I can hear her tapping away at something—most likely her laptop. Her phone is probably wedged under her chin while she works.
“He climbed into the house through my kitchen window, came to my office, and scared the ever-loving piss out of me,” I ramble on in one long, breathless sentence.
“He what? Wait.What?”
“You heard me correctly, Molls. Apparently, it took me too long to come to the door, so he let himself in like a common criminal.”
“Stop it right now.”
“Are you laughing?”
“No, I’m…” She laughs. “I’m not laughing. You’re laughing.”
“Molly Summervale, this is not funny!”
“I’m sorry, but I’m trying to picture it.”
“You know damn well if you were in your office and some random dude you’ve never met opened your door while you were concentrating, you’d have a heart attack.”
“This is true,” she allows. “Still, he was expected to be there.”
“Oh, so that makes it okay? Gotcha.”
“Don’t be mad. I’m not defending him. I just know how he is. Sort of. I’ve only met him once, and it was a Zoom call.”
“He’s worse than all the little boys in my class combined.”
“Oh shit—that bad?”
“Worse.”
“What’s he doing now?” She wants to know, giving me her full attention, no doubt standing next to those big panoramic windows of her penthouse apartment in the sky.
“Who knows? I didn’t have a meal prepared and didn’t go grocery shopping to stock my fridge with his dietary needs.” I roll my eyes at that. “So he left.”
“Does he have a car?”
“No. He’s on foot. Like Bigfoot, stalking around the neighborhood.” I think. Or maybe he’s just in the backyard hiding.
“There’s no way he’s walking around the neighborhood. He’s there to hide, remember?”
True.
“He’s probably in the tree house out back.”
“Tree house out back? What are you talking about?”
“Behind the garage is a tree house. Didn’t you know that?”
“Uh, no.”
“If he hasn’t come back, I’d check there. I doubt you’d find him wandering the streets, not without a disguise.”
“I can see what you mean. He sticks out like a sore thumb around here in his cowboy boots.”
Molly laughs. “Cowboy boots?”
“Oh yeah—cowboy boots. Real nice ones, too.” I giggle. “He looks like a bona fide country boy.” More like a country singer than a football player—or like he just walked off a ranch in Montana.