Chapter Sixteen

After a few days, I decided to change up my stalking itinerary. I hadn’t yet ventured to Aubrey’s house. Heading there while she was at work would give me some clues about her life, namely whether she was shacking up with Clark Kent’s dorky twin. I’d decided that I needed as much information as possible before confronting her, even if some of it was going to make me ill.

When I pulled up to the small brown bungalow, the exterior looked like typical Aubrey: quirky, a little messy but unconventionally and stunningly beautiful at the same time. The first thing that caught my eye, though, was the grass out front. It looked like it hadn’t been cut for months. What the fuck kind of man lets his woman’s grass get to nearly a foot high?

Jackass.

With my baseball cap and sunglasses, I looked around me to make sure there were no nosy neighbors. Peeking in the window, I saw that the inside was much tidier than the outside. Her living room had cream-colored furniture, and there were some silk flowers on the coffee table. There was nothing to indicate one way or the other whether a man was living there.

I nearly fell back into the bushes when I saw the shadow of something moving. It couldn’t have been Aubrey because I’d waited until she safely disappeared into the office building before coming here.

Who the fuck was in her house?

Adrenaline pumped through me. Deciding to walk to the window at the other side of the house, I trudged through the overgrown grass, swearing under my breath again about it.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw the face plastered against the glass pane. Not just any face.

“No fucking way!” I yelled.

My voice must have scared him, and he went down for the count.

Mutton. Holy shit. Mutton!

Through the window, I watched as the goat lay on the ground. He’d fainted. Of course. Shit. I kept tapping on the glass to try to wake him.

“Come on, little guy. Wake up.”

After a few minutes, he eventually wriggled his body and stood upright. He kept moving around in circles and seemed discombobulated. I needed to get to him and decided to try to break open the window. I’d replace it if I had to. To my surprise, it slid right up on the first nudge.

What was she nuts leaving her window open? She probably slept that way at night, too, making it easy for any crazy lunatics to enter her bedroom whenever they wanted.

I’d have to remember that for the future.

I was halfway through the window. Waving my hands for a blind goat to come toward me, I said, “Bugger! It’s me. Come here, Mate.”

The animal came right to me and placed his face in my palm. Gently scratching his head like I used to, I said, “You’re a good boy. I can’t believe you’re still here.” I muttered to myself, “You’re nuts, Princess. Royally nuts. But I’m glad you kept him.”

Call me crazy, but he seemed to remember me. He let out a long, “Baaaaa.” The second time, I could’ve sworn it sounded like “Daaaad.”

“What’s been going on here, huh? You’re my spy. Is she happy? Does she hate me? Tell me.”

“Baa.”

I scratched his head harder. “Eh, you’re no help.” He started to lick my face. “Oh, God. I never thought your putrid breath would be a welcome scent.”

Mutton wouldn’t let me go. It occurred to me that one of the neighbors could suspect I was a burglar. Getting arrested was the last thing I needed at this stage of my life. My eyes wandered around the room and caught a glimpse of a man’s suit hanging over the closet door. My heart sank.

I kissed his forehead. “I’ve got to go. I’ll come back and see you again. I promise.”

He grunted.

“I know. You don’t trust me anymore. You have no reason to right now. I have to earn that back.”

For the first time, I noticed that a piece of metal was jingling from around his neck. “What the hell is this? She has a collar on you?” I looked closer at the name.

Pixy.

Hope filled my heart, which suddenly started beating faster. I rubbed my thumb across the engraved lettering. After everything I’d been through over the past two years, don’t ask me why this moment was the first that almost caused my eyes to water a little. It was just the right push I needed to keep this going—a little bit of hope that maybe she didn’t wish I were dead after all.

It took me a few minutes to get him to let me leave. He was trying to jump out the window to go with me. I was finally able to close it.

When I turned around, the goat’s face was still plastered against the window. I suppose I could’ve broken all the way into the house to get more clues about her life, but that would have been pushing it. Like I told Mutton…Pixy…I had to earn my way back into their lives, not steal it.

There was one more piece of business I had to take care of before heading back downtown. I remembered passing a home improvement store on my way to the house.

After a quick trip over there, I returned with a modest Craftsman push mower.

It took me about forty minutes to mow Aubrey’s lawn. When I got to the side of the house, Pixy was still waiting at the same spot. A few of the neighbors walked by, and I’d wave with a gigantic smile on my face. I hoped that they’d assume that she dumped Biffy Clark Kent’s lazy ass in exchange for a real man who did yard work. Either that, or maybe they just figured I was a landscaper.

Admiring the smooth tracks along the grass, I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. My work here was done, but the real work was just beginning.

That night, I’d somehow missed her. Either she left in the middle of the afternoon, or she was still inside working late. After waiting until eight-thirty, I finally had to give up and reluctantly left for the bar. A huge feeling of disappointment consumed me. Seeing Aubrey at the end of the day was always my reward, and I felt cheated today.

“Carla Babes, hit me up,” I said, assuming position on my usual stool.

She was wiping the counter. “Aussie! You’re late tonight. Stalking overtime?”

“Eh. Today wasn’t so great.”

She stopped wiping to grab my drink. “What happened?”

“I somehow missed her at the end of the day.”

“You’re losing your touch,” she said, slapping my Rum and Coke down on the dark wood counter.

“I’m losing something…my marbles, maybe.”

Carla leaned her elbows down on the counter, displaying her massive cleavage. “Anything good at all happen today?”

I started to laugh. “Actually, something great happened. I found my goat.”

“Your coat?”

I chuckled again. “My goat. With a G.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

I proceeded to tell her the story, everything from how Aubrey and I found him to the shit—quite literally—that happened while on the road.

“Aw…that’s so cute. So, he’s kind of like your child.”

“That was what Aubrey used to say.”

She must have noticed a look of melancholy wash over my face. “What’s wrong?”

“There was a man’s jacket hanging in her room. I think he’s living with her. They could be engaged or married for all I know.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know, would you? Because you haven’t talked to her.” She took her rag and whipped it over my head jokingly.

“This has to be handled carefully. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“There’s handling it carefully, and there’s avoidance. How long are you really gonna camp out like this? You need to just rip the Band Aid off, man.”

Taking one last gulp down and slamming the glass on the table, I said, “I hate when you’re right, Carla Babes.”

“You must hate me all the time then.” She winked.

Aubrey looked so incredibly beautiful walking into work the next morning. It was windy, which made her hair especially unruly. As usual, she stopped into Starbucks to grab her coffee before heading into the building.

The ache in my chest was bigger than ever because I knew D-day was nearing. Even though I’d made a vow to “rip the Band Aid off” in the next couple of days, I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to approach her.

When she was finally safely inside, I let out a deep breath and exited my truck to head into Starbucks and get my own coffee. Hung over again this morning, I’d slept through my alarm, arriving too late to risk going in earlier and paying for her drink.

I decided to try something new today. I wanted to taste Aubrey. Well, I wished. Instead, I decided to order that frou frou drink she always ordered to see what it tasted like.

“I’ll have a large nonfat, three-pump vanilla latte, low foam and extra hot.”

The young cashier’s face always seemed to light up when she saw me. “You’re ordering her drink today…for yourself?”

“Changing things up, yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Why do you need my name?”

“It’s just procedure with specialty drinks. We write it on the side.”

“Oh…Chance.”

She wrote my name in black marker on the cup, and I walked over to the other counter where you’re supposed to pick up your order.

I watched the barista make a couple of the drinks in line before mine. What a friggin’ process between the steaming and the frothing. It better have been complicated for five-bucks a pop.

I heard the cashier’s voice. “Aubrey. What are you doing back so soon?”

My eyes quickly darted toward her then I immediately pulled my baseball cap down and turned around toward the back wall. Heart pounding. Chest constricted. Stomach nauseous. A rush of adrenaline.

Oh Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

My heart had never beat so fast. I heard her voice behind me. “My boyfriend came into my office to talk to me and knocked my drink down with his elbow. It spilled all over my desk.”

Fucking clutz.

“I’m sorry. Let me get you another one free of charge.”

“Thank you so much, Melanie. I appreciate that.”

It felt like the walls were closing in on me. The sound of the steaming milk suddenly seemed deafening. I wondered if I could get away with sliding away slowly with my back facing the wall until I was behind her and out the door. Just as I’d started to move, the kid making my drink shouted, “Chance!”

“Did you just say Chance?” Aubrey said.

At this point, I was just behind her.

Melanie, who probably figured Aubrey was just my innocent crush, decided that moment would be a good time to play matchmaker. She outed me. “Chance is the guy who paid for your drink the other day. He’s right there.”

Aubrey flipped around so fast that she accidentally backed into a display of plastic iced-coffee cups, knocking them down like dominos onto the ground.

Seeming unphased by the disaster she’d just created, she stood staring at me with her hand over her chest as if it were holding her heart in.

I took my baseball cap off and crossed it over my chest. With pleading eyes, I whispered, “Princess.”

Looking like she’d just seen a ghost, she slowly shook her head as if to say ‘this can’t be happening.’

I took one step toward her.

She held her hand out, stopping me in my tracks. “No! Don’t you dare come near me.”

My heart fell to my stomach, and it felt like my guts were twisting.

This was not how I pictured things going down.

I lifted both of my palms. “I won’t. But please, just hear me out.”

“You’ve been stalking me?”

“Not exactly.”

We were both silent. Filled with humiliation, I bent down and started picking up the cups she’d knocked over. Aubrey stayed frozen in the same spot.

Nosy Melanie spoke from behind the counter, “Why won’t you just listen to what he has to say?”

Aubrey’s chest was still rising and falling. She finally spoke, “Let me ask you this, Melanie. If a guy led you to believe that he cared about you, then fucked you and left before the next morning without so much as a sticky note goodbye, would you hear him out?”

“Probably not.” She laughed then added, “Well, if he had an ass like Chance, maybe.” One of the other female employees giggled.

Aubrey looked at me with daggers in her eyes and continued, “Okay…what if he never contacted you for two whole years after that, then all of a sudden showed up stalking you in your hometown. Would you hear him out?”

“Definitely not,” Melanie said. “That’s just weird.”

“I rest my case.”

Aubrey suddenly zipped past me and out the door. She was gone.

Feeling like she’d just ripped my heart out and fed it to me, I stood defeated in the middle of Starbucks.

After a minute of staring blankly outside the store window, I heard a voice inside my head that sounded awfully like Mum. “Grow some fucking balls and fight for her.”

And that marked the end of my subtlety streak.

I flew out the door and ran down the street, hoping I could track her down before she went inside her building.

There was no sign of Aubrey anywhere. Flying through the revolving doors, I spotted her as she was waiting to get into an elevator. Just as she disappeared into one, I stuck my hand in the doors to open them.

She was alone.

Tears were pouring down her face. She’d been crying.

As the elevator rose up, I hit the stop button.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed.

Panting, I said, “If this is the only way I can get you to listen to me, then so be it.”

“You can keep me trapped in here for—oh, I don’t know—TWO years for all I care. I’m not talking to you. Maybe then, you’ll know what it feels like.”

Locking her against the wall with one arm on each side of her trembling body, I said, “I’m glad to see you’re stubborn as ever, Princess.”

Seeming uncomfortable with my close proximity, she swallowed before saying, “I need to get back to the office. Move this elevator, or I’m calling the police.”

“I get that you’re in shock. You weren’t supposed to find out that way.”

“Is there a good way to find out that the person who tore your heart to shreds is now stalking you?”

She had a point.

“Probably not. But you have to let me explain.”

The words that came out of her mouth next were hard for me to hear. “Do you realize how long it took me to get over you? My life is only just now getting back to normal. You can’t come back after two years and expect me to just let you in after I’ve fought so hard to let go of you. I’d finally let you go. Please. I’m begging you to leave.”

My chest was so tight it felt like it might burst.

She’d let me go.

Well, too fucking bad. I’m back.

“I’ll go…for now. But I’m not leaving town until you agree to let me explain what happened. If you still want me to go after you’ve heard it all, then I swear to God, Aubrey, you will never see me again for as long as you live.”

Her eyes started to water again as she looked into mine. Without taking my eyes off her, I let go of the stop button and pressed the number for the next floor.

“I’m staying at the Sunrise Motel, room eight. I still have the same cell number as before. You call me when you’re ready to listen.”

When the doors slid open, I got out, leaving Aubrey in the elevator with the ball in her court. I just hoped she didn’t choose to deflate it.