“Oh,” I replied, feeling like an idiot. “Hey Ned.”
“Hey back at cha Lauren.” He grinned. “Betty tells me you’re stayin’ awhile.”
“Yeah,” I told him thinking he seemed friendly enough but not certain how much to share because, well, I didn’t know him and every girl in a pool in the parking lot of a hotel on the edge of Nowheresville should be smart and not tell their story, current or past, to some random man who snuck up on them. In fact, girls like that should get out of the pool, get into their room and lock the danged door.
“That’s great.” Ned was still grinning. “We don’t get a lot of long timers. Weekenders. Nighters. Yeah. Long timers. No.”
“Oh,” I replied, my eyes going back to the long block of hotel, specifically to my room where I figured I should be at that present moment.
“That’s Neeta,” Ned said and I looked back at him.
“Neeta?” I asked.
Ned nodded. “Neeta and Jackson,” he shook his head, “bad news.”
My gaze slid back in the direction of the hotel. He’d misinterpreted where I was looking. He thought I was looking at Harley Guy and Lucky as Hell Girl’s room.
I didn’t inform him of his mistake. Instead, I asked softly, “Bad news?”
“Yeah,” Ned answered. “She swings into town and shoo!” My eyes went to him to see he’d put his hands up at his sides and had taken a step back. “We brace.”
“Brace for what?” I asked.
He dropped his hands. “Brace for whatever Neeta’s got up her sleeve.”
“Is that…” I stopped and motioned toward the Harley and the convertible with my head, “Neeta with that man?”
“Jackson, yeah. He’s great, a good man, smart, solid, salt of the earth. Loses his mind around Neeta, though. Then again, not many men wouldn’t but I’m guessing you know all about that.”
My eyes had wandered back to the Harley as I treaded water and Ned talked but I looked at Ned when I heard his comment.
“I do?”
His grin came back and it was bigger this time, brighter, transforming his whole face making me think he might just be a friendly innkeeper in a biker town in the Rocky Mountains, just like he seemed.
“Sure you do. Ain’t shittin’ me, pretty lady.”
He was right. I wasn’t shitting him mostly because I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Figure, though,” he went on and his eyes moved toward the Harley, “you’d be worth whatever trouble you might cause.”
“What?” I whispered and he looked back at me.
“I’m a good judge of people,” he informed me instead of explaining himself.
“Yes?” I asked because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah,” he replied quietly, moved closer to the edge of the pool and squatted down. I kept treading water and staring at him. “See,” he continued, still quiet, “any trouble you might cause I’m guessin’ would be trouble you don’t mean to cause.”
“I’ve never caused any trouble,” I told him.
This was true. I hadn’t. I was a good girl. I’d always been a good girl. I’d always made the right decisions and done the right things. I might have chosen the wrong husband and the wrong friends but they were the jerks in those scenarios, not me. I was nice. I was thoughtful. I was considerate. I looked out for my neighbors. I got up when old ladies needed a seat in a waiting room. I let people who had two or three items go in front of me at the checkout in grocery stores if I had a full cart of food. I kept secrets. I bit my lip when people I knew did stupid things I knew they would regret and then kept biting my lip when those stupid things bit them in the ass and they came to me and whined about it.
I didn’t wear mini-skirts, not ones with frayed hems, not any mini-skirts at all. If I did, I wouldn’t wear them with high-heeled sandals. Maybe flip-flops or flats but not high heels. I didn’t air kiss front desk reception guys named Ned even if I knew them. I didn’t drive a convertible. I didn’t rush out a door and throw myself in the arms of a man.
And I’d never laughed so loud I filled the air with music.
“Betty’s different than me,” Ned broke into my thoughts and I focused on him.
“She is?” I asked thinking I may have missed something.
“I’m a good judge of people, she’s got the sight.”
“The sight?” I repeated stupidly.
He grinned again while straightening, it was his big grin. He had all his teeth, the eyetooth was wonky but they were all clean and white and the rest were straight. His hair was a little thin, light brown. He wasn’t tall, not short either. Lean and on the thin side. And, I was beginning to believe, a genuinely nice guy, not the creepy night clerk at a hotel in Nowheresville.
“The sight.” He nodded then looked toward the hotel before he turned to me as I moved my arms through the water to take me back to the side so I could stop treading. I reached out and held onto the edge as he kept going. “She told me she met you and she just knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Somethin’ big was gonna happen.”
I blinked and it wasn’t to get the water out of my eyes.
“Something big?”
“Yep.”
“To me?”
“To you, through you, because of you, whatever. But whatever it is, it’ll be big and it’ll be good.”
I didn’t know what to do with this mostly because it was a little crazy.
“She said that?”
He nodded and crossed his arms on his chest, rocking back on his heels again.
“Yep. And she’s never wrong. We been married twenty-five years and she gets these feelin’s and, I’ll repeat, she’s never wrong. My Betty’s always right. Always.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I stayed silent.
“Anyhoots!” he exclaimed loudly. “Best leave you to your swim. You need anythin’ at all, you know where to find me. I hit the hay around midnight but you just gotta ring the buzzer outside the front door and it’ll wake me up. Yeah?”
I nodded.
“Anythin’ you need, pretty lady, I mean that,” he said and it sounded like he meant it.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Glad to have you with us, Lauren.”
“Thanks, Ned.”
He lifted a hand in a wave and wandered back to the reception-slash-house.