Fallen leaves covered the fading green lawns, while some of the more colorful ones clung to their branches. I loved fall; it was my favorite time of year. I’d been so busy lately, I hadn’t even realized how quickly October was slipping by. Halloween would be here soon, and then after that the other holidays would fall into place one after the next after the next. I wondered if Jay and I would spend Christmas together, or if he’d travel back to Massachusetts to see his family. My parents would love to take him with us to the Christmas Eve service at the Unitarian church. They have this lovely tradition of handing out candles to everyone, turning down all the lights in the sanctuary, and as the light spreads slowly throughout the room candle to candle, everyone sings “Silent Night.” It’s beautiful, and something I look forward to every year. I felt a fizz of excitement at the thought of having Jay there with us this year; I was in the middle of this thought when Ryan called my name from the front porch of Missy Gellerman’s house.
“Hey Riles!” He trotted out to the sidewalk to meet us and immediately crouched down to give C some love. Coltrane whined and licked Ryan’s face—and I had a feeling if it were socially acceptable, Ryan would have done the same. Those two were like peanut butter and jelly. A few times over the past month, Ryan had asked if he could take Coltrane to work at his parents’ store. I’d always agreed—even though I knew Ryan had been partially using it as an excuse to come over and see me—because Coltrane loved the wide-open spaces out there. I didn’t want to begrudge my dog a fun day just because my ex had delusions of us getting back together.
“Someone is sure happy to see you.”
He stood up, maybe a little closer to me than he needed to be, and said, “Glad to see you too, sugar.”
I suppressed a smile. “What’re you doing here?”
In his UVA T-shirt and long board shorts, Ryan looked just as he had in college. He was tall, over six feet, with sandy brown hair, gorgeous blue eyes, and the kind of lopsided smile that could charm you into any number of bad decisions. Virtually every memory of mine over the past seven years had something to do with Ryan Sanford, and yet we’d hardly talked since he moved back to Tuttle. It had been hard, he had not only been my boyfriend but pretty much my only friend for the past several years. After everything that happened between us, I needed some space to move on and, despite what he said, he did too.
“I’m buying this place.” Ryan jerked a thumb toward Missy’s house.
So much for space. “What?”
“Yeah, Missy’s moving to Asheville to be near her kids, so she’s selling. And I’ve always loved this area, so I thought, why the hell not?” His handsome, optimistic grin belied the obvious problem here: this house backed up to mine. Only my six-foot privacy fence separated the backyards.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, why?”
I made some sort of glottal sound that I felt he should understand.
“What?”
“Ryan, this house is literally in my backyard.”
“So?”
I wasn’t sure if he really didn’t get how inappropriate that was, or if he was just being obtuse. So I asked him exactly that.
“I don’t even know what obtuse is. I bought this house because it’s in a great neighborhood, it has an awesome yard, and there’s a separate apartment in the basement. I’m going to live down there and give Ridley and our little dudette the upstairs.”
“Ridley is going to live here too?” My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, still looking like he couldn’t understand why this would bother me. “We decided it’d be best for the baby to have us all live together—even though we’re not, you know, a traditional family.”
There was so much in what he just said that evoked emotion, not the least of which was that Ryan was making mature and responsible decisions to take care of his family. Old habits die hard, so a sliver of me felt proud of him, but the majority of me was straight-up pissed that he was going to make me take a front row seat to watch his new life unfold.
“Don’t you think it’s going to be a little weird living so close to me?”
“Nah,” he said. “We’re cool. And Ridley loves you.”
I was speechless. That is not hyperbole. I honest-to-goodness could not find the words to respond to this information, so I simply turned around and walked back toward my house.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset about this,” he called after me. “It’ll be fun! You’ll see!”
Hey Riley,
So I have to admit that I don’t know that much about owning real estate because due to a small misunderstanding with a Victoria’s Secret credit card, I am apparently considered “high risk” by lenders—haha lol! But I can totally understand what ur saying about how weird it is for ur ex to move in his baby mama drama right behind ur house! In the wise words of Selena Gomez, “That is not okay.”
But here is the part of the process when I have to [TRIGGER WARNING] challenge ur truth: Why do u think this upsets u so much? I mean, I need u to really think about it. If ur truly over Ryan then why does it matter where he lives? Could there be some unresolved issues hiding inside ur reaction to his home purchase? Do we need to examine them?
PS: This is why I plan to buy a tiny house as soon as my credit clears up. U can just move it when u need a change
