Page 7 of The Ex Next Door (Charming, Texas #8)

A my clasped her hands together and remembered the capable, confident woman she’d seen in the mirror this morning.

The one who’d kept a household of four running smoothly for nearly a decade.

The one whose children were always on time, always clean, always at the top of their class, always respectful and well behaved.

The one her children had kissed and hugged before she left as if she was a superwoman going off to conquer the world.

If only this woman across the desk from her, or anyone else for that matter, would see her the way her children did.

“So… You basically have no experience?” the human resources representative said, studying Amy’s half-page résumé.

Amy repeated what her mother and Bianca had told her to say. “Not outside of the home. But I’ve balanced our checking account for years, kept track of my hus—ex-husband’s business expenses and filed our taxes every year.”

“I get it. If only the experience we have as domestic engineers—” she held up air quotes. “—counted in the workforce. It should. I know you can do the work, Amy, and certainly be trained. But we’re looking for someone who can just come on board and hit the ground running.”

“I understand.”

The woman was kind enough to let Amy believe she might possibly still be in consideration by telling her a decision wouldn’t be made until next week.

She also walked Amy to the front door. “I’ve been where you are, returning to the workforce after a long break raising my children.

It’s taken years to get back to where I was when I left.

We say we respect women who choose to stay at home but when it comes right down to it, we don’t. If it were up to me alone, Amy…”

“That’s okay. I’ll find something.”

“You want some advice? Take a course at the local community college, then volunteer your services for someone with a business who might need them. Say a friend, or neighbor. At least you will get experience.”

“Great idea.”

Yet Amy had been working for free for many years. Rob wouldn’t like the idea. He expected her to help out now that they had two homes.

It was almost as if the woman could hear Amy’s thoughts.

“And your ex? He’s just going to have to get used to the fact that you might need a little more time to get back into the workforce. You’ll be expected to get back to work but it won’t be that easy and he needs to understand that.”

“Thanks for your support. It’s honestly nice to talk to someone who’s been there.”

“And come out on the other end fresh as a daisy. You’ll get there, honey.”

The interview took far less time than Amy had allowed for it.

It was true what people said: a no comes a lot faster than a yes.

She drove back to Charming and decided to stop by and see Bianca.

They’d met at the neighborhood park and become close friends when their children were only a few months apart.

Bianca only had one at the time, her son Matthew.

Now she had an adorable four-year-old too, named Henry.

Amy felt a bit like a boomerang driving back onto her street in the neighborhood that had come to be known as “IT alley” since so many of the professionals here worked in the field.

Apparently she couldn’t really leave her home.

She passed by it, seeing no one in the front yard.

They’d sold it to a couple of childless professionals.

“Hey!” Bianca opened her arms wide to Amy. “Welcome back, you.”

“Just got back from the interview. It didn’t take long.”

“Ugh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. My first try. I’ll get better at selling myself. Though the lady was also a single mom and had some great advice.”

She followed Bianca into the kitchen and told her what the woman had suggested.

“Or maybe you could go back to school and get your teaching credentials like you wanted.”

“I don’t know if Rob would want to give me that kind of time.”

“Who cares? He’s the idiot. Why make life easier for him?”

Funny, Amy still mistakenly thought of them as a team. The team that got to raise David and Naomi. But in many ways that’s what hurt the most. She’d been abandoned by her co-captain in the middle of the playoffs.

The thought suddenly conjured Declan in his baseball uniform, those tight biceps and muscular thighs.

Declan had a fastball that went close to ninety miles per hour, according to the town lore.

It still surprised her that he thought baseball was the main reason her father had adored Declan.

Sure, it helped, but it was the way Declan treated Amy that her father loved most.

This seemed to be the start of another week of nostalgia for her. She was no longer the girlfriend of the town’s best ballplayer and hadn’t been for over a decade.

“Matthew wants to try out for Little League,” Bianca said, pulling a couple of sodas from the fridge.

Dear Lord, baseball was everywhere now. Next door, in her memories and now at her best friend’s house.

“David is still committed to soccer, though he’s not getting the hang of it and wants to quit.”

“Maybe he and Matthew could join a league together!”

“I don’t know, baseball is such a big commitment.”

How well she remembered that it took up half of Declan’s life, if not more.

Away tournaments, fundraisers, practice.

And the parents were just as involved as the kids.

The Sheridans lived for that kind of thing, which was fine, but Amy didn’t think she could do that level of involvement without a partner.

“It’s just a city recreational league, not exactly the time constraints of Little League,” Bianca said.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re worried about getting him to practice once you start working.

You won’t need Rob. I’ll do it for you and at least we know we’ll see each other a few times a week.

The boys, too. With it being summer, I don’t want them to lose touch. ”

She had a point. “I don’t know, Bianca. I want him to stick with soccer. He shouldn’t just give up. What am I teaching him if I tell him to give up when it’s tough?”

“He’s just a kid and is just learning what he likes. Trying things is how he figures it out. Anyway, just think about it.” Bianca popped open her soda can. “So, a little birdie told me that you moved in next door to your old boyfriend. Did you know Declan lived there?”

“Nope, and neither did poor Mom. You should have seen her expression when he walked over.”

“He walked over? What for? Welcome you to the neighborhood?”

“In a way. He helped us move this huge box I overpacked.” Amy took a swig of the cherry-flavored ice-cold soda, her favorite.

“Oooooh.” Bianca fluttered her hands near her heart and batted her eyelashes. “Declan Sheridan. God of baseball.”

Amy wasn’t going to mention the little talk they’d had on Sunday night after he’d come back from his date.

By the time her children got home at nine in the evening, the kids were bouncing off the walls with a sugar high.

David’s tongue was blue from the artificially colored powdered candy she’d specifically asked Rob not to give him anymore.

It took her hours to get them both calmed down enough for bed, and after the ordeal, she’d simply strolled outside to sit on the bench swing and contemplate her life’s choices.

She hadn’t expected Declan to roll up at midnight and want to talk.

It was a surreal conversation in so many ways, talking about a huge piece of her past. The loss of her father and those painful first years without him.

At first, it was like being forced to walk around without a skeleton.

With zero foundation, with no bones to hold up the skin, the organs.

Her father was the heart of her family and when he was gone neither Amy nor her mother knew quite how to move on.

Amy had turned all her attention toward Rob.

Not on graduating from college with honors, as she should have, but with replacing a man who then became the center around which she built her adult life.

It was kind of Declan to personally offer his sympathies, but it was a little too late.

He’d been the last thing on her mind, and maybe he’d been right to stay away.

Maybe he’d been the last person she should have seen then, when her heart was already soft and bruised.

The Sheridans had attended the funeral to pay their respects, Mrs. Sheridan holding Amy so tight and close.

“I miss you, honey,” she said. “Come by sometime.”

Amy never had. She went on to marry Rob after they’d both graduated from UT in Austin.

They’d come home, where Rob eventually got a job in IT and started working his way up the corporate ladder.

Funny how at one time she’d imagined herself the wife of a professional baseball player, in a supportive role.

She’d wound up as the wife of a software salesperson, in a supportive role.

Then she’d had children. Another supportive role.

The choices were a bit old-fashioned of a millennial such as herself, but her father was a conservative man, and that’s the home she’d grown up in.

There was never a time in her life in which Amy built her life around the idea of what she wanted it to look like.

That was going to change.

* * *

Tuesday night was slammed at the Salty Dog, and not just because they were short a waitress again.

Declan filled orders at the bar and as usual helped wherever else he could.

It was summer, and the tourists who came down to see Galveston always made their way to Charming eventually.

The boardwalk here was the best, with festival rides on one end and restaurants and shops on the other.

The Salty Dog Bar & Grill was just one of those establishments, built in an area considered historical because of the last great hurricane.