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The moment I look back, I see Rita standing in her front door.
“Oh, look at the time. It’s way past my bedtime. I’d better let you kids enjoy it without me. I’ll take a rain check,” she says, keeping her front door barely cracked enough for her tiny body to stand in between.
“Rita, we have the last bottle of wine for you to open. We can't do that without you,” he says, trying to encourage her.
“Don't be silly. Just drink a glass for me in honor of Bart,” she smirks. “Night, you two.”
Rita closes the door before Seven or I can protest.
Then we both hear the deadbolt lock engage on her front door.
She just locked us out and now I’m beginning to see that this was a setup for the beginning.
The only question is, was the entire dinner a ruse to get us here? To plant the firepit idea? To get a romantic bottle of wine in my hands and guilt trip us into making sure it doesn’t go to waste?
“Did she just pull one over on us?” I ask Seven as we both stare back at Rita’s front porch, dumbfounded.
“That woman is on a different level than the rest. She’s a grand master schemer but I never imagined she’d go this far.”
My eyes shift from the door to him as he stares back at her house.
“What is she up to?” I ask though I have my own ideas.
He turns and looks at me, his warm brown eyes settling on mine.
“Whatever it is, she’s wrong," he says and then stares over at the firepit for a second. “Maybe we should head back to the house. I'm tired. I was up all night.”
Yeah, up all night with me, but he doesn't look back at me. It's as if he's already blocked out that we spent the night together. It was a night I'll never forget for so many reasons, but mainly for the way Seven made me feel things that I haven't felt in so long… or maybe ever.
I look down at the wine in my hand and he follows my line of sight.
“What about the wine?” I ask.
Should I drop it back off on her front porch?
But what if an animal comes by or the wind knocks it over, and the bottle breaks, losing the last bottle that she so graciously gave us, even if it had been part of her plan?
I hear the deep sigh of a man knowing when his seventy-year-old neighbor outwitted him.
Really, she outwitted us both.
“How about one glass to appease the senile neighbor and to honor Bart? Then tomorrow, I’ll set her straight that nothing is going to happen between us.”
And there it is.
I needed confirmation that whatever interest he had in me last night was quickly squashed when he saw Daniel's texts. And I don't blame him, not really.
Now that I know it for sure, I can focus back on where I should have been all along… waiting for Daniel to come back so that we can start our life together as we planned.
But I'm not in a rush to go home. Rita convinced me that I should stay. I'm writing better than I have in a long time and now that I have her apartment to stay in, I have accommodations for as long as I want them. Besides, I can't move my flight up any earlier at this point.
I turn from Seven and start towards one of the Adirondack chairs, the heat of the flames starting to heat my skin the closer I get with each step.
“Here,” I hear Seven say behind me. “I’ll open that for you.”
I turn and hand him the bottle of wine.
I watch as he uses the wine opener corkscrew to pull out the plug from the bottle, and then he pours the glass for me and hands it over.
