That’s my truth now.
Just as soon as I get this boner from hell under control.
10
Tillie Jean
“Let’s call a truce, Tillie Jean,” I mutter to myself while a whole-body shiver dances from my scalp to my toenails approximately two seconds after I walk out of my front door two mornings later. “Let’s be friends. Let’s put the past behind us.”
A concrete garden gnome snickers, and another one moons me.
No, I’m not kidding.
There’s a freaking terrifying mutant garden gnome holding his pudgy concrete hand over his mouth while his eyes twinkle with the light of hell and another one right next to him peering over his shoulder while he holds his pants down, exposing two round concrete butt cheeks, and two dozen more garden gnomes are lined up alongside them right at the property line between my house, handed down to me by my great-aunt Matilda, and Max Cole’s winter house, which he’s renting from my great-uncle Homer.
My brother can’t pull off a decent prank to save his life this winter, but Mr. Two-Faced Growly Bear is sending a freaking garden gnome army after me.
How do I know Max set them up?
Because I know Uncle Homer put them in his basement a few years back after the sight of them made me take out his mailbox with my car, which I don’t think about. When I think about an army of garden gnomes in the basement of the house next door, I can’t sleep, but having them stored and forgotten in the basement is so much better than having them running around next to my property line.
Also, Cooper wouldn’t prank me with garden gnomes.
He just wouldn’t.
I shudder again.
“Dead,” I say, pointing to each and every one of them. “You are all dead to me.”
I swear to god, one actually makes noise, and that’s all it takes to make me shriek and dive for my car.
Unfortunately, the four-block drive to Crusty Nut doesn’t relieve the shivers.
Or the images from my brain.
Neither does an eight-hour shift.
And when I get home, Max’s Mercedes SUV isn’t in his driveway, but the gnomes are still there.
“There are freaking rules of engagement, Max Cole,” I mutter to myself.
And then I march inside, brew myself a very, very strong, very large afternoon latte, and pull up my big girl panties.
There’s vengeance to be had.
“I’d ask what you’re doing, except then I wouldn’t have plausible deniability,” Annika says from somewhere behind me thirty minutes later.
I straighten and turn to face her.
She’s not alone, and the sight of my older brother walking his goat with his pregnant wife makes me smile. “Hey, it’s my favorite people.”
Sue bleats out a greeting, so I bleat back at him.
“Are you torturing your neighbor, or the garden gnomes?” Grady asks.
I lean over and move one more gnome into formation in the middle of Max’s yard.
With gloved hands, for the record.
Gloves that I’ll be burning as soon as I’m done here.They touched garden gnomes.
I shudder and almost dry-heave, but I’m nearly done, so I grab the last gnome and put him in place.
“Aren’t you the one who had nightmares after Cooper made us watch that old Gnomeo and Juliet trailer on YouTube last year?” Annika says.
I tilt my head to the side, clamp my teeth around the bite valve connected to the tube sticking out of my small day pack and hanging over my shoulder, and suck. Warm mocha latte floods my mouth, and I sigh in relief. “Don’t wanna talk about it,” I say as the liquid courage reassures me that I can, in fact, finish this job.
Grady looks at me, then at Max’s house, then at the gnomes, then back to me, and I swear he pauses with a significant glance at my day pack along the way. “What, exactly, did Max Cole do to you to make you brave enough to touch garden gnomes in the name of retribution?”
“He set them up along the property line. This is not my doing.”
My oldest brother starts to grin. “Tillie Jean, do I need to have a talk with your neighbor about how we court ladies in this town?”
“Shut up and move that last concrete thing, please.”
Annika tilts her head. “Did you really put them in the shape of a middle finger?”
“They didn’t put themselves in that shape.” I suck on my hydration bladder of coffee again, ignore that voice whispering that hydration bladders are for carrying water on long hikes, not coffee in the front yard, and say a prayer of thanks that garden gnomes cannot, in fact, line themselves up, and that even if they could, I’m deadly with a tire iron.
Which I’ll be sleeping with under my pillow until these fucking gnomes are gone.
Uncle Homer swore they didn’t move, but I heard Pop talking about animatronic garden gnomes, and between that one garden gnome moving—and yes, that’s why I took out the mailbox—and the thing that we don’t talk about that happened when I was four, I. Hate. Garden. Gnomes.
“That’s really impressively creative,” my sister-in-law says. “Especially the part where the top of the middle finger is the one mooning you.”
“Can we please stop talking about them like they’re real?”
Grady hands me Sue’s leash and takes the last garden gnome.
Without gloves.
“I wouldn’t let him touch you for like three weeks if I were you,” I tell Annika. “That’s how long it’ll take all the cooties to come off his skin.”
She laughs while Sue rubs against my leg. I peel off my own gloves, making sure to not accidentally touch the parts of them that were touching garden gnomes, to rub his goofy one-horned head. He has the funniest smile ever, and he loves Annika more than he loves my brother, and I’m okay with that.
“How’s your ankle?” Grady asks after finishing my dirty work for me, but not before I realize Max Cole has once again made me stretch outside my comfort zone.
Dammit. “Completely back to normal. Can you hold Sue again? I need to do a little B and E.”
Grady takes his pet back, but he’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. Annika’s choking on her own spit.
She’s really adorable when she’s choking on her own spit. I can totally see why Grady married her.
“B and E? What, exactly, are you doing?” she asks me.
“B and E. Braiding and erasing my memories.” And if they believe that’s what B and E stands for, then I’m very worried for their offspring.
“Tillie Jean! You’re breaking into Max’s house.”
“Uncle Homer asked me to check on something.”
“I’m not watching this,” Grady mutters.
So he says.
But he and Annika and Sue are still standing on the sidewalk, more or less playing lookout to make sure my cousin Chester, the sheriff’s deputy, doesn’t catch me, after I’ve slipped into Max’s side window and done what I needed to do in his house with the other item inside my daytime hiking backpack, which is something I’d intended to put in Cooper’s house, but not anymore.
Now, Max Cole is in the circle of people who will lose at winter prank wars.
“Yep,” I announce as I slide back out the side window. “The windows do open without squeaking. I’ll report back to Uncle Homer.”