The Player Next Door

He turns suddenly and catches me gawking.

I not so smoothly divert my attention back to my roller. “Good job.”

His soft chuckle carries, but he doesn’t otherwise respond.

I smile. What an arrogant ass.

“How was school yesterday?”

“Better, now that it’s cooled off. I’m getting into a groove. It’s going to take time to get to know the kids but they seem like a good group, for the most part.” I pause. “Has Cody said anything about school? Or me?” I often wonder what these kids have to say about my teaching ability.

“Just that you’re really hot.”

“He did not!” He’s eleven! I spear a glare over my shoulder and catch Shane’s dimpled smile before he shifts his focus back to edging.

“He said you’re okay so far, which is about all you’re going to get out of him. He’s too cool already.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to notice that.” The sly smiles, the nods of greeting and handshakes with his friends. Though gangly and prepubescent, Cody is as athletic and popular as I remember his father being. “So, you were nineteen when he was born?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s crazy.” At nineteen I was hitting keg parties and flashing my fake ID at clubs and making sure that I wasn’t making babies.

“I checked my messages after my English exam and found out Penelope was in labor, two weeks early. So, I hopped on a plane and flew back here. Made it just in time.”

“You were there for his birth? Like, in the room?”

“Yup. Pen begged me to be there. And I wanted to be there anyway, even if we were over.” He shakes his head. “Craziest thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been at a couple emergency births since then, but none of them are like your own kid being born.”

“I can’t imagine.” And he got to share that experience with her. I can’t conceive of having my nineteen-year-old ex-boyfriend by my side while I’m squeezing a melon out of my body. Then again, it sounds like Penelope was angling to reconcile with Shane. What better way to try to set aside past wrongs and start fresh than with the birth of your child together?

In her case, though, it didn’t work. Was it because she hurt him too much?

“Becca said Penelope was cheating on you and that’s why you guys broke up.”

He nods. “The summer before we went away to college. She hooked up with a friend of her brother’s. Things were already rocky between us. She said she was trying to make me jealous. I was planning on ending things with her before I left for California anyway, so when I found out, I broke up with her. And then she called me a few weeks after school started and told me she was pregnant.” He adds in a lower voice, “And that was the day my life changed forever.”

I hesitate. “Did you ever wonder if he was yours?” I add quickly, “I mean, I know he is. He looks like you.”

Shane smirks. “I know everyone around here was whispering that for a long time. But Penelope swore she’d never actually screwed the guy.”

“And you believed her?” I’m unable to mask the doubt from my voice.

“I didn’t want to, at first.” He pauses to check his edging work before shifting to another stretch of wall. “But I knew her pretty well by then. I knew she wasn’t lying.” Shane coats his brush with fresh paint. “It would have been an easy out for me, though, to tell her to find me when it was time to do a paternity test. But, that would have been wrong, especially if the baby was mine. What kind of guy would I be?”

I snort derisively. “You’d be my father.” According to my mother, Marcus Meyers did just that.

I feel Shane’s steady gaze as I roll a wide stripe of paint along the wall.

“Have you seen him again?”

“Who, Marcus? No, not since I met him that one time.” I barely remember it. I was so young. But my mom filled in the holes for me once. We were hurting for money and about to get evicted. She had no one to lean on for help—my grandfather had died when she was young, and my grandmother had disowned her and moved to South Carolina when my mother got pregnant—so she did the only thing she could think of. She borrowed a neighbor’s car and we drove to Philadelphia, to the trucking company where Marcus Meyers had been working when they had their brief fling. A to Z Trucking was its name, easy enough to remember. It was a small operation, running out of an old, run-down warehouse. She had no idea if Marcus was still employed there.

Not only was he employed there, but his father—my grandfather, the man I have to thank for my inheritance—owned the business. That’s how my grandfather found out about me. Up until that point, he had no idea I existed.