I spend the next hour pacing my living room, alternating between eating his cookies and plotting his demise. Every idea I have seems too pedestrian, too basic, too tame. I need it to be something epic. Something that will drive him crazy.
I know one thing that drives him crazy.
My eyes fall on the Netflix home screen on pause on my wide flatscreen TV and a grin grows on my lips. I know for a fact hearingLove Actuallythrough our shared wall is taking him to the brink of his sanity, so I just need to go with that. Lean into it. Crank it up to the next level.
“It’s simple and perfect,” I mutter deviously.
I plug my phone into the Bluetooth speaker I have placed on my kitchen counter and, so excited I do a little hoppity-hop, I open Spotify.
“There it is.”
Within two taps, I have it cued and ready to go. Seventeen songs, one hour and four minutes of listening pleasure. On repeat. At maximum volume.
“The trouble with love is…” I sing along with Kelly Clarkson. My out-of-tune falsetto is also at full volume and I angle the speaker towards the wall, picturing him standing on the other side, glaring a hole through it. He’ll be thinking I’ve started the movie again and he’ll have to suffer through it for the next two to three hours.
Oh, my pesky neighbour, you have no idea.
After dancing through the full soundtrack, start to finish, I listen to it start up again, only then getting the satisfaction of hearing him groan.
“No, no, no, no, no!”
I giggle as he rants, throwing out words like ‘lunatic’ and ‘irrational’ and ‘ridiculous’. When I hear his front door slam, I rush to the window. With a thrill, I watch him pace up and down, his muscular hands gripping his hair in frustration, showing off some impressive biceps in the process.
“Hmm, jerky neighbour is hot,” I mutter, keeping my eyes glued to him and also staying out of sight.
With one eye on his angry, vibrating body, I lean over and turn the volume up a bit more, watching as he stops pacing to glare at my house.
“Wow.”
The joke is on me now, I think, as I stare at his face from the shadows of my living room. His gorgeous, should-be-on-a-billboard face. The man is delicious. Like his cookies. Even furious-looking with red cheeks and blazing eyes, he’s a work of art.
“This will not do,” I lecture myself, unable to tear my gaze away from him. He’s tall, so tall, with long legs ensconced in soft-looking blue denim jeans and a white t-shirt. His hair ispulled up and away from his face in a half-ponytail, and the stubble on his jaw makes my hands itch to touch it.
“Yikes!” I force myself to turn away from his magnificent beauty, not willing to let my hormonal response dampen this need to destroy him.
And destroy him, I will. If he looks angry now, wait until he’s had to listen to this soundtrack on repeat for the next twelve hours. I have noise-cancelling headphones and a stubborn streak a mile wide. The man may be hunky, but he’ll also be regretting ever taunting me.
I’m a self-confessed crazy single lady. There was never a need to bring a cat into it.
CHAPTER 6
Noah
There is silence when I pull my car into the driveway. I roll down my window to double check I haven’t gone deaf in the time since I ran out of my house.
Hmm, it sounds like she’s turned that awful music off and is letting the ears of everyone nearby recover. That’s good. Though, I still think she may actually be evil.
Earlier today, when I’d first heard the music through the wall (the wall of doom, as I now call it. Worse than any wall of punishment inGame of Thrones, that’s for sure), I’d laughed a little. Secretly I was relieved that she hadn’t taken offence to my mild insinuation that she’s turning into a cat lady, fearing that she may have seen my ‘gifts’ and taken to egging my house. So, when all she did to retaliate was play a little music, a little louder than usual, I’d shrugged, impressed with her resilience but not overly concerned.
Until it stopped, only to start back up again. That’s when I’d realised what her game was, her so exquisitely simple game. She was planning to play the same songs, at that same ear-bleedingly loud volume, until I went insane.
At first, I tried to wait her out. If I’m listening to it, I figured, then so is she, and even the most die-hardLove Actuallyfan would have to get tired of those trite songs, eventually, right? I thought she’d play the soundtrack through twice, three times at the most, before cracking herself and turning it off. But it did not play out that way, and by the fourth time “Jump (For My Love)” came on, I was out of there.
Now, it’s two days before Christmas, so the shops are filled with last-minute present buyers, and the cafes and restaurants are jam-packed with holiday revellers. In my current foul mood, I wanted none of that. So, too annoyed to be around people, I headed for my favourite surf beach and got lost in the waves for the afternoon. But it couldn’t last forever. My salt-covered skin and my food-empty body begged me to head home, and so here I am. Sitting in my car, relieved to hear my cooky neighbour has come to her senses and turned that rubbish off.
“Thank goodness.”
I wearily open my car door and am hit smack in the ears with “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
