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 in Game 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-hard Love Actually fan 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.”
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.
“I may have accidentally started a tiny war with my neighbour.”
They all look at each other in wonder and I get their confusion. I’m the most laid-back person they know, so this must be shocking to them.
“What happened?” Mum asks in a normal volume. She’s learning.
“It started about a week ago…” I go into the details, telling them all about the repeated movie watching, the quiet sobbing, the ear plugs, the cat lady paraphernalia, all leading to where I’m at right now. In my car, escaping the incessant sounds of The Beach Boys singing “God Only Knows.” It’s sad how intimately I now know each one of these songs.
“That is quite the situation,” my dad pipes up when I’m done, ever the king of the understatement.
“I know.” The more I think about it, the gloomier I feel.
Mum clears her throat. “You haven’t been very nice to the poor girl. She’s clearly going through a hard time.”
My stomach twists into more knots at the admonishment in her tone. She raised me to be a better man than this.
“But what about the ear plugs? And the incessant replaying of this soundtrack?” I try to defend myself. “I can’t even go into my house without my ears bleeding.”
They laugh at my pain and I consider hanging up.
“Why don’t you try to help her get over her heartbreak?” Gavin suggests.
“How?”
He waggles his eyebrows and my mum pinches him.
“I just mean by offering her ways to get over the ex,” he clarifies, rubbing his arm like he’d been injured.
Hmm. Not a bad idea. “But how can I do that?”
They’re silent for a moment. “I know!” Mum beams at me. “In the spirit of watching movies, you can suggest ones to help her move on.”
“I don’t know, Mum. Last time I did that, she wasn’t happy.”
“But this time, you could buy her the movies, like a peace offering. Nice, happy movies to raise her spirits and make her feel good.”
Buy her movies? Huh?
“How can he buy her movies?” My brother asks the obvious question.
Mum tsks while Dad laughs. “You kids these days. Buy her DVDs.”
DVDs? What are we? In the 1990s?
“Mum, there’s no way she’ll have a DVD player.”
“You don’t know that,” she argues. I guess I get my stubbornness from her. “And either way, it will be a gesture. You can walk back the ‘sad, cat lady’ sentiment—which we’ll be having words about another day—and show her you can be nice.”
I shrink back from the disappointment on her face. The cat lady stuff was not my finest moment. “OK, say I decide to do this. What sort of DVDs should I get for her?”
They all sigh together. “Just google ‘movies to get over a breakup’ or something,” Gavin says, clearly over this entire conversation. “And order a bunch. Bake some more cookies to go with it and your war is done.”
They make it sound so simple; I decide to take their advice. Anything to end the madness and the sounds of Love Actually through my wall.
“OK, thanks guys. I’m going to do it.”
They cheer and wish me good luck, and once we’ve hung up, I finally make the trip up my driveway, the music getting louder with every step. Along with my growing annoyance. When I get to my front door, I find another bottle of wine, along with a Love Actually Soundtrack CD (where on Earth did she find this relic?) and a note.
Dear Christmas Elf,
I saw this CD and thought of you.
Now you can enjoy the music of Love Actually every day!
From the Grinch next door.
P.S. The cookies really are delicious!
“She can’t be serious,” I mutter through a grimace. I crumple her note in one hand and, using the other, I pour a sizeable glass of wine; another wonderful selection by her. “She’s got terrible taste in movies and music, but she knows her wine.”
As I sip my drink, the music through the wall goes up another notch. I didn’t think that was possible. Smothering a groan—I don’t want to give her the satisfaction—I type “movies to help the broken-hearted” into my google search, following my Mum’s advice.
“Aha.” A wicked smile grows on my face as I read through the search results. This isn’t exactly what my mum was thinking when she suggested I do this, and reading through my Amazon order, I’m guessing this won’t broker a peace deal as I’d initially wanted. But the pounding music mixed with my throbbing head is robbing me of my former need to be a nice guy.
I press check-out for my wonderful same-day delivery and sit back with a smile. My next move is going to be subtle, almost guerilla-like warfare, but once it’s done, I’m sure the Grinch next door will feel the burn.
And our war of wills is bound to rage on.