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Charlie looks up at me with sleepy eyes.
“You ready?” I ask him.
He doesn’t respond.
I take it as a yes.
When she starts to string her first set of lights onto her perfect shrubs, I press the ‘on’ switch.
My entire yard lights up, the hidden LED strands glowing in multi-colored glory.
She turns around slowly, her mouth open as she gawks at my display. I’ve been working on it whenever she isn’t home. I work from my office here, so it’s easy to see when she leaves. I stole each moment and dashed outside to string lights, carefully hiding them as best I could in the greenery along the front of my house.
There’s plenty more I’m going to add now that the jig is up, but I wanted to strike this first opening salvo.
It works perfectly, because she scowls for a long time, and I can feel her gaze searching the windows for me. I smile and keep petting Charlie as she fumes and puts her hands on her luscious hips.
She’s worked up.
Good.
That’s just how I want her, and I’ve wanted her for quite a long time.
2
ARIADNE
What. The. Hell? I stare at the house across the street, my blood boiling. Why does he do this to me? I hate him. Hate. Hate. Hate. Him. I want to stomp my feet in anger, but I have a feeling he’s watching. I close my mouth and try not to lose my cool. The chill of winter is the only thing that helps cool the anger I have building inside. Okay, it isn’t building up, it’s pouring out of me. I stomp toward his house but when I get to the road, I turn around and stomp back to mine. I do this three times before I finally make myself go back inside. I slam the door hard, wishing it was right in his handsome face.
“Crap.” I jerk it back open to see that my wreath has fallen off and now the beak of one of my cardinals is broken. I pick all of it up, yank it inside, and slam my door again.
This is a bunch of bullshit. He made me break my wreath. It took me hours to handcraft it. I take it over to my dining room table where I construct most of my decorations and lay it back down. I look it over to see what I can possibly do to fix it. I don’t have another bird to replace the broken one, and I’m out of Crazy Glue. I’ll have to go to the store in the morning. There is no way that I can order it online and wait for it to come. It’s imperative that I have it tomorrow. My house would look ridiculous without a wreath on the door, especially considering all my other decorations.
Even though I hate going to the store more than anything, I’ll make the sacrifice to show my neighbor that I’m not messing around. I’m not big on going out—this is a small town, and everyone knows everyone, and they try to talk to me—which is why I order everything weeks in advance. I should’ve ordered extra of everything. You can never have too many Christmas decorations. I know it’s not a competition with my jerk of a neighbor, but he’s always trying to one-up me. He’s been doing it since he moved in. I’m all for Christmas spirit, but I’ll be damned if he outdoes me. I’ll have to up my game.
I head back over to my window and peek out to see if maybe his display isn’t as pretty as I first thought. I’m disappointed when I realize it looks perfect. I mean, if you like that in-your-face gaudy look. That good-looking jerk has really outdone himself this year.
I smile, safe in the knowledge he’s shown his hand early. I’m in this for the long haul. There can only be one winner and that’s going to be me—not that it’s a competition, like I said. I walk over to my sofa and let myself fall back onto it. I have to give it to him; he took me by surprise but that won’t be happening again. I yank my stupid hat off and throw it on the floor, admitting defeat for the moment. I curse the day he moved in. I shake my fist in the air.
“Whatcha doing?”
I let out a small scream and almost jump off the sofa.
“You scared the crap out of me.” I sit up and throw my legs over the side of the sofa.
Laura plops down on the arm of the chair. She’s in her pajamas. I don’t know how she’s not freezing. Both of our homes sit in front of a long stretch of woods, which makes the winters bitterly cold.
She appeared out of nowhere one night claiming she lived down the street and needed a cup of sugar. For the next month, every night she would claim to need something. I’m guessing what she really needed was a friend, and I didn’t have any of those, so I wasn’t opposed to it. Somehow, she managed to get my phone number out of me and steal a key to my back door out of my junk drawer. That’s the story of our friendship. Laura is always lurking around somewhere. I still don’t know exactly where she lives, because I only venture out if I have to, and she’s always over at my house so there’s no need for me to go to hers.
“I’m out of bacon.” Of course she is. Why else would someone use the key they stole from you to enter your home? Because they were out of bacon. “And I wanted to see how it was going. You’ve been so busy.” She rolls her eyes.
We’ve become best friends over the past two years. A friendship that was forced upon me. She is relentless, I’ll give her that. She’s also loyal. I actually thought she might be imaginary, but my ever-depleting stores of perishable goods say otherwise.
“He broke my wreath.” I point toward the table. She hops up, going over to look.
“That fucker.” She clucks her tongue.
“We aren't killing him,” I say before she can.
