I put my hands together and looked up to the sky. She threw back her head and laughed.
I smiled at the sound. She looked more carefree tonight, as if she’d left all her burdens back home and just brought herself. It was a pleasure seeing her this happy. I wanted her to be like this every damn day.
“Do you know your neighbors who live across from you?” she asked suddenly.
I chuckled. She was definitely talking about Dingle Dick. “I was just thinking back to the first time I saw you.”
“You were?” She sounded happy about that. “I first saw you on campus. In the lecture hall.”
“The first time I saw you was in front of my house. You were on a mission to cut off my neighbor’s balls. The one you named Dingle Dick.”
“Dingle Dick?” she laughed. “How did you even know? He did mention that…”
I frowned. “He mentioned what?”
She waved her hand. “Tell me about this encounter. I don’t remember seeing you.”
“Ouch,” I said. “You don’t remember?”
It was a dead end where she was heading, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted her to discover the maze on her own.
I pressed the remote in my pocket and the lights I’d installed in the maze came on.
“Pretty lights.” She looked at the blue lights on the ground, then the fairy lights I’d recently installed in the trees, th
inking of her. I wondered if, during the time I was installing the lights, after I left her, I’d always known that I’d bring her here eventually.
Yes, I realized, I did.
She turned around at the dead end, walked to her left, and kept going. If she kept going straight, she’d hit a secret passage. I looked at her long hair swaying behind her back as she walked ahead of me. The sway of her hips tempting me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t see you. I have this thing…” She looked over her shoulder at me and caught me checking out her ass. She rolled her eyes.
I grinned.
“Sometimes I block out everything around me except for my current mission in life, so that’s probably why I didn’t see you at the time.”
“I know. I noticed.”
“Really?”
I nodded. She stepped back so she could walk beside me.
“I went back to…look for you after you left…” she said quietly.
My eyes lifted to hers. She went to my house to look for me?
“Big Tony was there.”
“Big Tony?” I repeated.
She chuckled. “Your neighbor.”
“Ah.”
“He said you told him that I would harass everyone in his life if he didn’t pay his bill.”
“I had to improvise. He’s a piece of shit for not paying his bill.”