Love On Her Terms. Jennifer Lohmann

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СКАЧАТЬ a head, a neck and a chest taller than her. Every other time she’d seen her neighbor, his black hair had been slicked back against his head, but this morning it was loose about his face, with locks hanging over his eyes. He obviously hadn’t shaved since yesterday at least, and maybe since the day before. One day, once her garden was put in and her bathroom redone, she’d make a study of his facial hair.

      Today, she stuck her hand into the void between them, a desperate cover for wanting to push his hair out of his eyes. “I’m Mina. I moved in next door a couple weeks ago and wanted to introduce myself.”

      His eyes were a surprisingly light brown, given how dark his hair was. She noticed this as she realized her hand...still hung in the air. She had offered him a strong handshake, like her dad had taught her. No weak wrists. People judged you on your handshake.

      Or most people did. Her neighbor might never shake her hand, and he wouldn’t know that she’d practiced her handshake with strangers since she was five.

      She was about to give up when his calloused hand slid into hers and gripped tightly enough that her knees went weak in the best possible way.

      “Levi,” he said, his voice deep with sleep.

      It seemed his dad had taught him to have a good handshake, too. His grip revealed shapely forearms with just a hint of vein under the skin. Enough that Mina wanted to see more. More forearms. More biceps.

      More everything of her neighbor.

      Though there was plenty to see—or, at least, to imagine. His white T-shirt had a couple of holes scattered about the cotton and worn hems. His cotton pajama pants weren’t much better. She sneaked a long enough peek to notice that the tie at the waist had been washed into a tight knot and he had to keep them loose enough to pull over his hips and butt without undoing the knot. What she could see of the hem of his pants was as worn as the hems of his T-shirt, maybe more so.

      Had she woken him up? It was ten in the morning on a Saturday, so it was possible. But she’d seen him up earlier on Saturdays. And Sundays. And, from what she could tell when she closed her blinds before going to bed, he was also early to bed.

      Oh, well. Too late now. If she’d woken him, the damage was already done. Best just to go on. Deciding to meet her neighbor on Saturday morning was yet another decision she couldn’t redo.

      “Nice to meet you, Levi,” she said, returning her hand to her hip and her gaze to the scruff on his face.

      When he rested his hand on his door, the movement raised his shirt a little, revealing both a little skin and some of the elastic sticking out from his worn pajama pants. Her gaze snapped back to his face. One eyebrow was up and, from the way he looked down at her, she couldn’t tell if he was amused, irritated or both.

      She looked down at his bare toes before she could feel self-conscious about knocking on his door and waking him up. He had nice toes. Long, with a dusting of dark hair on each of his big toes. Not enough to veer into Hobbit-hood, but enough to make his feet interesting.

      “I moved here from Chicago,” she said. The silence between them was starting to get on her nerves. Someone had to lead the conversation, and he wasn’t going to do it.

      He nodded.

      Mina waited for him to offer up his own end of the conversation. Maybe where he’d moved to Missoula from. Maybe that he liked Chicago. Or that he’d never been there. Or that both Montana and Chicago had bad winters, but Montana’s was probably worse.

      But he seemed to be done nodding, and he hadn’t opened his mouth again. Since she’d knocked on his door, he hadn’t said anything other than “Levi.”

      She could have looked at his mail to learn that.

      “I teach at the university, in the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department. I teach Russian. And a course on graphic novels. It’s the first one they’ve offered. My suggestion, really, and the class is full. There was a waiting list, even.” God help her, she was babbling. She’d gone beyond polite conversation with a neighbor and had hit full-on ramble.

      “Graphic novels are what I do. I mean, they’re what I write. I’ve written three, all based off Russian novels and folktales.” She was wandering through her life and her history in front of this man who still remained silent. Of course, awareness wasn’t enough to encourage sense and good behavior. Or enough to get her to stop talking.

      She took a step back, teetering a little when her heel hit the back of his front steps.

      “You can look me up,” she continued. Distance. She had to put distance between her need to fill quiet with words and his gaping silence. She gripped the handrail. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you.”

      She had turned to go when she heard him say, “I can’t look you up if I don’t know your last name.”

      “Oh!” She spun around to look at him again. “Mina Clements. One M. I’ve got samples of my work on my website.”

      She slammed her mouth shut before she was tempted to continue. With a wave and a cascade of embarrassment washing over her, feeling like a complete fool, she hopped down his front steps and scurried back to her house.

      * * *

      LEVI CLOSED THE door with a soft click as soon as his neighbor—Mina—turned off his property and onto her own. She was even shorter up close. And younger-looking. And she had hazel eyes that danced with life as she talked.

      Hell, he wasn’t even sure what all she’d said. He was pretty sure he remembered her saying that she taught at the university, but he couldn’t imagine that she was old enough. Did she teach people her own age?

      Or maybe she was older than he thought she was. Which meant he was older than he thought he was.

      He turned away from the door, back to his coffee and the paper spread out on the kitchen table.

      That he was older made sense, actually. He’d started noticing that he couldn’t have extra fries without adding extra weight a year ago. Last year he’d noticed a creak in his knees when he got out of bed. And one benefit of living alone was that there was no one to watch or poke fun when he plucked the couple of gray hairs from his head.

      Kimmie absolutely would have made fun of those hairs.

      “When she was well,” he said, flipping the paper open to the horoscopes and pressing the newsprint flat. Thoughts of how Kimmie would or wouldn’t act always included a footnote about her health. Levi had never successfully been able to only remember Kimmie when she was well. Her depressive episodes sneaked into his memories so much that he’d stopped trying to halt them. After all, the weeks she’d spent in bed had been just as much a part of his wife as her laughter and sly sense of humor. Seemed almost like a betrayal not to remember them both.

      “Remember her as she’d have wanted you to remember,” people had said to him after her funeral. Well-meaning but ultimately stupid advice. Kimmie hadn’t expected him to even be alive to remember her. She’d thought he’d died first.

      The coffee burned down his throat when he took another swig. No second cup. Another side effect of getting older.

      Not that he should be surprised. He’d spent a lifetime working with his body, and all those years, especially the ones in mining, were bound СКАЧАТЬ