Delectable (Neighbor from Hell 9)

“And what am I lying about exactly?” he asked, coming to a stop beside her.

“Are you really going to tell me that you’ve been here for almost a week and none of the lovely natives have shared the tale of Kasey Gallagher? I don’t believe that for a second,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as she looked out at the ocean.

“You mean about the seventeen-year-old girl that was forced to raise a baby alone after her boyfriend lost his battle with cancer?” he asked, content to watch the waves roll in as they had the conversation that he’d been trying to avoid.

“I see you’ve heard the kind version,” she murmured.

“Is there another version?”

“Oh, there are many versions to this tale, but only one of them is true,” she said, glancing up at him with a sad smile. “She was sixteen when she had Mikey. Michael died a couple of months into the pregnancy.”

“I see,” he said, thinking back to when he was sixteen and wondering how he would have handled something like this.

It was simple.

He wouldn’t have.

It was the one of the reasons that he’d made the decision to wait. He hadn’t been ready for a kid or the responsibilities that sex brought and had decided to wait until he was. That wasn’t the only reason of course, but it was the only one that mattered right now.

“He was also her husband,” she said, nearly knocking him on his ass.

“Christ,” he said, stabbing his hand through his hair as he tried to wrap his mind around everything.

“Michael changed her, mostly for the better,” she conceded with a slight nod.

“Meaning?”

“Before Michael, Kasey was a bitch,” she said with a cringe. “Hell, even I hated her.”

“What changed?” he asked, having a hard time believing the that the woman who was always smiling could ever do something to earn that title.

“The eight grade dinner dance,” she said with a fond smile. “She found me crying in the bathroom, quickly figured out that I’d been stood up, and took it upon herself to go remind the guy that he already had a date by making him sing soprano for a week.”

“Ouch,” he said with a wince.

“Exactly. After that, we just clicked and became inseparable. I thought my parents were going to kill me the first time I brought her home for dinner,” she said, chuckling.

“Why’s that?”

“Well,” she said, slowly exhaling, “Kasey had always been a wild child, but at that point she was already following in her mother’s footsteps as the town slut. My parents, like most of the parents at the time, didn’t want me anywhere near her. They were afraid that she was going to rub off on me and I was going to end up pregnant, a high school dropout, or dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Were they right to be concerned?” he asked softly.

She laughed. “With Kasey on my ass every time I stepped out of line? God, no! She knew things were bad and she didn’t want me ending up like her. She’d resigned herself to living out her mother’s legacy, but she wasn’t going to let me join her. As soon as my parents figured that out she was always welcome at my house.”

“And when did Michael come into the picture?” he asked, feeling like an asshole, because he already knew that he wouldn’t have given her a second look in high school.

“I honestly don’t know. I didn’t even think they knew each other. I mean, he was the star pitcher, popular, and she-”

“Wasn’t,” he finished for her, not sure that he could handle hearing her being called a slut again.

“I don’t know how it happened, but one day she was glaring at him and the next, she was falling in love with him. She started smiling more, trying harder in school, and suddenly became shy. I used to tease her, because you couldn’t even say his name without making her smile. I honestly thought that was it for her. She was going to get her life together, graduate, go on to college and marry Michael one day,” she said quietly.

“But, it didn’t happen that way, did it?” he asked, his heart breaking for Kasey, because he already knew how this story ended.

“First you have to understand that Michael’s parents weren’t happy when he brought her home. Michael was an amazing kid. By freshman year, college teams were already scouting him and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was going places. His parents didn’t want to see him throw it all away over a girl, but especially not someone like Kasey.”

He didn’t say anything so she continued.

“It started off with his leg bothering him, but he’d shrugged it off, thinking that it was just a pulled muscle. Soon, it was obvious that something was wrong and then it became a race to save him. The whole town came together, trying to save him, supporting his family, and I think that scared the hell out of him even more than the cancer. Everyone treated him like he was already dead.”

“Everyone, but Kasey,” he said, already guessing that Kasey stood by him, teasing him and making him smile to the end.

Nodding, she continued. “I think she truly believed that he was going to make it. I don’t think that she ever really thought that she was going to lose him. Michael, on the other hand, was absolutely terrified. He was also determined to die without any regrets.”

“And that’s when he married Kasey and got her pregnant,” he said, slowly exhaling and reminding himself that Michael had been a terrified kid and probably hadn’t meant to destroy her life, but god, did he want to hate this kid for what he’d done to her.

“Kasey’s mother hadn’t cared and his parents had been helpless to say no to him once they’d found out she was pregnant. They’d barely managed to say, ‘I do,’ when things went really bad and Michael ended up back in the hospital. Within days, he’d slipped into a coma and died and Kasey was left all alone, pregnant, and devastated.”

“What did his parents do?” he asked, rubbing his hands down his face, honestly wishing like hell that she’d never told him any of this, because knowing made it a hell of a lot harder to stop himself from caring about her.

“They were drowning in their own grief and Kasey was just a reminder of everything they’d lost. Before Mikey was born they’d moved out of town, taking Eric with them. By that time, Kasey’s grandmother had been moved into a nursing home and had reluctantly given Kasey the house. I honestly don’t think that she would have survived losing Michael if it hadn’t been for Mikey.”

“She forced herself to keep going, determined to give Michael’s baby a good life. She got her GED, worked any job she could get her hands on, and struggled. She worked so hard and no matter how many setbacks she faced, she never gave up. She taught herself how to be a mom, how to cook, and how to stand on her own two feet.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, already knowing that this wasn’t something that she would share with just anyone.

“Because she’s not ready for someone like you,” she said, meeting his gaze with a sad smile.

“Is this the part where you warn me away?”

“Would you listen?” she asked, with a curious frown.

“Not a chance in hell.”

Chapter 18

“How much sugar do you think she had?” Eric asked, gesturing with the large bag of pink and blue cotton candy that Mikey had shoved in his hand a minute ago before she’d jumped in line for the Anti-Gravity ride, towards the small woman practically bouncing with excitement as she raced from one game to another.

“I’m not really sure,” Kasey said, pursing her lips up in thought as she watched Haley, who hadn’t stopped smiling since she’d first spotted her an hour ago, do a little happy dance when she won a stuffed bear only to release an excited squeal seconds later when she spotted a vender selling caramel apples.

“She seems to really like carnivals,” Eric noted as he helped himself to some of Mikey’s cotton candy.

“She really does,” Kasey agreed with a solemn nod, shifting her attention to the man resigned to trail after

her, picking up all the stuffed animals that she dropped in her haste to get to another game.

“Can I go again, mom?” Mikey asked, smiling hugely as she ran over to join them.

“Sure,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out another strand of tickets that had cost a small fortune.

“Thanks!” Mikey said before once again taking off and leaving them to watch as Jason was suddenly forced to change directions when Haley spotted the Ferris Wheel.