45. Sarah
Sarah
Iwas not watching the window across from mine or waiting for George to call out, as he had last night. The late-evening breeze rustled my curtains and eased the stifling heat as I turned pages. I scanned the familiar words. Blurry friends. My chin sagged toward my chest.
“Psst.” George’s window remained dark, but the shadows shifted. I brushed my curtain aside to rest my arm on the sill. His smooth voice drifted across to me. “And the silken sad uncertain… rustling of each purple curtain.” My skin prickled as he leaned out of the shadows.
“Familiar,” I said. “Can’t quite place it. Give me another line.”
George’s low chuckle echoed and folded in on itself between our houses. “Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before…”
“Ah, yes. Poe. Very clever. And a little creepy.”
“Never thought you’d call me clever, Goldie.”
“It’s all relative. I recently told Henry he shared a brain with his dimwit beagle, and he took it as a compliment.”
“He didn’t.” George shook his head.
“No lie.”
“So the oaf is not wowing you?”
“Wowing?”
“Buddy says a fellow needs to wow a lady for a bit before he can consider proposing.”
“No wowing.”
“Good.” His eyes were green, but in the dark they looked black and bottomless.
Good?
“Viola’s home,” he said with an amused huff. “I’m pretty sure she thought Jacob was about to propose at dinner tonight. He didn’t… but it was entertaining. Not sharing-a-mind-with-a-dog entertaining, but I think you would’ve enjoyed it.”
Oh, Viola. “I bet she was about to jump out of her skin.”
“He thought she was having a fit of the sneezes.”
Laughter filled the space between our rooms.
“Night, George.”
“Night.”