Page 98 of The Cul-de-Sac War

“I can’t think of anything,” she said at last, then reached for her water glass. As she picked it up she meant to deflect with some fascinating conversation point, but her eyes fell on a man at a table on the other side of the room, raking a hand through hair that looked about a month overdue for a trim.

Like Chip’s. She’d never quite noticed before she stood beside him on her porch that evening. He had smelled of sawdust and coffee grounds when he shocked her to the core and put his arm around her, pulling her deep into his side. Cocooning her from the outside world for a few brief, safe moments.

She had processed and reprocessed that gesture well past midnight.

“Is there . . .” Theo paused significantly. “Somewhere else you need to go?”

Bree shook her head, picking up her soup spoon.

Of course not. She was here. Dipping her utensil into something—she wasn’t sure quite what—made of coconut milk and cumin.

“Perhaps someone else you’d like to be meeting tonight?” Theo pressed.

“No.” Bree dropped her spoon in the bowl. “Of course not,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “I can’t think of anything nicer to do tonight than this.”

That was true. Theo was one of the most pleasant men she knew.

Theo’s brow dropped, his onyx eyes saying silently, Then what aren’t you telling me?

She pressed her lips together, but her resolve withered under his patient stare.

“It’s just . . .” Bree reached for a bread roll. “Just . . . I may have been involved in an adolescent war on my neighbor and crossed a line.”

There. She’d said it. She was a child.

“You . . . are in a war. With your neighbor,” Theo repeated, a smile beginning to rise. He was looking at her like the parent of a kindergartener listening to his child’s complaints about the rainbow erasers being sold out at the book fair.

“You don’t understand,” Bree said. “I’m not talking mature, adult-level, hate-your-neighbor stunts. I’m talking spending hours scouring the internet to subscribe him to every bizarre magazine on the planet. I’m talking about running up an eBay bid for 250 live eastern subterranean termites to place on his property.”

“You have . . . an eBay bid running for 250 subterranean termites?”

Bree shrugged defensively. “That one was just a backup plan.”

He settled back in his chair for a moment. Pensive.

“Is it that single man who lives perpendicular to you? The one with the leering expression?”

Bree’s forehead creased. She didn’t even know the man perpendicular to her. “No.”

“The woman with the toddler?”

Bree shook her head. Picked up her roll. Started shredding a piece here, there.

“Is this the elderly neighbor I met the other day who lives across from you? The one you have game night with?”

“Mrs. Lewis?” Bree furrowed her brow. “No. She’s a saint.”

“Pity.”

There was silence for a moment while Theo sat back in serious contemplation. She continued to shred her roll until it was a pile of tiny bits on her napkin.

Theo leaned forward, his voice tentative. “Is it the new man we met on the Creeper Trail the other evening?”

Bree felt her chest pinch. Nodded.

“The tall one?”

“He’s got a few inches on me.”