. “What’s up? My PlayStation’s acting weird.” When he didn’t get a response from me, his posture straightened and he paused the game. “Is it cool if I hang out and use yours until my shift starts at five?”

Most people would have sent a text to ask before showing up, but this was typical Preston. My friend was an only child, like me, and could be self-absorbed a lot of the time, but he was working on it. He was two years younger than I was and still had a lot of growing up to do.

And I almost never remembered to lock the door on the guest house, so . . . lesson learned.

I checked the screen to see he was playing on his own profile. “Yeah, it’s fine. I gotta take a shower.”

He nodded and restarted his game.

It didn’t take me long to get clean, and when I was done, I dressed in board shorts and a t-shirt from my traveling baseball team when I was in high school. I’d cut the sleeves off a lot of my shirts because I’d been more dedicated to the gym my last year of college and the old shirts had grown snug around my biceps.

Preston was still on the couch when I came out of my bedroom.

“What’s going on with your PlayStation?” I asked.

“It won’t connect to the internet. I probably just need to reset the WiFi router.”

I blinked slowly. “It was easier to come over here than do that?”

He paused the game, put down the controller, and ground the heel of his palm in his eye. “Yeah, well . . . my dad’s planning Cassidy’s birthday, and I kind of needed to get out of there.”

“Oh.”

It made a hell of a lot more sense why he’d shown up without warning. Preston hadn’t had that hard of a life. He was healthy, decent looking, and came from money. He owned his own car and had just finished his sophomore year of college at Vanderbilt.

But his relationship with his dad had been tough, and my friend had been filled with resentment when he’d first come to Nashville at sixteen, forced to move in with the father who’d basically been a stranger up to that point in his life.

And just when things were finally smoothing out for them, the Cassidy situation blew it all to hell.

Cassidy Shepard had been Preston’s girlfriend for years, although the rest of us didn’t really get it. Near the end, he’d been enough of a dick to her, most of my circle of friends avoided hanging out with him whenever possible. He was my boy and all, but he didn’t deserve her.

I was glad for both of them when they broke up. She could do better, and he needed to date around to realize not every girl out there was willing to put up with his shit. He’d seemed better after he’d spent his summer with his mom.

Then he came home one night to find his dad fucking Cassidy on the couch. Apparently, they were hopelessly in love.

Fuck, it was some messy drama—and it sucked for everyone involved. It’d been hard for Preston to get past it, but somehow he’d found a way. For as immature as he could be, he’d handled it way better than I’d expected.

His tone was worried. “I think he’s going to do something big, like propose, or ask her to move in with him.”

“Seriously?” I made a face. “They’ve only been together, for what? A year?” Not to mention, Cassidy was only twenty-one. Wait—not yet twenty-one because Dr. Lowe was planning her birthday.