Chapter 10
N ora
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been dreading facing Jericho again. And it’s not my police investigation fiasco that’s bothering me, it’s what came after. The moment of quiet peace on my front porch. The first time we actually spoke like humans without barking at each other.
My fear of facing him becomes unwarranted because I don’t see him for a few days.
In fact, other than his truck, I don’t see any signs of him.
Has this town already spooked him so much with our good intentions?
We can do that to people. The poor guy who was renting the house before him didn’t last long either.
I think our family was the only one talking to him while everyone else deemed him ‘dangerous,’ but we knew he was a sweetheart deep down.
Very, very deep. Which might be the reason only we got close with him—Grandma has this quality of breaking people’s walls and making them feel like they’ve finally found home.
I hear Jericho’s truck before I actually see him.
There’re only two houses on this side of the street, and I’m not expecting any guests.
Cheryl called earlier and said that Granny is staying with her again, which is unusual.
She prefers to stay here, far from the town’s noise, except for bingo nights.
I wonder if she’s avoiding sleeping in her own house because of the rooster—maybe he’s bothering her too.
I really don’t like staying alone in this big, empty house.
It’s not like Granny could save me if shit hits the fan or some big burglary happens around here, but her presence always makes me feel like Superman.
Like I can beat up anyone who dares come at her.
I guess we’ve switched roles because she’s the one who’s always protected me, and now it’s my turn.
It has been for a long time if I’m honest.
When Granny stays with Cheryl, I try to stay late at the diner and then drag my feet around town, looking for errands so I don’t have to spend much time alone at home.
Because staying here alone means reliving the same nightmare I’ve been having since I was a kid.
It seems to attack me the most when no one is around.
Nightmares are the reason I started sleeping naked. They would cause awful night sweats where I’d be drenched in the morning and shivering from cold. So I began ditching all clothes and developed a habit of having an extra blanket by my bed.
Being alone in the house or facing Jericho after our interaction are two equally terrifying things, but the latter seems more mortifying, so the decision is not that difficult. Sighing, I rise to my feet and walk back to my front door, hoping to disappear behind it before he sees me.
I wake up to the same sound that has been haunting me for the past few months.
The damn rooster—the uncatchable Phantom of the Opera.
I can’t even be sure he’s real, but at least one other person can attest to his existence. Grandma swears she saw him in the backyard in the wee hours of dawn, but I’m unsure if both of us are tripping with the way he seems to phase in and out of reality. Might as well be.
I pull the curtain on the window to the side, prepared to be disappointed. But not this time. The rooster is there. Sitting right on the top of the wooden fence separating the neighbor’s and my yards. How did he get there? It’s pretty high for a flightless bird.
I’m ready to run outside and catch the morning monster when I remember that I am naked. But we’re not alone anymore on this part of the street, so I pull on a ratty, gray T-shirt that covers my bum and run to the back door, grabbing a hat on the way and tall, warm boots.
Carefully opening it and trying not to scare the evil creature off, I peek outside. He’s there. The rooster. The thing turns his head with his beady eye toward me and lets out a loud cock-a-doodle-doo. Showing the bird my middle finger might seem immature, but it certainly makes me feel better.
Grabbing a pitchfork on the way, I silently pad toward the fence where I’m planning to make myself invisible by merging with the wood and then moving toward the rooster. What I’ll do when I get to him is unclear, but the plan is good enough.
Halfway to him, I hear a rustling sound behind the fence.
Peeking my eyes between the rails, I try to figure out where the sound is coming from.
But it’s dark, and my neighbor doesn’t have the lights on because the fixture on his backyard is broken.
I know it is because it was me who threw a mug at the rooster which collided with a different target—the half-hanging light on the back of his house.
Hopefully he’ll fix it soon because even though I love nature, the pitch-black darkness creeps me out. The low gray of dawn is all right, but if I had to come out an hour ago, I wouldn’t have been comfortable.
The rustling intensifies, moving toward me. The rooster becomes agitated and starts flapping his useless wings.
I move my head around, trying to find a better position to see the source of the noise.
And there, I find the storming figure of my neighbor.
Said figure is wearing unbuttoned jeans.
How do I know they’re unbuttoned? They’re about to slide down his narrow hips.
The happy trail looks very happy to be hiding behind the zipper.
And he has no shirt on. I mean, I don’t have pants on, but I ran out here on a whim, chasing the feathery demon.
I didn’t plan on staying here for a long time because it sure is cold outside.
If not for tall boots and the hat I put on before rushing out, I’d be freezing right now.
The rooster lets out another loud chorus, and I slow down, trying to be a silent ninja and catch him before he runs away. But my neighbor the brute clearly is not on board with my plan because his already loud stride turns into a run as he jumps at the fence, trying to catch the rooster.
Such a rookie mistake. He must think the bird is stupid and would just sit there waiting to be caught. I’ve been hunting him for a long time with no luck. Why does he think he can just sweep in and catch him on the first try?
Of course, the bird flaps his wings and jumps away. Into my backyard.
A loud cursing on the other side of the fence makes me snort. The cursing stops.
“Nora?”
“Obviously.” I wish he could see my eyeroll. “And you just spooked him.”
“Is that your rooster?” he asks accusingly.
“Gosh, no,” I reply, searching around where he escaped. “He’s wild, I think. I see you, asshole!” I cry out after the rooster .
“What did I do?”
“Not you. C’mere, you soup package!” With a loud threat, I take off.
“Nora, what’s it doing?” he hisses loudly, but I’m already away, chasing the bird around my backyard.
“I’ll get you and make you into a soup!” I threaten as I run after him. “I will win this time.”
“Nora,” Jericho keeps calling out.
“Come here, you little cock-a-doodling dickwad!” I’m out of breath because the bird is surprisingly fast for having such short legs.
“Nora!”
I keep on ignoring the call because I’m so close to catching the bird and saving the whole neighborhood from the early awakenings.
“Damn it, Nora.” This one sounded different, so I come to a halt.
Only to find Jericho leaping over the fence in one swift motion.
Da-a-amn . He’s so graceful and fast that I forget about the rooster for a moment.
A big mistake because the little creature hasn’t forgotten about me.
A sudden sharp pain on my naked knee makes me let out a loud curse and look down.
The rooster just pecked me! There’s a red spot where his beak touched my skin, and now the soup-on-legs is running away toward my peach trees.
“You little?—”
I take off after him, forgetting about the half-naked man running toward me.
“Come here! I’ll pull all your feathers out!
” I yell as I spring across my yard. My hair flies behind my back.
I feel like a fast, nimble lioness chasing its prey through the field.
The reality doesn’t match my expectations unfortunately because I stumble over a garden tool I left out a couple weeks ago and fall forward in a pile of limbs.
“Damn, Nora, are you okay?” Jericho’s voice comes from right behind me. “Are you hurt?” Closer this time, like he’s kneeling right next to me.
“Physically no,” I muffle into the grass without lifting my head up. “Emotionally though, I’m totally damaged.”
“Let me help you.”
Ignoring his helpful hand, I try to scoop myself up by all fours. It is at this moment a fresh Maine breeze rushes through the air, caressing my back. My naked back.
“Oh, shit,” Jericho exclaims. “You are—You know—Your?—”
I, unfortunately, know what he means because the breeze has lifted my shirt up, baring my ass, currently covered in goosebumps.
“You’ve seen it already,” I mutter, feeling the tips of my ears grow hot. I reach back and yank the shirt down to cover what little dignity I have left.
“Not this close,” he says, and his voice is strained in a way that makes my heart do something between a flutter and a stumble.
“I’m sure you’ve seen others this close,” I shoot back, a mix of self-consciousness and defiance that surprises even me.
“Not for a long time,” he rasps, almost too quiet to hear, but the words land like a punch to the guts. My head whips toward him, searching for some tell that he’s joking.
But he’s already reaching for me, grabbing my arms with careful hands and hoisting me to stand.
He looks totally unbothered, like it’s nothing to him at all, so his last words might as well be the fruits of my imagination.
He wouldn’t admit something so personal with such ease.
Not him. Not to me, his annoying new neighbor he barely knows.
I’m still gaping at him when my balance wavers, and I’m forced to cling to his forearms to steady myself. I wonder if he notices the way my legs suddenly quiver beneath me or the way his words left me breathless. Probably not. He’s like a damn rock, more stoic than the fence he leaped over.
The way his skin feels under my palms—taut, warm, alive—makes it hard to remember I was supposed to be the one springing into action. The rooster definitely notices my failure—he’s already cackling victoriously from the shelter of my peach trees.
My legs are starting to feel like jelly, shaking from the cold, maybe, or maybe from the proximity of his bare chest. Maine breeze or not, the temperature of my blood is dangerously close to boiling, and I know I need to create some distance.
I drop back into the grass with a graceless thud, pulling him down with me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I reply gruffly, sitting on the cold grass.
Jericho looks around with narrowed eyes as if he wants to duel the rooster. “Where did it go?”
“Who knows.” I rub my sore knee I banged up when I fell. “I’ve been trying to catch him for a long time, but he’s uncatchable.”
“Huh.” His assessing eyes dart around my yard. “We need to make a trap for him.”
“We?” I ask with a quirked brow.
“If we make a trap in only one yard, he’ll just move over to the other.”
“True. Let me know if you come up with something. I’ll think of something too.”
He sits on the nearly frozen ground next to me as we both stare in the darkness, knowing well enough the rooster is gone. And yet, we are both still here.
“Why are you always naked?” The sudden question takes me by surprise, and I swivel toward him with a grin, trying to maintain coolness despite the jab .
“I’m not,” I shoot back with a laugh. “I’m wearing a T-shirt.”
“With nothing underneath,” he observes quietly. I note how he keeps his eyes averted, as if the very act of looking might somehow disrupt a fragile balance between us.
“What about you?” I counter, unwilling to let him have the upper hand. “You don’t seem to have anything under the jeans either.”
The words tumble out before I have a chance to reconsider, and too late, I realize his curious eyes are already on me. My face grows warm as if the breeze just shifted to a heat wave.
“How do you know?” Jericho’s voice is smooth, almost challenging. “Did you look that closely?”
“Close enough.” The weak shrug I give feels like a flimsy shield against the intensity of his focus. I try to play it off, but I seem to have walked right into a smartly laid trap, and I’m not sure I want to struggle free.
“Here?” he prompts, and my eyes betray me, instinctively following his motion. He tugs the side of his jeans down, revealing the navy band of his underwear. The color registers for a fleeting moment, but not before my gaze locks onto the expanse of his skin.
Thank goodness I replaced the bulbs in the outdoor lights a week ago for more powerful ones because I was planning on hunting.
And now I can see everything. The trail is even happier up close.
The skin north of the boxers band is a little darker from the sun.
Tiny skin wrinkles show the lack of fat on his stomach.
“Did you find it?” comes his guttural voice.
“It?” I ask, swallowing from the embarrassment of being caught gawking.
“What you were looking for.”
Clearing my throat, I shift my attention up to his face.
“No. I mean yes. ”
His chuckle is husky. He releases the hem of the jeans material, and it clings back to his skin. “What’s your excuse?”
“I hate sleeping in clothes,” I say, feeling the heat of my own words as they meet the chill of the air.
“All the time?”
“All the time.”
“Nothing at all?” His voice sounds funny.
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
After a few moments of letting the silence hang between us, I shift my body, careful not to flash him.
The cold has not been kind to me, and I feel it down to my bones.
Jericho is quiet next to me, but I sense the tension in his stillness.
He seems to be analyzing every word, trying to fit them into some observation of me.
I know from experience that keeping him guessing is the best strategy.
“So, do you want coffee or something?”
“I guess I could stay for a bit,” he replies with a nonchalant shrug.
“Great! I’ll be right back!”
A normal person would invite him inside, but I’m not normal. I’m scared he’d look too good in my house. And it’s a very scary thought. So I leave him sitting in my yard with the slow-rising sun starting to lighten the sky.