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Rea’s is a small white bungalow with a neat little porch. It’s very tidy looking, and it has newer siding and cedar accents. I know she’s not handy unless she developed some crazy home improvement skills in the eight years since we broke up, so I assume she bought it that way. The porch is stained a dark brown to match the trim, the roof looks freshly shingled, and the yard is pretty, with a sprawling flower garden tucked up against the porch, pots here and there, and a quaint, purple wood mailbox with flowers painted across the front.
My footsteps echo over the sidewalk, then up her front steps and across the porch. There’s no doorbell, but there is a metal door knocker on the red front door—of course it would be red, Rea always had a thing for red doors—in the shape of a cow’s hind end. I knock hard enough to raise the dead, not that I apply much pressure. The knocker is just very effective.
A few minutes later, Rea opens the door, and she’s brandishing a hammer in one hand. Her eyes are enormous, and her chest is heaving underneath a yellow knit sweater that looks handmade. She’s also wearing a pair of jeans and has huge fluffy slippers on. When she sees me, she lowers the hammer, sets her other hand over her chest, and narrows her eyes. “Jesus,” she mutters. “You just don’t give up, do you? It’s eleven at night.”
“Were you burning the midnight oil doing some renovations?” I indicate the hammer.
“No! I could have bashed your brains out with this thing. I thought you were a robber.”
“A robber?” My brow quirks up. I can make them do quite alarming things. Everyone gets a kick out of how I can make them wiggle independently of each other. Someone once told me I could put on an entire play using just my eyebrows. It’s an enchanting idea, but I haven’t tried it yet. “A robber who knocks on the door?”
“That would be the most logical way for an intruder to enter. No one would expect it.”
“And you really thought you could beat someone’s brains out? You?”
“I still might be capable of it now that I know it’s you. It’s quite tempting, actually.” When I don’t have anything to say to that, Rea’s lips curl, but it’s no smile. It’s more like a grimace of annoyance. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“I might. Then again, I came to ask you something.”
“At eleven at night? Couldn’t it wait for you to torture me with it tomorrow at my place of work?” Rea emphasizes the word my in that sentence and gives me a scathing look, which I return with my most charming smile and my left brow slightly furrowed.
I happen to know that Rea is single, and she lives alone. The PI I really did hire confirmed it for me. It wouldn’t have been well-timed to come here if she wasn’t. In fact, if she was in a relationship, then maybe I could have let her go. I hadn’t crept on Rea until my father laid down the ultimatum. Sure, I’d thought about her. I thought about her endlessly, but it was always in the abstract of missing her, wishing things had been different somehow. The breakup was so sudden and unexpected. Rea was right about one thing, though. I never got any real closure.
When I found out that not only was Rea single, but she’d never really had a real relationship after me, I guess it’s what made up my mind. I formulated a plan and acted on it before I seriously thought it out.
“What are you doing here?” Rea crosses her arms. “Seriously. You might live next door, which I still can’t believe, but it doesn’t mean I have to talk to you. This is my house and my yard. You’re trespassing. I should call the cops on you.”
“You could if you want. Go ahead.”
Rea rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I’m not going to call them. It would make me the center of attention, and unlike you, that’s not something I like to be.”
Good. She’s taking shots at me already. That means emotions are running high. I know Rea. She can be as calm and collected as freaking cheese when she wants to be. Ever see a block of cheese get up and turn a cartwheel? No? I didn’t think so. The round ones, maybe, but I’m thinking about the block ones here. They don’t have the ability to go rolling away. So cheese might cause happiness, melt in your mouth, and make you want more, but it, in and of itself, is often quite inanimate.
Rea bends and sets the hammer down on the floor by the door. “Just ask your question and get it over with!”
