“Perry, what are you doing lying on the lawn? I've never seen you here?” My sexy neighbour Nadine said with a smile that I'd never seen before, like she was into me, which couldn't be the case because in all the years that we had been neighbours, we'd never tried to do anything about getting close even though we lived as close together as we did. But geographic closeness didn't make us close in any other way. Still, there she was, looking down at me with a smile.
“Nadine!” I said, looking up at her and returning her smile in equal measure before jumping to my feet because it seemed like I should give up the space that I was taking because I'd seen her lying down on the grass many times over the years. On the same blanket that she was carrying now. I stumbled as the heat hit me like a wave and I suddenly wished that I hadn't done that.
She reached out to steady me and I felt the joy of her touch but had the good sense to not react like it was the first time that I had been touched in three years because that would be awkward as she wasn't trying to make a move on me or anything. “Are you okay Perry?” She said, sounding worried that something was wrong with me.
I nodded and stood up straight to show her that this was the case. “I am, I just shouldn't have jumped to my feet on a hot May day like I did without my cooling phone.”
“You don't have your cooling phone with you Perry? Then why are you outdoors? No one does that unless theirs is broken. Oh no, is it broken?” She asked as she looked at me with care and concern.
“No, I just needed to get outside and my phone wasn't charged so I had to lie down in the grass to find some cool.” I said with a wry smile, hoping that she wouldn't press me too much about the why of this.
“Cool. But you know you didn't have to get up like you did right? There's plenty of room on the lawn for both of us.” She said as her gaze looked past me, four feet away, as clear a statement that she wanted to be undisturbed as if she had said the words themselves.