Guilty as Charged

the window.
“Hey, Jared,” she says while leaning against the white metal door.
Jared leans forward and flexes his arms for good measure while blinding her with his flirtatious smile.  “Hey, Mrs. Murphy. How’s it going today?”
“Great. Couldn’t be better.”  I roll my eyes, thinking about how frazzled she was when I walked into her house.  “Can I get a strawberry shortcake bar and a Big Stick please? Apparently three-year-old’s can’t remember orders,” she teases.
He winks at her and then moves around the vehicle.  “Sure thing.”
I shake my head in amusement as she turns around to face me and licks her lips while Jared’s backside is on full display as he bends over to reach into the freezer.  The other moms all nod in agreement as they watch her.  It’s like they have their own dirty moms club in which everyone is automatically a member and their meetings are held randomly like this to ogle hot twenty-something guys.
“Here you go.”  Jared hands her the treats and he hands her the change from the ten-dollar bill Taryn handed him earlier.  “Who’s your friend by the way?”  He throws his chin in my direction as I feel my cheeks start to flush.  Am I really blushing at the man-child ice cream man?
“That’s my best friend, Sydney.”  Ally waves her fingers over at me as I shoot her a glare.  “She’s single if you were wondering.”
Jared’s eyes move down the length of me as I feel my body heat up.  “I was. Nice to meet you, Sydney,” he calls out, waving his hand over at me now too.
“Hi.”  That’s all I say, all I can muster—because although I love my best friend and appreciate what she’s doing, there’s no way I’m going to open my legs to the twenty-year-old ice cream man.  I do have some standards and don’t like to waste my time.  Although I’m sure Jared could go all night long, I can’t.  I have a job and a persona to uphold, and I haven’t been ready to let a man touch me just yet.
“I literally give you an in, and all you say is hi?”  Ally stomps back over to me and hands me the strawberry shortcake bar, then opens the Big Stick.
“I’m not sleeping with the ice cream man,” I grit out before taking a bite.  The cold and creamy mixture melts on my tongue as we start to walk back to Ally’s house while Taryn is covered in yellow stickiness all over her face.
“You’re gonna let that go on longer?”  I gesture down to my niece.
“Yup. No sense in cleaning her until she’s done. Besides, it’s bath time once Collin gets home. That’s his job.”
Once we arrive, Ally’s husband, who has now become one of my best friends as well, greets us at the door.  We met him during our first year in law school and they fell hard and fast for each other.
“Did we get ice cream?”
“Yes, Daddy! I got Tweety.”  Taryn reaches for him, but he avoids her sticky hands just in time.
“Looks like you got more of him on your face and hands than in your mouth. Come on, let’s get in the bath.”  He directs Taryn down the hall before stopping to greet Ally and give her a kiss.  “Hey, babe. How’d it go today?”
She wistfully looks at her husband as their faces stay inches away from each other.  “It was crazy, as usual. We’ll catch up later. Sydney and I are going to go for a walk.”
“Alright, sounds good. Nice to see you, Syd.”
“Same to you, Collin. I heard about that case you won last week, the murder trial. Congratulations.”
His smile stretches wide.  Collin is also a lawyer, specializing in criminal law.  “Thanks. It was a big victory for the firm. How is estate planning treating you?”
I chuckle, knowing that among lawyers, I picked the most boring specialty there is.  But I actually love it.  “Dull as ever, with the exception of a few custody cases that have been passed to me lately at the firm.”
His face wrinkles in disdain.  “Those can’t be fun.”
“Nope.”
“Alright, well you two go visit. Don’t let Ally get into too much trouble.”  He winks in our direction, knowing damn well how much of a troublemaker his wife is.  Back in college, I literally had to put her on leash at one point during parties so I could keep her near me.  Otherwise she would run off and then call me randomly in the middle of the night to pick her up two towns away.  The woman has always been crazy and adventurous, the complete opposite of me.  But God, do I love her, and I think that’s why our friendship just works.
With our tumblers of wine in hand, we take off for a stroll around her housing track, full of homes with river rock cascading up the sides, brownstone pathways, and large wooden doors.  The community is definitely reminiscent of the one I grew up in just a few miles away, just on a much smaller scale.
Newberry, Texas nights are one of the reasons I never itched to leave the town I call home nestled right outside of Dallas.  One look at the sherbet-colored sky woven through light gray clouds accompanied by the slight breeze floating across your skin, and you’d see why I lived for these nights.  Of course the humidity is a bitch to deal with, but the place I remained dedicated to made up for it.  And Byron Kennedy, my boss, gave me an opportunity right out of law school to make a name for myself in an established firm outside of the bustling city.  Despite feeling like I always had to be ‘on’ around people in our town, there was a comfort that I found from the familiar, especially when my life was threatened after work that fateful night.
“Alright, spill. I can feel the heaviness in your chest as if it were my own. What’s going on, Syd? You shot down Jared, which I mean, I