Stranger Things Have Happened

"Hello?" He was frowning and I couldn't remember when his expression had changed into the dubious one he now wore.

"Yes? I'm sorry, I-I missed what you said." I stammered.

"You were miles away." He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me and for some odd reason, I suddenly felt like a seventeen year old drunk driver.

"Yes, sorry, I'm uh, I think I have the flu…" I bit my lip and looked at anything other than his eyes and his teeth and his shoulders. It wasn't the flu making me feel dizzy.

He nodded slowly. "Yeah I hear it's going around."

After a few uncomfortable moments he slapped his hands on the fence and gave it a small shake, absently testing its stability, and then he took a few steps away from it as though deeming it high time he got back to work.

"Well as I was saying," He said, over a deliciously massive tanned shoulder, "let me know if your cat gets stuck anywhere and I'll come rescue him for you."

I nodded and gave him what was possibly the fakest smile in the written history of mankind, and then I made the lamest giggle ever heard or seen, right before I ran inside and locked the security screen behind me, which I'd had installed when I inherited the terrace house. With my back pressed hard against the door, I took a few frantic, deep breaths to calm myself, just as Madame Katrina had taught me to do. My heart was palpitating and my head was spinning but within a few moments, the tried and true rescue remedy began to work. Thankfully, the feeling that an elephant was sitting on my chest began to ease.