The Window

Six weeks, and Derek still hadn't said it to himself plainly.

Not that he'd set out to watch her. The kitchen window was over the sink, her garden was next door, and every morning, by the time he reached his second cup of coffee, she was already there.

Second coffee had become a late-morning thing since the move. Time had loosened without anyone around to notice.

He could give the count exactly: forty-two days, since the Thursday after he'd finished unpacking the studio monitors downstairs. The fact that he could give it told him something about himself he wasn't ready to examine.

At first it was incidental. A neighbor in the garden while he stood at the sink, coffee warm in his hands, delaying the walk down to the studio. Then it became part of the sequence. First cup at the counter. Second cup by the window. Her, in the garden next door. Kneeling on a faded green mat with pruning shears, work gloves past her wrists, hair pulled back. Every movement deliberate, economical. Just the roses, the soil, the quiet rhythm of her hands.

He told himself it was the garden. That he admired the discipline of it, how someone could give that kind of sustained attention to something living. But if he were honest, and Derek was trying, lately, to be honest even when it cost him, it wasn't the garden.

It was her.

A woman in her mid-thirties maybe, with a self-possession he could feel even from his kitchen window.

She moved through the space as if every inch belonged to her. She'd pause mid-cut, studying a stem the way he studied a waveform, looking for the imperfection she could feel but hadn't located yet. Utterly, completely alone, and she seemed to prefer it that way.

He understood that. The preferring.

This particular Thursday, day forty-three technically, he was standing at the counter with his second cup when she did something she'd never done before.

She looked up.

Not at the house. At his window. Directly at him, shears poised mid-cut, as though she'd known exactly where he'd be and had simply been waiting for the right moment to confirm it. She stood slowly, wiping dirt from her hands onto her hips, and walked toward the fence with a stride that wasn't hurried but wasn't casual either. Purposeful. Like someone crossing a room to settle an argument.

She leaned her arms on the wood and held his gaze through the glass, taking her time about it.

Derek set his coffee on the counter.

His throat had gone dry in a way that made him feel seventeen. He hadn't felt seventeen in thirty-two years, and even then he'd been better at watching sound crews than talking to girls. He went to the back door. Opened it. Stepped onto his small patio.

"I couldn't help but notice how hard you work out here," he said, and immediately wanted to rewind the sentence and try again.

She let out a short laugh, more air than sound, and pushed a strand of hair from her face, leaving a streak of dirt across her cheek. "Hard work. That's what you're going with?" She clicked her tongue. "Most people just say 'nice flowers' and scurry back inside."

She crossed her arms. The sun caught the sheen of sweat on her collarbone.

"I'm Alexis. And you've been here, what, two weeks now? Three?"

Six, he thought. Closer to six.

"Long enough to develop a habit, apparently," she finished.

Her gaze drifted past him to his back door, then returned. Not unkindly, but thoroughly, like she was deciding whether he would be useful.

"So. Are you going to keep making excuses from across the fence, or are you going to come help me with these roses?" She gestured at a pile of clippings near her feet with the shears. "Consider it neighborly restitution for the show."

She turned back toward her garden without waiting for an answer. Knelt down on her mat. Resumed pruning with the same focused precision as before, as though the conversation had taken exactly as much time as she meant to give it.

"I'll be right there," Derek said to her back.

* * *

The side gate creaked when he opened it. She didn't look up. Let the silence stretch while she snipped another dead bloom.

"Good. You actually follow through." She glanced at him sideways. "That's refreshing."

She pointed to a pair of worn gardening gloves on the edge of a raised bed. "Put those on. The thorns don't care if you're new to this."

The gloves were too small. Women's medium. He pulled them on anyway, the seams tight across his knuckles, and she watched him approach without expression, reading how he moved, how he carried himself, as if his posture had already answered questions she hadn't asked. When he reached the pile of clippings, she nodded toward a wheelbarrow parked a few feet away.

"Start loading. And try not to step on the hydrangeas. They bruise if you look at them wrong."

She returned to her pruning, but something in the set of her shoulders told him she was tracking every sound behind her. The rustle of his shirt. The scrape of thorny branches against the metal wheelbarrow. The crunch of mulch under his shoes when he shifted weight.

"So what brings you to the neighborhood?" She clipped another stem without turning. "Quiet cul-de-sac, nosy neighbors, one of those 'fresh start' situations?"

"Fresh start," Derek said. He loaded a tangle of rose cuttings into the wheelbarrow, a thorn catching the back of his hand through the thin glove. "Horrible ex situation."

The shears paused. When they moved again, the cuts were slower.

"Ah. One of those." She snipped a particularly stubborn branch. "They usually are."

She didn't turn around, but her voice lost its teasing edge.

"Let me guess. New house, new tools, old damage. Someone either left, or made staying feel like work."

Derek's hands tightened on the wheelbarrow handles.

"That's a lot to get from mulch."

The shears paused again. Then she turned, interest sharpening instead of retreating.

"That's a guess," she said. "Probably a rude one."

He surprised himself by not letting her have it cleanly. "Not entirely accurate."

The corner of her mouth moved. "Good. I hate being entirely right about strangers."

She stood, brushed off her knees, and faced him. Her expression was softer than before, but still direct, almost practical. A face that would tell you your shirt was untucked and mean it as a kindness.

"The garden doesn't judge. Doesn't leave. Doesn't lie." She gestured at the space around them. "Put something in the ground, water it, give it sunlight, and it grows. Simple. Honest."

She watched him work for a moment, arms crossed loosely.

"Whatever happened, it doesn't get a vote in my garden." A small shrug. "You're here now. That's all that matters."

She walked toward him. Close, closer than she needed to be, close enough that the smell of her hit him like a frequency he hadn't expected. Earth and something floral. Jasmine, maybe. Layered underneath with something warmer.

"You're doing fine," she said simply, without ceremony. "Keep going."

"Wow," Derek said, and then his mouth kept moving before his brain could intervene. "You smell delicious." He blinked. "Delightful. I meant delightful." He felt the heat climb his neck instantly, a flush he couldn't hide even if he turned away, which he didn't, because his feet had apparently decided to stop taking orders.

She stopped mid-step. A grin spread across her face, not sharp, not mocking, but undeniably delighted.

"Delicious." She let the word hang in the air between them. "That's a new one. Usually I get 'earthy' or 'like flowers.'"

She took a half-step closer. Close enough that the heat radiating from her skin was noticeable in the already warm morning.

"You know what's funny?" She lowered her voice. "The first version is usually the honest one. The correction is just panic."

She reached for a stray clipping caught on the cuff of his glove, her arm brushing his. She held his gaze the entire time.

"Jasmine. Lavender. And something called 'hard work.'" She dropped the clipping into the wheelbarrow and stepped back. "It's not fancy, but it works."

She studied the flush creeping up his neck. He stood there and let her see it.

"Relax. I'm not going to bite." The grin sharpened slightly. "Unless you ask nicely."

She turned back toward the rosebush before he could respond, but there was a lightness in her voice that hadn't been there before.

"Keep loading. We're almost done with this section. Then maybe I'll let you make it up to me for staring by helping with the hydrangeas."

"Whatever you need," Derek said. "I aim to please."

The words came out before he could weigh them. Honest and a little earnest and exactly the sort of thing that would have made his ex roll her eyes and say something cutting about trying too hard. He braced for the dismissal, the deflection.

It didn't come.

Instead, she turned slowly. One hand on her hip. The sun caught the sweat glistening at her temples.

"Aim to please." She repeated the words back like she was tasting them. "Interesting choice of phrasing."

She walked a slow circle around him, examining the loaded wheelbarrow, then him, her fingers tapping against her thigh. He stood still, not because he'd decided to, but because some part of him understood that moving would break whatever she was calibrating.

"Most people say that and don't mean it. They say it because they think it's what someone wants to hear." She stopped in front of him, close enough that he had to look down slightly to meet her eyes. "But you actually said it like you meant it."

He had meant it. That was the unsettling part. It was the exact tone he used for a client in the studio. I'm here, tell me what you need, I'll make it work. Except this wasn't a client and this wasn't a studio, and the feeling pooling in his chest was not professional.

She reached up without warning and brushed a smudge of dirt from his shoulder. Her hand lingered a beat longer than the task required. He could feel the warmth of her palm through his shirt.

"Careful with promises like that around me." Her voice dropped, almost conspiratorial. "I have a tendency to collect on them."

She pulled back. All business again.

"Wheel that over there." She gestured toward the hydrangea bed on the far side of the garden. "Those need mulch, and the bags are heavy." She started walking ahead of him, throwing a glance over her shoulder. "Consider this your trial run, neighbor. Let's see how well you actually follow through."