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“Pizza?” he asks.
“Definitely.”
The parking lot of his favorite pizza place is nearly flooded, but his truck is high enough that it’s not a problem to drive in it. When I open the door to step out, however, I realize I’m going to have to wade through ankle-deep water. Just as I’m about to hop down, Teague yells, “Wait!” He comes around the truck to help me down, but he doesn’t set my feet on the ground.
“You cannot carry me inside.”
“Unless somebody’s passed a law that I’m not aware of, I guarantee you I can. And if there is a law against it, I’m about to break it.” He hooks one arm around my shoulders and the other behind my knees and carries me out of his truck, knocking the door closed with his hip. As soon as we cross the threshold, I insist he put me down so I can walk the rest of the way inside.
I can see why this place is his favorite. They make their own mozzarella, pasta, and Italian sausage, grow their own basil and tomatoes, and locally source whatever they don’t make or grow whenever possible. It’s a very farm-to-table kind of place, and the freshness is evident from the first bite. High quality and great service. What’s not to love?
The rain keeps coming down, slow but steady. My phone buzzes on the table, probably an email from whatever company I most recently ordered something from, offering me a discount on the very thing I just bought.
This place also makes homemade cannoli and mascarpone cheesecake. So much for my plans to eat light this weekend.
My phone buzzes again. I ignore it again. But within five minutes, Teague and I can’t even complete a sentence without another notification interrupting. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll mute my notifications.”
Every single notification has been a text. From my ex. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Bryan.”
“Y’all are divorced. Tell him to leave you the fuck alone.”
Laughter bubbles up from my chest as I read through the messages. “He’s flipping out because the house we had built last year is flooding. The house I wanted but he fought me for, the house he would’ve drawn out our divorce indefinitely over. I backed off and let him have my dream house just to be rid of him. He can’t possibly think I give a damn if that house floods! I hope it does. I hope it floats off its fucking foundation and ends up in the middle of an ocean where it sinks to the floor to become a reef for poisonous eels because they would literally deserve that house more than he does.”
“That’s exactly what you should tell him.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I type those exact words, and then I mute my notifications. Damn, that felt good. I luxuriate in every bite of my cheesecake, with visions of Bryan’s nasal spray floating in a drainage ditch.Sniff. Sniff.
We drive though Teague’s privacy gate to find most of his yard flooded, but the water’s not close to the house or the driveway. No worries, just a lot of saturated ground.
Within an hour of getting back to his place, another thunderstorm moves in, and this one is angry. He builds a fire, and I curl up under a blanket on his couch. On his TV, the boyfriend has just been brought in for questioning when a loud boom outside makes us both jump. And then the house goes silent. And dark, aside from the flames.
Angus whimpers from his bed in the corner.
“Aw, fuck,” Teague says. “That was a transformer.”
“Do you think it was lightning?”
“Probably.”
A flash outside the windows lights up the room for a split second. Immediately after, a series of strikes illuminates the gray sky, casting the room in a blue-white glow for one breath, and then two. “To be honest,” I say, “this is kind of nice.”
He smiles. “If the power stays off for long, the rest of the house will get cold. We’ll have to sleep in here.”
“That wouldn’t be awful. Your couch is comfy, and we have plenty of firewood.”
“You’ll never know who killed that woman in the parking garage.”
“It was her neighbor.”
“You haven’t even heard the boyfriend’s interrogation yet.”
“He’s an asshole, but he didn’t do it. They never show the real killer this early. There’s too much time left. And the coworker didn’t do it. He was in love with her, probably would’ve eventually been the reason she broke up with the boyfriend, but he would’ve never killed her. I’m telling you, it’s the new neighbor. He doesn’t blink. Definitely a psychopath.”
“You may have missed your calling.”
