Page 10 of The Woman By the Lake

You ran on public trails.

You didn’t run through people’s yards.

When no one lived there, okay (sort of).

But I lived there now, so…not okay (definitely).

Therefore, I just stared at him.

He didn’t hide his hilarity (though it wasn’t vocal) when he said, “Nice to meet you Solitary Coffee Lady.”

I did nothing but raise my brows.

His hilarity became audible with his chuckle, which was as rough and attractive as the rest of him.

He then turned, ran through my yard, and disappeared in the pines.

Ugh.

Whatever.

I sipped my coffee.

Stared at the lake.

Put that conversation behind me.

And felt the crushing weight of a year in the pines with nothing real to do, except the impossible, settle on top of me.

The sun was shining, glinting off the peaceful waters of a lake that was a good twenty yards away.

And still, I felt like I was drowning.

THREE

My Pocket

Nadia

I turned to my back in bed, stretched my body ramrod straight, and snapped to the dark ceiling, “Oh my God. I’m going to kill him!”

I’d heard the party spark up at a little after nine.

This was a surprise because it was a weeknight, and according to me, who hit the sheets anywhere between nine and eleven every night (and okay, that tended to lean toward the nine o’clock hour), it was too late to start up a party.

Sadly, the music that filtered through the trees between his place and mine only got louder and moved from seventies rock (which I could tolerate) to metal (which I could not), with a penchant toward Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Tool and Slipknot (yes, I knew the bands, because Trevor was a metalhead).

With this came loud voices, including intermittent shouting, laughter, and even loud conversations that carried across the water to my lovely abode.

They sounded like they were having fun, raucous fun that included people jumping into the water and frolicking there for a goodly period of time (which was insane, I’d stuck my toe in, and it was freezing).

Fortunately, that stopped, but the rest of it carried on.

And on.

And on.

I couldn’t sleep with noise outside white noise (say, a fan or traffic), unless it was the drone of a narrator telling a sleep story, which I had also tried in order to get some sleep, but the noise even filtered through that.

---