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“Great.” Levi tossed enough cash on the table to cover his beer and at least one of Dennis’s.
On his way out, he stopped by the bar and told Brian and Mary that Dennis was staying. He also told them that Dennis’s car wouldn’t be running, and they should be prepared to call a cab or find someone to give him a ride. Dennis would be pissed, but there was no way Levi was leaving him able to drive home in a drunken, angry fit.
Maybe his friend would get lucky, and Brook wouldn’t be too angry that they had to get his car from the bar parking lot on Saturday. Maybe she would even remember that when he wasn’t busy playing an angry drunk, Dennis was a good guy.
Maybe Levi would get lucky, and his neighbor would still be up and sitting on her porch, reading.
CHAPTER TWO
MINA HAD MET all of her neighbors except one. Given how rarely she saw him outside, it seemed like he was determined she not meet him or even lay eyes on him.
Still, she wasn’t used to not knowing her neighbors. Even in graduate school she’d made a point to meet all the people in her apartment building at least once. That way, she figured, even if they avoided her for the rest of their shared time in Chicago, they would be able to tell the paramedics her name if she were found gravely injured on the sidewalk outside the building.
Though how she would have managed being gravely injured on the sidewalk outside her apartment after being hit by a train was still a mystery.
Mina smiled as she crossed the property boundary. A death worthy of Anna Karenina was ridiculous, which was part of the pleasure of thinking about it. She was going to die from something prosaic and boring. A cold that turned into pneumonia. An allergic reaction. Basically, her own body turning against her. Nothing as spectacular as throwing oneself in front of a train after the betrayal of a lover.
She knocked on the door and almost laughed when her neighbor opened it, a death glare on his face that he didn’t even try to hide as he said, “Yes.”
Fortunately, death held little fear for her. It never had. Not even when in the form of a man who stood a head, a neck and a chest taller than her. Every other time she’d seen her neighbor, his black hair had been slicked back against his head, but this morning it was loose about his face, with locks hanging over his eyes. He obviously hadn’t shaved since yesterday at least, and maybe since the day before. One day, once her garden was put in and her bathroom redone, she’d make a study of his facial hair.
Today, she stuck her hand into the void between them, a desperate cover for wanting to push his hair out of his eyes. “I’m Mina. I moved in next door a couple weeks ago and wanted to introduce myself.”
His eyes were a surprisingly light brown, given how dark his hair was. She noticed this as she realized her hand...still hung in the air. She had offered him a strong handshake, like her dad had taught her. No weak wrists. People judged you on your handshake.
Or most people did. Her neighbor might never shake her hand, and he wouldn’t know that she’d practiced her handshake with strangers since she was five.
She was about to give up when his calloused hand slid into hers and gripped tightly enough that her knees went weak in the best possible way.
“Levi,” he said, his voice deep with sleep.
It seemed his dad had taught him to have a good handshake, too. His grip revealed shapely forearms with just a hint of vein under the skin. Enough that Mina wanted to see more. More forearms. More biceps.
More everything of her neighbor.
Though there was plenty to see—or, at least, to imagine. His white T-shirt had a couple of holes scattered about the cotton and worn hems. His cotton pajama pants weren’t much better. She sneaked a long enough peek to notice that the tie at the waist had been washed into a tight knot and he had to keep them loose enough to pull over his hips and butt without undoing the knot. What she could see of the hem of his pants was as worn as the hems of his T-shirt, maybe more so.
Had she woken him up? It was ten in the morning on a Saturday, so it was possible. But she’d seen him up earlier on Saturdays. And Sundays. And, from what she could tell when she closed her blinds before going to bed, he was also early to bed.
Oh, well. Too late now. If she’d woken him, the damage was already done. Best just to go on. Deciding to meet her neighbor on Saturday morning was yet another decision she couldn’t redo.
