“Courtney,” she said. “Terrible meeting you.”
I shied away from her hand. Why we, as a society, still participated in such an archaic tradition was beyond me. Studies had shown it was more sanitary to greet each other with a kiss than—
Great. Now I was looking at her mouth. She was going to get the wrong idea.
The only solution was to continue acting like an egotistical douche nozzle. I was familiar with egotistical douche nozzles from my years of being bullied on playgrounds. All I had to do was channel some of that energy.
Unsolicited advice should do the trick. Hooding my eyes in a look of arrogance, I said, in a patronizing sort of way, “Those things will kill you, you know.” I tilted my chin in her direction.
“Candy?” Courtney looked at me like I was a toddler and not a Very Intimidating Man.
“Vending machines,” I said, in a dark tone that I hoped conveyed I was the type of good-for-nothing rogue who carried danger with him wherever he went. I was also familiar with good-for-nothing rogues, thanks to having found my grandmother’s secret stash of explicit historical romance novels when I was thirteen.
Courtney regarded me with the detached manner of someone examining sidewalk gum—mild distaste, but mostly indifference.
“Anyway, you’d best stay away from me,” I said, practically swooping a black cape in front of my face as I began slinking backward into the—well, not shadows exactly, since the store was brightly lit with fluorescents, but metaphorical shadows. “I’m trouble. A maker of trouble, if you would.”
“A troublemaker?” she supplied.
“And a rake,” I said, because I’d always wanted to be a rake.
“The rakes are over there.” She pointed across the garden section.
I drew up short, dropping my mysterious act. “No,I’mthe rake. A rake is like… a bad boy.”
“I’ve never heard of a bad boy who’s scared of vending machines.”
“I am a bad boy. The baddest of boys.”
“Please, I invite you to call yourself a boy again.”
Flustered, I raised my voice. “Roughly thirteen people a year die from vending machines, making them statistically more dangerous than spiders, sharks, and even mountain lions, which is why I’m a bad man that you should definitely avoid.”
“You’re a bad man because you’ve warned me about the dangers of vending machines?”
This was going poorly. She was a tough nut to crack. I’d been distant and aloof. I’d hinted at danger. I’d even insulted her mother. What was left?
I lifted my chin at a regal angle and gave her a parting, disdainful look, and then I whisked away scornfully.
Which is to say: I ran away like a total baby.But babies can’t run, one might say. And one would be correct. I ran exactly like a baby who wasn’t very good at running.
After returning home, I sat in my living room, typing away on my laptop. Working from home as an accountant was as delightfully boring as it sounded. Boring equaled safe. Boring also meant my mind was free to think about things it shouldn’t. Like fatality statistics. Or what kind of illness I might have that I just didn’t know about yet. Or how I’d stumbled over my own shoelaces running away earlier. Or how my new neighbor had been desecrating a KitKat like she was laughing in the face of the universe.
She had no right to sit there chomping away at a candy bar like she was happy with a life in retail. She had no right to make me feel like, if I got to know her better, maybe I could be happy with my miserable existence, too, by association. That was unacceptable. Because if I was happy with my miserable existence, it left room for my existence to get more miserable.
Happiness was just the calm before the storm. It made you think that maybe the world wasn’t so bad, right before it ripped the rug out from under you. Like when you let yourself get excited about a new relationship, right before you wound up getting dumped out of nowhere and accused of “emotional unavailability.” Again.
Or it was like when you were a kid, and your mom gave you ice cream for breakfast and took you to your grandparents’ house. Life couldn’t get any better, especially since there were a bunch of slugs on your grandparents’ driveway, and nothing made little boys happier than looking at slugs. Everything was great. Until your grandparents brought you out of your ice-cream-and-slug-inducedtrance to tell you your mother had left you, and she wasn’t coming back.
But those were hypothetical examples and definitely not real events.
The point was happiness made me sadder than being sad, so I’d decided to just be sad. I couldn’t be friendly to Courtney because then she might get the wrong idea. She’d become one of those neighbors who’d say things likeGood morningandNice weather we’re having lately, isn’t it?Those types of interactions ventured too close to pleasant for my liking. Luckily, going full theater kid on her had probably weirded her out enough that she’d want nothing more to do with me.
I was pretty sure I’d seen the last of her.
Someone knocked on my front door.
Assuming it was the mail carrier or something, I snapped my laptop closed, went to the foyer, and looked through the peephole. Catching a glimpse of blue hair, I cursed under my breath.
