You are not a squirrel

“You are not a squirrel.”
“Are door-knocking squirrels a common problem around here?”

“There’s not much around here that’s common at 3am.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t be opening the door.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She slams the door in his face. Immediately, she feels bad. She didn’t even ask if he was hurt or in trouble. She thinks about it for a second, he seemed capable enough. She locks the door and crawls back into bed.

The next morning at 3am

The dogs start barking. She rolls over and looks at the clock. “Are you freaking kidding me?” She walks to the door, opens it, stares at him.

“Hi! I’m still not a squirrel.”

“I can see that. Is there a reason you’re waking me up at 3am…again?”

“Yes…is there a reason you opened the door…again?”

She looks him up and down. “Yup… I’ve always been overly curious.”

“You know, they say curiosity killed the cat.”

She pauses for a moment, raises her eyebrows, and slams the door in his face.

The next morning at 3am

This time, she doesn’t even bother looking at the alarm clock. She just starts walking to the door. As she opens it, he says “Why do you keep slamming the door in my face?”

“Why do you keep sounding like a creepy serial killer?”

“Valid point. I promise, I am not a creepy serial killer.”

“I kind of feel like that’s what all creepy serial killers would say.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Then, what are you doing here?”

He glances down and then quietly states, “I honestly don’t know.” He turns and walks away.

She stares after him and then softly shuts the door. She crawls back into bed.

She tosses and turns, wondering why his answer and leaving bothered her. Maybe she shouldn’t open the door next time. Maybe there wouldn’t even be a next time. She sighs.

The next morning at 3am

She wakes up, but the dogs are silent. She listens intently but there’s no knock at the door. She punches her pillow, pissed that she’s actually upset some random guy who’s probably married, or psycho, or both didn’t wake her up at 3am in the freaking morning.

She wakes up a few hours later, feeling depressed. She slowly gets ready for work and opens the door to leave. On her patio, there are folding chairs with a taped note. The note read...

 

“I don’t know why I came back. I don’t know why I keep coming back. I just know I don’t want to stop. Please open the door again.”

She goes to work with a stupid smile on her face. As she tries (and fails) to focus on work, she thinks about him, and if she should answer the door, and if he *gasp* likes her. Maybe they could fall in love and get married! They could honeymoon in Hawaii and have two point five beautiful perfect children! Or…much more likely, he’ll sleep with her, get her to fall in love with him, and then decide he’s “really still in love after all” with his wife.

The next morning at 3am

The next morning when he got to her house, only one chair remained outside the door. Although it wasn’t exactly what he had intended, he smiled. She opened the door to reveal the other chair. They sat and stared at each other through the glass door. “Hi”, she said. “I wasn’t sure I would see you again.”

“Did that bother you?”

She pauses, thinks about it for a moment. Should she be flirty? Should she lie? Out of her mouth comes, “Yes. I don’t know why, and actually I don’t like it.”

He laughed. “Well, that’s honest.”

She grins, “Being too honest might be one of my least charming qualities.”

“I can’t imagine you having any quality that could be considered anything other than extremely charming.”

She snorts, “Wow, you really thought that was smooth, huh?”

“It wasn’t.”

He smiles, “But it made you laugh.”

All of a sudden, the smile drops off her face. “That’s not enough.”

He looks at her, confused. “What’s not enough?”

“It’s not enough to laugh. To sit across from each other, separated by glass. I need to know what you were doing here that night and why you’re here now. Even if it ruins everything, I have to know.”

“Ruins what? What do you think everything is? Why are you starting a fight? I thought we were having fun!”

“You thought we were having fun?”

As he nods, she slams the door in his face.

She crawls back into bed, irritated with herself, him, and the entire freakin’ world. She knows he didn’t really say anything wrong, but she’s spent the last few nights (and days) thinking about him and what it could mean and if he was single and not crazy… and for him, it’s just been fun? Like it doesn’t matter if he ever sees her again?

She looks at the nightstand clock. 3:40 in the morning..of course she’s slamming doors in people’s faces…no one can think straight this early in the morning!

At the much more reasonable time of 8am

She winces as she brushes her teeth in the harsh light of the bathroom sink. Ugh.. playing it cool was definitely never her strong suit but last night was still super embarrassing. She sighs…maybe it’s better this way, what possible good could come from continuing to see a man whose name she doesn’t even know? And that’s when it hits her…all these late nights…obsessive thoughts during the day….door-slamming…and she doesn’t even know his name!

She drives to work determined not to think about..whatever his name is. Maybe she should finally go out with the coffee guy who always winks at her “super adult beverage choice” of hot chocolate when everyone else in line orders their macchiatos and espressos. He might just be a chronic winker though.. That is a thing, right?

She mutters to herself, “I just want one of those notes from third grade…’do you like me? Check yes or no.’” It’d be so much easier if that’s how adults communicated, too! She scoffs aloud, “and it’d be nice if he signed it with his freakin’ name”.

That night at 3am

The dogs didn’t bark. She slept through the entire night for the first time since the night he appeared at her door. When she woke up the next morning, she knew she should have felt refreshed and relieved. But she just felt lonely instead.

As she pulled out of her driveway, she noticed a sign on her patio door. She stopped the car to investigate. As she got closer, she realized the sign said “DO YOU LIKE ME? CHECK YES OR NO, Sebastien.”

Her first thought “Oh my god..Sebastien is such a sexy name! Of course that’s his name…”

And her second thought was “I mentioned the sign while I was driving…how the hell did he know about it?! Was he in my car?? I need to move before he decides to murder me and wear my skin as a coat!”

As she starts to hurry back to her car, Sebastien pops around the corner of the house. “Seriously, what the hell? I do what you ask and now I’m some kind of skin-wearing murderer? Who even thinks like that? Maybe YOU’RE the psycho killer in this relationship!”

She scoffs, “We’re NOT in a relationship. And if you’re not a psycho killer who was hiding in my car, how did you know to make the sign??”

He stutters…”I can’t tell you yet. You won’t believe me.” And walks away down the street.

She gets into her car and drives to work. This is so frustrating. What secrets is he hiding? Why won’t he just tell her? He wouldn’t really hurt her…right? She sits in the parking lot thinking about her day ahead.
“Nope. Not today.” She texts her boss, “Hey, I’m sorry but I need a personal day today. I’ll get caught up on everything tomorrow.”

She drives straight back home, picks up the dogs, and goes to the offleash dog park with the lake. It’s hard to be upset when you’re watching your favorite mutts running, playing and splashing. After a few hours of throwing tennis balls into the wall and taking pictures as they frolic, she starts feeling calm again. As she turns to sit in the pavilion area, her eye catches on a particularly tall man walking towards her.

“How’d you know I would be here? Are you really stalking me?”

“No..I don’t need to stalk you. Can’t you feel the connection we have? I was trying to wait to tell you but I can sense how much you’re hurting thinking I’m a bad guy. I promise you…I’m not.”

She nods to the pavilion area and walks towards it. Taking a seat, she looks him in the eye and says “I need to know everything. Right now. What’s going on between us?”

Hours later

She looks down and realizes she just ate an entire carton of banana split ice cream. She snorts.. so, shapeshifters exist. That seems like something she should take longer to process. But she’s been reading about them for years and hoping they did actually exist. Of course, she never expected to actually meet one, and especially one like that? Kind of kills the badass alpha superhero image when you have to tell someone “I actually am a squirrel”.

She thinks about what she’s learned… the insta-love she scoffed at is apparently a real thing, there’s a shapeshifter of every type of animal (except unicorns. Unicorns are still just a myth, according to her new source in all things supernatural.), and other than the mind-meld thing, their life is actually pretty boring.

Apparently, he thinks better when taking long midnight walks after a long stressful day running his company... Macadamia Madness. As he passed by her house, he caught a scent of her (mixed in with the dog’s) and had to meet her.

It’s not what she thought would ever really happen to her… a great guy (with a good job!) just magically falling in love with her with literally no effort on her part, but she’s going to give it a shot. At a date. Not insta-mate and marriage, she’s not crazy. There’s way too much they have to discover about each other and he has to be allowed to actually come inside the house at some point.

As she throws her pathetically empty ice cream carton away, she smiles to herself, “yeah...a date sounds really good”.

The End