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It’s on the to-do list.
Like her.
As soon as possible.
I can’t afford to have Krystal walking around unclaimed like this. It won’t do.
She’ll be mine.
Even though you’re twice her age, impersonating her neighbor and have lied to her since the moment you both met?
Not lying. Re-framing. I tell myself, feeling a little uneasy when she tells me we’re almost there.
As if I should need to know that.
Shouldn’t I know where I live?
Taking the turnoff, Krystal drives us towards what I can see from where we are is one of those new-ish housing developments.
The kind of instant suburbs that crop up, doomed to be inhabited by the working class who wanna feel like they live someplace nice for a change.
It all looks great for the first year or two, but like this one, after a time it starts to look shabby.
Cheap houses sold at three times their value, with local businesses closing or moving closer to where people will actually buy stuff.
“Hasn’t changed a bit,” I say cheerfully, acting like a man who’s glad to finally see the longed for sights of home.
Krystal looks at me in the rearview, raising her brows.
“What?” I ask her.
“It’s changed a lot,” she confides in me, reaffirming my own impressions.
“When I went to college everything looked so new, so fresh. Now it looks like an old neighborhood that needs work.” She observes, taking the turns down streets by memory.
“Maybe it’s just you who changed, College I mean,” I suggest, not wanting to run down her neighborhood.
I mean, my neighborhood too. I live here for a reason, right?
“How’s your new place coming along?” she asks, helping me join the dots in my mind as well as my story of the mystery man I’ve become.
“My new place?” I ask her, wondering if she has much more on the topic.
“Dad said you were only staying in the neighborhood until your new place is built,” she tells me, looking a little somber.
The idea of someone moving on and up while she stays stuck seems to be written in her eyes.
“Oh that,” I exclaim, wanting to set her mind at ease.
“Still at the hole in the ground stage, really,” I reply, noting her mood shift up when I tell her.
“I’ll be here for a while yet,” I remind her. Needing her to know that whether she thinks I’m her real neighbor or knows me for who I really am, I mean it.
I’m not going anywhere without her.
“Here we are,” she announces.
I force a nod of appreciation, but I still don’t know if she’s pulled into ‘my driveway’ or hers.
She unbuckles herself and turns in her seat to face me.
“Glad to be home?” she asks, sounding more excited than I’m acting or could ever pretend to be, so I just think of her.
She’s my home now. She’s everything I want and more. The only person I want to be with, so yeah. I’m glad to be home.
“Thanks for finding me,” I tell her truthfully, noting the change in her expression as she looks bashful. Her eyes moving down.
“Oh! I nearly forgot,” she says, quickly recovering herself and lifting her rear end off her seat, and leaning closer.
Fishing in her pocket for something.
Her hair is so close I can smell its freshness, the sweetness of her whole body too.
My mouth is close enough to kiss her, but before I can decide, she’s produced a key and holds it up between us.
“You’ll need this,” she tells me as I look at her, only wanting her closer to me again.
“The spare key you gave my dad,” she adds, explaining it all as I absently take it. Glad at least I have a way inside.
But which house is mine?
I take a guess, comparing the two which look so similar it’s almost impossible to imagine who would live where.
Both have mail filling the mailboxes, but one has an unkempt-looking front yard.
Like someone who’s been overseas for weeks, or someone who works away a lot and hasn’t got around to it yet?
I can’t blow my cover just yet, but it really is an impossible decision for me to risk making out loud.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me in?” I chuckle instead, “Or do you have other plans?” I ask her, not wanting to see her go so soon either.
She blushes again, gnawing her lower lip.
“Maybe you could ask me in,” she says formally, looking shy again.
“Our place. It’s a bit of a mess,” she admits, making me smile.
“What a great idea. Lead the way,” I instruct her cheerfully, taking my time getting out of the car so I can get another few moments’ view of her from behind.
My god but she’s beautiful.
Just stunning.
She takes the lead, but only by a step, and I follow her to the house next door to where she’s parked.
The neater-looking one.
Lawn guy. I deduce.
Krystal waits by the front door and I slide my key in, relieved when it turns but still unsure exactly how all this is gonna pan out if the real owner is home or decides to come home while I’m here.
