Dating During Lockdown - Love Under Lockdown

“You first,” I teased.

He was ready with it before I finished speaking. Armed with his number, I called his phone from mine.

“Now you have mine,” I said into my speaker when he answered, trying to keep the tremble of excitement out of my voice.

As a single mom who was usually cooped up with Polly, this really was the most interesting thing that had happened to me in ages.

Leif remounted his bike and I took the handles of the stroller and we went our separate ways. Catching Leif stealing a glance at my ass, outlined clearly in my yoga pants, as I turned to watch him ride away, I blushed with a wild sort of pride.

It had been so long since a man had taken an interest in me. Physically or otherwise. I really didn’t know what to make of it. I took Polly home, wondering if he was genuinely going to call but not daring to hope he actually might.

The whole thing was a bit like something from a dream. It was possible I had imagined him entirely.

The house was empty when we got back and I wasn’t surprised. I got Polly into the bath and then put her down for a nap. Meegan would probably be out late again. Her hours at the hospital had gotten really erratic with the overflow.

She had never been Miss Congeniality, but her temper had gotten even worse in the last couple of months. I put it mostly down to sleep deprivation and stress. It would be difficult to maintain a cheery disposition when there was a forty percent chance someone was going to die on your shift.

She had also become a real hard ass about cleanliness. Meegan had always been a neat freak before but lately the dial had been turned to eleven. When she got home, she would strip down to nothing in the garage, leaving her clothes by the door, and then scrub in a scalding hot shower for at least twenty minutes.

She had managed to acquire fifteen pairs of scrubs so she would only have to do laundry once a week, which she would do once again stark naked and then repeat again, taking showers both before and after. It seemed crazy but I also really appreciated her trying to protect me and Polly like that.

Polly was still asleep when I got out of the shower. I kissed her on the forehead and went into the kitchen to get a glass of wine.

There was a time when I would have done that naked, it being just us girls, but I put on my robe, not wanting to even be near any windows unless I was covered. Popping the bottle of Australian Merlot from the door of the fancy chrome fridge, I poured out an amount Meegan would never miss. I was careful to replace the bottle just so.

In the privacy of my room, I opened the robe, loving the feeling of the air against my skin. Getting sufficiently calm with the help of the wine, I logged onto my laptop to do some background research.

I only had his first name, but how many Leifs could there possibly be in Brooklyn?

Fifteen. There were fifteen Leifs in Brooklyn, not all of whom had pictures I could find. All the ones that I did fine were not the one I was looking for. Unless he looked very different indeed when he was clean-shaven.

I let out a sigh, both of disappointment and curiosity. I was really intrigued now, and also kind of liked the mystery.

I couldn’t imagine that there would be anything bad in his past. Like he was a murderer on the run or something like that. Surely, I would have sensed it. I had more than enough experience with bad guys to know the type when I saw it. Which only begged the question of who Leif would turn out to be. It was enough to drive me crazy.

Chapter Two

Leif

I had never believed in love at first sight. It was a nice idea in stories but completely unworkable in real life.

If the brain chemicals that caused the love reaction are so quickly or easily employed, what is there to stop someone from falling madly in love with a different person every other day?

At least, that was what I used to think, anyway. How radically things can change within an instant.

The bike certainly got some odd looks. Not as many as it would have in Los Angeles or another car-based city, but enough to make it uncomfortable.

Most of the car-less within the Five Boroughs, of whom there were many, preferred the city’s famous public transit system. But that system was something less of an option now that everyone had to stay at least six feet apart by government mandate.

There was also the environment to consider. While a modernist in many ways, there were still some areas in which I could be considered a traditionalist. To the point of naked anachronism, even. Fact was, I was descended, however distantly as it might have been, from a people who lived not so much off the land as with it, building shelters literally out of stones and earth. I had a vested interest in, and familial duty of, keeping things ecological.