Yet Mr. Personality pulled me away from the words on the page. He made me curious about him walking into Joy’s house. Watching him chat away with her had my mind racing. A few minutes later, when the two of them walked back outside each with a glass in their hands—one with wine, the other with some dark liquor I assumed was whiskey—I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over at them. Joy kept talking, and Mr. Personality kept responding. Even though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, Joy looked beyond smitten with whatever was being said to her, which forced my own heart to skip a few beats.

Well, I’ll be damned.

The town asshole made me swoon.

I looked away before he could notice me staring at him as if he’d just saved a kitten from a tree. As I turned back to my novel, my heartbeats didn’t slow, and I silently wished I could be a fly on Joy’s porch railing to see what the two of them were talking about.

When I heard a deep manly chuckle fall from Mr. Personality’s lips, my head flipped around so quick to see him tossing his head back in amusement.

Whoa.

He had the ability to be amused.

Who would’ve ever thought?

The two talked for a little while longer, and then when it came time for Mr. Personality to leave, he stood and gave Joy another hug.

“I’ll see you tomorrow for breakfast,” he told her. “I’ll make you pancakes.”

“Okay, sweetheart. You call me once you make it home,” Joy said.

“I’m right around the corner, Joy. I’ll make it home safely.”

“Call me once you’re home,” she said once more, more sternly this time.

He almost smirked as he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Will do, Joy.”

My heart?

Pitter-freaking-patter.

As Joy walked inside and Mr. Personality walked down her footpath back to his truck, my eyes followed him the whole time. He didn’t glance my way once, but his lips did part.

“If you’re going to be that nosy, you might as well pull up a chair on her front porch to skip over the eavesdropping next time,” he said to me, still not looking my way. “I shouldn’t be shocked, though, seeing how you have a way of trespassing, first on my land and then on my conversations.”

I sat up straighter in my chair. “I wasn’t trespassing.”

He opened his truck door. “Pull up a search engine online, search the word trespassing, realize you were wrong—then live with that fact for the rest of your life.” With that, he slammed his door shut, turned the key in his ignition, and pulled away from the curb without another word.

And my pitter-freaking-patters?

They came to a halt as my heart flipped him off.

So the asshole was still an asshole, even if he had drinks with sweet Joy.

That night, I did google the word trespassing.

Tres-pass

/'tresp?s,'tres?pas/

Verb

Gerund or present participle: trespassing

Enter the owner’s land or property without permission.

Commit an offense against (a person or a set of rules)

The definition on Urban Dictionary was a little different than Merriam-Webster, though.

Tres-passing

When a woman is someone else’s property but two guys tag-team her.

(Tres)passing: Two men, one woman. (threesome)

Okay, okay. I had been trespassing on his property, but there was no threesome-type trespassing involved whatsoever. Plus, I wasn’t trespassing on his conversation. I was eavesdropping. Totally not the same thing. I’d call that a win in my book.

7

Jax

Joy Jones was easily my favorite human in Havenbarrow, but most of the town stayed far away from her. Eddie’s family and I were the exceptions. She was in her late eighties, and most of the day her mind lived in a time when the world was much different. Ever since her husband passed away over twenty years ago, Joy had become a true recluse.

Most people called her insane, but I called her brilliant. Little interaction with other human beings? Count me in.

When I was younger, I ran away from home once after my drunk father told me he was going to beat me until I went to sleep forever, and I ended up hiding in Mrs. Jones’ back yard for a few days. When she found me, she didn’t scold me or tell me to go home and get lost. Instead, she baked me cookies. She fed me dinner. She asked me about myself.

That was over fifteen years ago, and I’d been having morning coffee and evening dinner with her pretty much every day since then. To the rest of the world, she was Crazy Joy, but to me? She was my friend, one of the few.

“What do you think about my new neighbor?” Joy asked me one night after I came for our evening dinner session. “Eddie and Marie came over for lunch earlier, and they had so many nice things to say about her.”

“I think nothing of her,” I said as we sat down at her dining room table, which was laden with enough food for a whole gospel choir. Joy had a way of cooking too much food all the time, and I knew it was because she was determined to send me home with leftovers each night. I swore, the woman probably thought I couldn’t make a frozen pizza without burning it.