The hair towel slid forward and hung over my eyebrow.
"Moose."
He was already in the backyard. I could hear him. Tearing through the grass, having the time of his life.
I stepped through the gate.
I told myself I would grab him fast. I would get him, I would carry him back across the street, and I would never speak of this morning to a living soul.
Then I came around the back corner of the bungalow.
It was a beautiful yard. Roses along the fence. A vegetable garden someone had been keeping up with. Two Adirondack chairs on a back patio. The morning sun was hitting all of it at the kind of angle that made you understand why people moved to Hartsdale on purpose.
Moose was running in circles around the lawn. Bra still in his mouth. Tail at full mast.
I crouched at the edge of the patio in my towel and tried to whisper-shout at him.
"Moose. Buddy. Come here. Come here. We're going home."
He kept running. He cut a wider arc this time, ears flopping, like he wanted to be sure I appreciated the difficulty.
I took two steps onto the grass. The grass was wet. The bottoms of my feet were going to be green by the end of this.
"Moose. I will end you."
The wet seeped through my soles. I could feel the seams of the patio stone against my heel where the lawn met the brick.
Then the back door opened behind me.
I closed my eyes.
I had a very specific second, half a second, less, where I held still on the wet grass and tried to figure out if there was any version of this where the person who'd opened the back door was a stranger. A houseguest. A roommate. A meter reader. Anyone but the one man I had been quietly avoiding being seen by since I'd seen him across the street.
I turned.
He was leaning a shoulder against the doorframe in sweatpants and nothing else. His shoulders were tan, faintly damp at the hairline, like he'd come off a shift and into a quick shower and not gotten around to the second half of his clothes yet. Blond hair too long on top, stubble across his jaw, a smile he was working very, very hard to keep off his face.
He was not succeeding.
The hair towel chose that exact moment to give up. It slid forward, off my head, and dropped at my feet in a wet white heap.
I wanted to die.
He took one look at me, then one look at Moose running tight circles with my bra in his mouth, and the smile he had been losing the fight against won.
He whistled. Once. Short.
Moose stopped mid-loop and sat down at his feet, like a dog who had been waiting for someone to tell him what to do all morning.
Easton looked down at him. Looked at the bra in his mouth. Looked back at me.
"I figured his owner would show up eventually," he said. "But I didn't expect you."
His voice was lower than I remembered, a hint of a Queens accent at the edges of it. I would have known him in a black room.
He'd known it was me before I turned around.
I tried to think of something to say and couldn't come up with so much as a vowel.
