I glanced down at her feet, noticing she didn’t appear to be babying her injured ankle. It was only meant to be a brief glance, but for some reason, the sight of the teal polish on her toenails made me take notice of more than just her stance. It also didn’t get past me that she was in flip-flops, not the heels she’d worn an hour or so ago.
Leaning against the doorframe, I crossed my arms and held her in place with my stare. It wasn’t that I wanted to be rude or anything, I just wasn’t sure if I could trust her. “Do you honestly not remember meeting me already?”
“Like, earlier this morning?”
“No,” I said, trying to bite back my laughter. “Before then.”
Her eyes narrowed, but only for a split second before widening like she’d seen a ghost. “We’ve met before today? When?”
“Right after you moved in.”
She hummed to herself for a moment, pulling her lips to one side. “I didn’t think I’d met any of my neighbors.”
As if this couldn’t get any weirder…
“Well, you did. You met me—if that’s what you want to call it.”
“Let me guess…I was a total chib to you, wasn’t I?”
“A what?” I could assume what it meant, but I wasn’t sure.
“Chib—bitch pronounced backward.” She paused for a moment, appearing confident that she’d used a word most people had heard before. Then she added, “And you probably didn’t deserve it, did you? Listen, I’m really sorry about that. I can’t give you an explanation for my actions back then, because I don’t have one, but I do want to apologize for treating you that way.”
I had no idea what to say. At first, I expected her to resume the same nasty attitude she was widely known for—I’d looked her up after meeting her and discovered that I wasn’t the only one who’d been on the receiving end of her entitlement. But now, I had no idea what to expect. It was like this person wasn’t Tiffany Lewis but a really nice and extremely hot impersonator.
Maybe she suffered from multiple personalities.
If so, I hoped this one stuck around for a while.
“I guess that means there’s another purpose for these,” she said while lifting the covered tray that I’d almost forgotten about. “A peace offering.”
Still, I wasn’t entirely sure of her, so I decided to invite her in to share them with me rather than just accept the offered Pizza Rolls. If she didn’t eat any, then I’d know she had poisoned them. It was a foolproof plan.
That was until she ate one. Then another.
“I take it your ankle is better.” I pointed to her foot before grabbing a soda from the fridge and holding it out in a silent offer.
“Yeah. I can still feel it a little when I walk, but it’s not bad,” she said while taking the cold can from me. “Thank you again for all your help. I really do appreciate it.”
I moved from the small corner kitchen into the slightly larger living room and took a seat on the sofa. If Tiffany wanted to follow, that was her choice. To be honest, it was more or less a test. My couch was obviously much smaller and older than hers—and not nearly as comfortable. So I sat and watched her expression as she moved into the open room, waiting for the moment she sat down to read her thoughts as they came to life on her face.
However, she didn’t come straight to the couch. Instead, she moved to the giant vivarium displayed in the corner next to the TV. With genuine interest, she crouched down to look inside, then over her shoulder at me. “Is this a baby iguana or something?”
“Bearded dragon. His name is Terry, but you may call him Sir Terry.”
She smiled and turned back to the vivarium, admiring my scaly friend with her fingertip lightly pressed against the glass. “Where’d you get that name from? Does it have personal meaning to you?”
“I named him after my favorite author.”
Tiffany stood, straightening her back from the hunched-over position she was just in, and took a few steps to the side, admiring the books I had lined above the TV. Like she’d done with the aquarium, she ran her fingertip along the spines, as if she had to touch them to prove they were real.
Without saying anything else, she came to sit next to me on the couch. This was the moment I had waited for, to see what she truly thought of my humble existence. But to my disappointment, there was not even the slightest hint of disapproval on her face. Instead, she took a sip of her soda and continued to admire the aquarium from her seat.
“That’s a really cool setup. Did you make it yourself?”
It was my turn to regard the home I’d created for Terry. “Yeah, I got the idea from the comic fantasy series,” I said, pointing to the paperbacks that lined the shelf. “They take place in this fictional world that sits on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of a giant turtle.”
She stared in awe at the four elephant statues positioned between the four corners of the tank and the intricately carved sea turtle. Granted, I had it all on top of a table, but I didn’t have much of an option for that, other than putting the tank on the floor. Which I wouldn’t do for several reasons, the most important being that Terry deserved more than that.
“That’s really cool.” She stared in awe for several more seconds before turning her attention to the still picture on the TV screen—the movie was still paused from when she’d knocked on my door.
“What were you watching?” she asked
