Page 8 of January (New Orleans #1)

M elinda had the day off, which was a rare occasion. Because she lived just upstairs, if they got a lot of walk-ins or someone called out sick, she was often asked to come downstairs and do a tour or two. She didn’t mind most days, but there were a few where she just wanted to relax in her apartment and think about something other than walking tourists around the city. She’d been assured that she wasn’t needed for today and that if there were a lot of walk-ins, they’d either add them to existing tours or the boss herself would give the tour. Melinda appreciated the woman who had become her second mother. She also appreciated a good cup of coffee first thing in the morning, along with a book she’d been planning to read for years.

As she sat back on her sofa across from the windows that gave her a view of the building across the street and a sliver of the city beyond it, she inhaled deeply and breathed in the scent of her coffee with just the right amount of cream in it and prepared to take her first sip. Before she could, though, her phone buzzed on her coffee table. She grunted because this could only mean that the first tour of the day had a lot of walk-ins or that Jill had called out sick. It was later than she usually woke, but it was still before ten, so there wasn’t anyone else who would be calling her. She picked up the phone and nearly choked on that sip of coffee when she saw that it was Kyle. It wasn’t just Kyle. Kyle wasn’t texting. She was calling her. Melinda moved her mug to the table and stared at the screen as if it would tell her what to do. Answer it. She should answer it, obviously.

“Hello?” she said, likely sounding confused.

“Melinda?”

“Yes. ”

“Hi. It’s Kyle Schafer,” Kyle replied. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me,” she said, sitting forward on the sofa. “What’s up?”

“Um…”

Melinda smiled. For some reason, Kyle said that a lot, and Melinda loved it. She found it absolutely adorable.

“So, I found out something about my grandmother. Jolie and I were going to check it out today, but I can’t get ahold of the lawyer, and I don’t know if I should go on my own because Jolie decided she wanted to hang out with those new friends she made. They’re doing some tour outside of the city or something, so she said I didn’t have to wait.”

Melinda laughed a little and replied, “I know you just said a lot, but I’m not sure I understood any of it.”

“Sorry,” Kyle said, laughing a little, too. “Are you busy today? I’m sure you are. Am I bothering you at work?”

“No, I’m…” Melinda looked around her apartment, trying to figure out what she’d been doing or what plans she’d had. She shook her head at herself. “I’m free.”

“You don’t have to work?”

“No, I have the day off.”

“Shit. I’m bugging you on your day off. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she replied. “Kyle, it’s fine. Can you maybe just explain what you were talking about before?”

“So, according to something I found in her house, my grandma owned another property, and I have the key.” Kyle paused. “Jolie is a paralegal, and she says it looks legit, but I called the attorney my grandma’s neighbor said she had and left a message. He hasn’t gotten back to confirm yet. I was going to go over there to check it out today with my sister, but–”

“She decided to go on a tour with her new friends?”

“Yes. It’s fine, though. She’s here for the vacation more than anything. But I’m here to figure this all out,” Kyle said.

“So, you want company?” Melinda asked.

“You can obviously say no, and I don’t want to guilt you into anything just because you were nice enough to give us a free tour yesterday.”

“No, I’d like to,” she said. “Where’s the other house?”

“That’s the thing… It’s in the Garden District.”

“It is ?” she asked, standing up.

“Yes. I already looked it up online. It’s huge, and I… There’s just so much I don’t know.”

Melinda sighed and asked, “When do you want to go?”

“Whenever,” Kyle replied. “I’m at my hotel now. I wasn’t planning on calling you. I know we said we’d do another tour together, but this wasn’t what I had in mind. I just… I don’t really have anyone else.”

Melinda smiled at the thought that even though they’d just met, Kyle had called her.

“Do you want to meet there?” she asked, glancing down at her perfect cup of coffee and hoping she could recreate it later.

“I can come get you. I don’t know. You know the city. What makes more sense?”

Kyle in her apartment? Yeah, that made sense. But it also didn’t because while it was relatively clean, there were still dishes in the sink, and her bed was unmade. She was also pretty sure she had at least one vibrator lying around on a table somewhere from her time alone last night. She’d left it in the kitchen, maybe. Or, her bathroom. No, it was on the dining room table. Why had she left it there?

“I can meet you at your hotel,” she blurted out, turning around and finding a pink vibrator sitting in the middle of her small, round table.

She knew she had a black one still in her bedroom, lying on the bedside table, charging. It had died on her, so she’d pulled out the other one, and after giving herself three orgasms with it, she’d gotten up for a snack, and she’d ended up carrying it with her in a post-orgasmic haze and forgetting all about it until now.

“Okay,” Kyle said. “Have you had breakfast? We could grab something. I’m buying, obviously. ”

“I haven’t,” she replied.

“There’s a good place down the street from my hotel.”

“Can you give me about thirty minutes?”

“Of course,” Kyle replied.

They said their goodbyes, and Melinda took another sip of her coffee as she walked into her bedroom. She hadn’t gotten dressed yet, and her sweats and T-shirt wouldn’t be appropriate for breakfast and the Garden District later, so she found a pair of her nicer jeans and a Tulane T-shirt. It wasn’t supposed to be cold today, according to the weather app, but she made sure to grab a sweatshirt, too, just in case, and after making sure her hair wasn’t a mess in the ponytail she’d pulled it up into that morning, she left her apartment and walked the short distance to Kyle’s hotel. Minutes later, she was in the lobby and texting Kyle that she was there.

“Hey,” Kyle greeted as she exited the old-style elevator that gave the building that authentic feel even more so than the rest of the original architecture.

“Hi,” Melinda replied, looking at Kyle’s all-white tennis shoes and thinking that it was cute if she expected to make it out of this town with them still looking that way.

“Breakfast?” Kyle asked, tucking her hands into the front pockets of her jeans.

Her eyes appeared vulnerable to Melinda somehow, and Melinda didn’t know Kyle well enough to feel that way, but that was how they looked to her. Kyle was wearing a dark-green hooded sweatshirt that went really well with them, too. She looked ever the tourist, and Melinda had to smile.

“Yeah. Let’s go,” she replied.

They left the lobby, and Melinda let Kyle lead the way, but by the time they got near the restaurant, Melinda knew where they were going, and it was one of her favorite breakfast places in the city.

“So, I know you’ve lived here forever and that you’re a tour guide, but I don’t know what is your… favorite movie?”

Melinda laughed as she placed a napkin in her lap and said, “Favorite movie? ”

“I don’t know.” Kyle laughed, too. “Do you have any siblings? Is that better?”

“I have two sisters and a brother,” she replied. “And I know you have a sister.”

“I have a younger brother, too,” Kyle shared. “Well, he’s a half-brother. Same dad, but his mother is my dad’s new wife.”

“Are you close?” Melinda asked.

“Not really. My dad and I are somewhat, but my brother is so much younger than me that we don’t exactly have anything in common. I’m sure when he’s older, we will be.”

Melinda listened intently as they talked while waiting for their drinks and then their breakfast to be brought to them. Kyle ordered scrambled eggs and bacon, and she ordered pancakes. Then, Melinda watched as Kyle added Tabasco to her eggs and thought that this woman was looking more and more like a local to her all of a sudden.

“Love hot sauce?”

“Not normally. I read that this was made in Louisiana, though.”

“Avery Island, yes,” Melinda confirmed.

“I thought I’d try as much local stuff as I could while I’m here.”

“And how are you liking it so far?”

“Other than the beer and manure smell I mentioned before?” Kyle asked.

Melinda laughed and said, “Yes, other than that.”

“It’s really growing on me.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, it’s muggy all the time, it seems, but that just makes my hair look frizzy. No big deal.” Kyle pointed to the ponytail she’d pulled it back in. “See? I’m learning.”

Melinda smiled and continued eating, letting them settle into a comfortable silence until they finished. A few minutes later, when her phone buzzed on the table next to her plate, she looked down and saw that it was Bridgette texting.

“Do you need to get that?” Kyle asked.

“No,” she replied. “Just a friend texting. ”

“Did I interrupt plans? You can tell me, Melinda.”

“Mel.”

Kyle nodded and said, “Okay. Mel.”

“And no. I was just about to crack open a book when you called, and I had nothing to do after that.”

“Sometimes, those are the best days, though,” Kyle replied.

“But being here with you and showing you around the Garden District can also be a pretty great day, right?”

Kyle nodded, and when their check arrived, she paid it. Then, they left, walking slowly as if they had no destination in mind, and for the first time in a while, Melinda actually felt like a tourist. She always had a destination when she walked around. She was either giving a tour herself and on a tight deadline to get everyone to everything included, heading to meet a friend, or going to the grocery store, but she rarely, if ever these days, just wandered around anymore. When they arrived at the edge of the massive houses and oak-shaded streets, Melinda stopped and waited for Kyle to decide how to proceed.

“Um… It’s that way, I think.” Kyle pointed.

The woman looked anxious all of a sudden, so Melinda followed her.

“Did you know this was once a bunch of plantations?” she asked, turning on tour-guide mode to help alleviate Kyle’s anxiety.

“No,” Kyle replied.

“Yeah. When some rich white people didn’t want to have to live around the Creoles, they turned the properties into homes, but there were only a couple on each block and massive gardens everywhere. That’s how it got its name.”

“Is that why people still talk about how segregated the city is at times?”

“Because it was literally set up that way? I don’t think that’s any excuse to keep things the same, but things move a lot slower down here, and progress, unfortunately, takes time, even though I don’t like that. ”

Kyle didn’t say anything for a while as they kept walking. When she stopped, she turned and looked up at a two-story Greek Revival home with four white columns in the front.

“Is this the place?” Melinda asked her.

“I think so, yeah,” Kyle replied.

Melinda had passed by this very house every few days for the past several years, and while she hadn’t highlighted it on the tour, she often thought about who’d lived there in the past. The long shutters lining the windows were a pale yellow and made the house look welcoming. The landscaping was impeccable, as was most of the landscaping in this part of the city, but the hanging plants off the porch were pinks, reds, and blues, giving it a vibe that said this was a home.

“It’s empty,” Kyle told her. “She rented it out, I guess, but it’s empty now. I think renting this house was how she supported herself in her retirement. At least, that’s what I was able to find while reading a little of a journal she wrote.”

“Do you want to go inside?”

Kyle just stood there quietly, though, staring up at the house, and Melinda didn’t know what else to say, so she just stood there next to her, waiting, giving the woman whatever time she needed to process the thoughts in her head.

“Yes, but… I don’t know,” Kyle said after a while.

“Okay. Do you want to walk around more?”

“I feel like I’m the reason.”

“The reason for what?” Melinda asked.

“My mom lives in a trailer. Jolie and I grew up in it. My grandma had all of this .” Kyle motioned to the house. “I’m the reason.”

“Because your mom got pregnant with you and left town?”

“She said she was kicked out.”

“But you don’t believe her?”

“I did until I saw the house.”

“The house?”

“Not this one; the one my grandma lived in. My mom’s bedroom is still there, perfectly preserved, as if she expected a teenage daughter to return to it any day now. Would she really do that if she kicked that daughter out? Maybe initially, but not after all these years, right? She would’ve given up by now.”

“I don’t know,” Melinda said, feeling like she couldn’t judge such a thing from the outside.

“I know I asked you to come with me and check it out, but I don’t know if I’m ready. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Melinda told her, reaching her hand out to stroke Kyle’s lower back through her sweatshirt in a feeble attempt to comfort her. “We don’t have to.”

“Can we walk around, like you said?” Kyle turned to look at her.

Melinda nodded and asked, “Do you want the full tour-guide mode activated or just a mild one, where I give you a few facts every couple of blocks?”

“Oh. No tour-guide mode,” Kyle said. “Can we just be two people walking around, getting to know each other?”

“Yes, we can,” Melinda replied, smiling at her.