Page 12 of Emma and the Elf Next Door

Nooooooo!

“She’s watching me, the beautiful minx. She saw me open the door and turned the music back on.”

Wow. Her penchant for torture is greater than mine.

Defeated, I slump back into my car and close the door, imagining her chuckling with glee at having bested me.

What am I going to do now?

My phone vibrating in my pocket pulls me out of my thoughts and I swipe at my screen with a smile when I see who’s calling me.

“Hey, little bro. What’s up?”

My younger brother Gavin grins at me on my screen. “Happy almost Christmas Day.”

The sound of his voice, his accent thick through the phone, sends a wave of homesickness over me. I’ve been away from London, living the Australian dream for five years now, and I still get a pang in my chest whenever I hear from them. Especially during the festive season.

“Where are you?” he asks with a frown.

I sigh. “I’m sitting in my car.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed.I pause, not sure what to share with him. Things with my neighbour have escalated so rapidly, I’m not entirely sure how we got here. Or how we’re going to move past it.

“My neighbour has driven me to exile.”

He raises his eyebrow. “Your hot neighbour?”

How does he know she’s hot?

“How do you know what she looks like?”

Gavin chuckles. “I don’t. You’ve described her as young and blonde. And it’s Australia, so I put two and two together, and she’s Margot Robbie in my mind.”

He’s not too far off with that assumption, as stereotypical as it is. Yesterday, after I’d left the ‘cat parcel’ on her doorstep, I’d kept a close watch to see her reaction when she returned from her run and found it there. What I hadn’t expected was my reaction to seeing her. She was flushed from her exercise, her cheeks red and dewy. Her bright green eyes were glowing in the morning sunlight and her skin (so much skin on display) was bronzed and toned. She was, in a word…a goddess. And I’d just called her a sad cat lady.

I shake my head to clear these thoughts. So what if she looks like a movie star and has the sweetest lips I’ve ever seen? She’s still responsible for forcing me out of my house. And attempting to drive me crazy with that soundtrack.

That awful soundtrack.

“She’s fine looking,” I tell my brother, not wanting to encourage any further conversation on whether I’m living next to a Margot Robbie lookalike. “She’s also the devil.”

“Oh, this sounds good. Wait! Let me get Mum and Dad. I know they’ll want to hear it.”

I watch as he walks the phone around our parent’s house, glimpsing the snow falling outside through their large living room window. It’s still so weird to me, having Christmas in summer, even after all these years. To me, Christmas means wearing warm jumpers in front of a fire and drinking hot chocolate, not having a BBQ down at the beach.

Maybe next year I should go home for Christmas?

“Noah?” my mum yells as her face fills the screen. She’s holding the phone so close, I can just see her eyeball and the top of her nose.

My parents are not old, by any definition, but give my mum a smartphone and she instantly turns into a senior citizen with no clue how to navigate technology.

“Mum, move the phone back and don’t yell. I can hear you fine.” It’s like she thinks because I’m on the other side of the world, she has to speak louder.

“Son,” my dad takes over, holding the phone out so I can see them all sitting smooshed together. It’s adorable. “What’s going on?”

I sigh again, open my car door, hear the music and close it again. She’s really not giving up.

---