Page 11 of Heavy Petting

I grabbed her arm, and even through the layers of her clothing it was like touching a live wire. I immediately released her. Mabel frowned slightly as she looked down her arm, letting me know that she’d felt it too.

“I’ll walk you home,” I said.

“No need. Starlight Bay is really safe. I feel way safer here than I did back in Chicago.” She lifted the shoulder that held the dog carrier bag. “Plus I’ve got my ferocious guard dog here.”

“I insist,” I said.

There was no way I was leaving her on the sidewalk to walk home in the dark. I didn’t care if she did it all the time. My mother had taught me to be a gentleman. She passed away several years ago, but I had no doubt she’d find her way back from the afterlife to kick my ass for leaving a woman walking alone in the dark.

Mabel looked like she might argue, but instead she shrugged. “Fine. I’m about a mile away.”

I fell into step beside her, leaving the business area downtown and heading through the residential neighborhoods on our way towards Starlight Bay. We were both quiet as we walked, lost in our thoughts, but it was a companionable silence.

We headed up a little hill to a row of houses that looked like they’d seen better days. There really were no ‘bad’ neighborhoods here in Starlight Bay but some were definitely nicer than others.

Mabel lived on the corner of her street. Her small house was at least two levels, with a postage-stamped sized yard. A light shone in one of the windows on the street side with the words “Tarot Reading”.

“Tarot Reading?” I asked.

Mabel looked between the window and me. She seemed uncomfortable.

“I have a business doing tarot card readings,” she said quickly. “I mean, I just started the business, so I haven’t done a lot of readings for money yet, or any really, but I’ve done readings as a hobby forever, ever since I was a little girl. The readings are sometimes eerily accurate and people really like hearing what the cards say, they totally get into it. Unless of course you’re my mother or my ex-husband, both of whom think it’s nonsense, not that they’ve ever tried it to know.”

I was starting to realize that Mabel had a tendency to word vomit whenever she felt uncomfortable or embarrassed.

“I thought you were a writer,” I said, not wanting to touch any of the other things she’d said.

She looked at me in surprise. We hadn’t talked about her career at dinner, but that’s what she’d put on her intake forms at the Vet clinic.

“Writing is one of my jobs,” she said breezily. “I have several different enterprises.”

“What do you do besides writing and reading tarot cards?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, besides my freelance technical writing, I’m a self-published author of fantasy books, and sometimes I take virtual assistant gigs.”

“Virtual assistant?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“Helping other authors or small businesses doing remote work on things like newsletters, websites, marketing, that kind of thing.”

“Wow, sounds like you’re really busy,” I said.

“It pays the bills,” she said. “In fact, I’m semi-retired.”

I wasn’t sure how someone could have four different businesses and be semi-retired. I only had one and it was killing me.

We stood there for a long, awkward moment while I talked myself out of kissing her. I was dying to, of course. Spending time with her had only confirmed that I was feeling a strong emotion towards her, something that felt like love.

But that was ridiculous. I’d never been in love before, but I was fifty years old, much too old to be feeling whatever this was. A crush maybe. Or maybe I was coming down with something, something with a fever, because there was no way I was falling for a woman like Mabel. We couldn’t be more different.

Somehow that didn’t matter.

“Well, good night,” I said, awkwardly breaking the silence.

Mabel gave me a long, considering look before turning around and heading into her house, her curvy hips swaying with every step, Esmerelda walking alongside her.

“Good night.”

I was in a funk the next few days. I couldn’t get Mabel out of my mind. I kept replaying our dinner and our walk to her house over and over in my mind, analyzing every sentence like some kind of lovesick teenager.