I gasp. “I told you.”
“You two are ridiculous.” Dom stands up, grabbing my handand pulling me to my feet. “That’s our cue to leave before you decide to plan a night out at the strip club together.”
We look at each other, heads tilted in question.
“Nope, not happening,” Dom says, giving his aunt a kiss on the cheek, and he tells her he’ll call her next week.
“Thank you for having me,” I say, giving her a really big hug. She gives me a tight squeeze back, and I take in the motherly hug for all it’s worth.
“Anytime,” she whispers before stepping back. “And you simply must come with me to the Italian market next time I drive down. It’s so close to Camden I can’t believe you’ve never been.”
“I can’t believe no one told me about it, but you have yourself a deal.”
When we finally make it out the door, Dom doesn’t ask, just drives to his place. Just as I don’t ask him to take me home, I simply get out of his vehicle when we pull into his driveway.
With the earlier rain combined with the drop in temperature, it looks like a “Thriller” video, all wet pavement and fog filling the night air.
What happens when you see a large puddle?
Some would say you could walk around it. And some would say you could jump over it.
Which sounds way more fun to me.
I stop and steady myself, my mind doing the calculation in my head. Not actually a calculation because I didn’t pass physics, but I play the odds of making it over. I got this.
“What are you doing?” Dom asks.
“Ummm, I’m about to jump over this puddle. What else would I be doing?”
“I don’t think…”
“It’s fine. I got this.”
I rock once on my heels, gathering momentum like someOlympic long-jumper who trained exclusively on TikTok, then push off. For the record, I absolutely had it—clean takeoff, solid arc, ten out of ten form—right up until I didn’t. A blur swoops in out of nowhere, a frantic flutter of wings, and something hits my head. Claws—or very committed toes—snag in my hair. There’s a whoosh in my ears, then chaos.
Okay, two things happen.
One, I scream like a little girl, waving my arms in the air. Every time it flaps, my scream gets louder and maybe a little higher-pitched.
Two, I trip over my own two feet in a desperate attempt to get whatever it is off me. This, of course, leads me to tumble to the ground and land right in the giant puddle. My scream changes to a heavy dose of curse words.
“Are you okay?” Dom asks, already laughing even though he’s trying to swallow it.
“Peachy,” I groan, peeling myself off the asphalt. Water slaps against my thighs as I stand, jeans glued to my skin in the least sexy way imaginable. “What the fuck was that?”
“Looked like a bat to me,” he says between bouts of laughter.
Of course. A bat. Because apparently I’m Snow White if she’d taken a wrong turn into Gotham City.
“There’s a bat house in the back yard,” he adds, still grinning as I stomp up the stairs, every step a wet, indignant squish.
I spin on the top stair and glare at him. “Why the hell do you have a bat house?”
Dom reaches around me and unlocks the door, pushing it open and ushering me in. “Because bats eat insects, like mosquitoes. They’re the superheroes of the night.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, kicking off my shoes with a squelch. “Did you give them adorable vigilante names?”
“No,” he says, matching me shoe for shoe by the mat. “I did not name the bats.”
