Sure, it was only four or five inches of snow, and he bet Miranda was up to shoveling it, but he wanted to make something easier for her. She hadn’t said much about her personal life over wine and virtual space missions, but he’d listened to what she hadn’t said as much as what she had.

Definitely divorced. Confirmed by the way she rubbed at the empty groove on her left ring finger when she was thinking. The ex sounded like any number of successful corporate douchebags he knew; the guy kind of had to be, for letting a woman like that walk out of his life. Or worse, leaving her behind.

He thought her wheat-colored hair would float around her shoulders if she pulled it out of her sensible low ponytail. She had wise eyes and a quick smile, both of which betrayed hints of anxiety and weariness, the kind he understood all too well.

She loved her son and the cat, despite her charmingly foul-mouth when it came to Marvin’s antics. She knew books and picked things up quickly. By the time she’d left, she had a more than rudimentary understanding of the entire Spectre Armada franchise, never mind the Armageddon Impact game itself.

She looked equally great in old yoga clothes and a puffy winter jacket and jeans.

He’d done all the sidewalks, traveling counter-clockwise around the neighborhood until he got to her driveway, thinking the whole time that it was nice to share a glass of wine with a woman who didn’t automatically dismiss his hobby as infantile, even if she was doing it to improve her relationship with a seventh grader. By the time he finished her driveway, he was trying to figure out ways to make it happen again.

Next time, he’d shave, put on a clean shirt, ask her if she was into childless, middle-aged divorced guys and making out.

In your dreams, Pearson. Your neighbor is as far out of your league as Captain Jex to an ensign aboard the Arcadia. And you’re a giant dork who should find out what he inside of a gym looks like.

Miranda’s garage door creaked and groaned, riding up its tracks to reveal the woman herself. She’d traded the puffy coat for a knit sweater that looked like a blanket with sleeves; she was holding two steaming mugs, one red and one green.

Justin took out his earbuds, letting them dangle while he cut the engine. “Almost done here.”

“Got time for a hot chocolate break?” She sipped from the green mug. “Or is that lame?”

“Always have time for cocoa.” He took the red mug from her. “Marshmallows? Score.”

Giant. Dork.

Miranda bit her lower lip. “I always feel a little silly, but I love them. Elliot likes whipped cream, from a can.”

Justin met her gaze through the steam. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“It’s fine, but–“ she blew over the top of her cocoa, “I like the real stuff better.”

“But, instant gratification,” he pointed out.

“It’s hardly difficult, but so worth the wait.”

Were they even talking about food anymore? His head was spinning. Change the topic before you embarrass yourself!

“I have to ask. Your accent, where are you from?”

She sighed, but her smile reached her eyes. “Diplomatic brat. We lived in Denmark for six years when I was a child, then we lived in Singapore for a few years. My mom ended her government career and took a job at a TV production company in Vancouver, which is where we were living when I graduated from high school. My father is British. She married him while living there.” She paused, searching his face and apparently seeing the question he was about to ask, because she answered it. “I was actually born in Boston. She insisted we all be born in the U.S. During her third trimester with my brother and sister, she packed me up and flew home. My dad was working in Singapore and had to stay until she delivered the twins.”

Justin sucked a marshmallow from the top of his hot chocolate. “Wow.”

“I know. So, it’s an everywhere and nowhere mishmash of what my ear picked up when I was young. I always think I do such a good job at regular American.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not offended. In fact, I only do that––play it down––because Mike wanted me to. He didn’t like people paying attention to my exotic accent when he wanted to have the spotlight.” Her brows knit, as though she were puzzling that out for the first time.

“Exotic?” He laughed. “More like classy, mysterious, I don’t know…like Katherine Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor in an old movie.”

She blinked and a hint of a blush rose on her cheeks. “You’re flattering me.”

“Is it working?”

“That depends.” She held the mug in two hands, though if it was as cool has his, she wasn’t getting any warmth there. “Are you going to ask me for help stringing your lights for the festival? Because no amount of flattery will convince me to get up on a ladder.”

“I don’t decorate.” He hadn’t meant to shut her down; the short reply slipped out before he had time to soften it. “My dad used to do it for my mom, but I––“

“I understand.” She held out a hand. “Are you finished with that?”

He was, but he didn’t want the conversation to be over. He wanted to make it up to her. “Yeah. Thanks. It was delicious.”

She took the mug. “You’re welcome.”

Justin turned back to the snowblower, but it occurred to him she might had been fishing for help with her own lights. “Hey, if you need help with yours, you know where to find me.”

She shrugged, but missed the mark for nonchalance. “A big lights display isn’t in the cards for me. I sunk everything into the Quail Ridge address.”

He didn’t like the sadness––the weariness he’d heard the night before––that crept into that vintage film star voice. “Use mine.”

“What? No.” She shook her head as though he’d proposed she amputate a limb. “I couldn’t possibly––“

“You said that about the snow removal.” He put a hand on the snowblower’s handle. “Seriously, they’re yours. I’ll even come over with a ladder. Tomorrow?” That was time enough to shave and wash some decent looking clothes.

“I can’t tomorrow. I’m spending the day with my sister before I pick Elliot up at Mike and Sharli’s.”

“No problem.” He hid his disappointment with a––hopefully charming, not goofy––grin. “You know where to find me.”

Miranda woke Saturday morning to the preternatural stillness of snowfall. Marvin was next to her, doing a reasonable impression of a bear-skin rug and purring as though his last life depended on it.

She scratched his ears and ran her hand along his fur. “Good morning, Marvin.”

He flicked his tail by way of response.

“‘Mom, can I please get a cat?’ he said. ‘I’ll do all the work, I swear,’ he said.’” She spoke aloud to cat as much as to the empty house. “Maybe I should drop your litter box off at Mike and Sharli’s place? See how he feels about that.”

Marvin continued to snooze, so Miranda got out of bed alone. While her coffee brewed, she followed the link Justin texted her the night before and paid for the game via the developer’s website. As a precaution, she printed out the game code and stashed it in her desk drawer. She could always wrap it up and put it under the tree for Elliot to open.

She and Marvin had stayed at Justin’s for a couple of hours. He showed her the nuts and bolts of the game, down to how to set the controls up to keep unwanted players out, and launched into a solo side-quest to give her an idea of the scope of the game.

She found herself in a wildly immersive third-person world that Justin navigated the way she navigated the hallways of the high school five days a week. She watched him take out a gang of golden-skinned hover-bike gangsters with some kind of vaporizing weapon he said was pretty standard issue for in-game kills. 

She was gearing up to leave when someone from his crew pinged him on Discord––now she knew what that meant––so she’d stayed on to watch his squad in action, curled up in a papasan chair near his gaming table, cradling her wine, like an adult version of her teenaged self watching her boyfriend play guitar in the basement playroom, cradling a Sprite in a theme park glass.

When he’d offered to walk her the twenty feet home, she’d refused, but only because it was snowing. She’d looked back from her front door to see him standing inside his. He waved goodnight and disappeared into the blue-lit room where she now knew he’d be raiding some kind of fuel factory with his friends well into the night.

Outside, the sun was up, sparkling on four inches of fresh powder, but there was rain in the forecast, followed by overnight lows in the twenties, which would mean an inch of slick cement-like slush if she didn’t deal with it. Armed with a brand new snow shovel, Miranda opened the mud room door. As if summoned, Marvin sauntered in, yawned hugely, and hopped up on the washer to eye the door to the garage.

“No way, Buster. You’re grounded.” She picked up the cat, deposited him the in the den, and closed the door. 

She’d cleared half her driveway when a silver SUV slowed at its end. The window glided down and Justin leaned across the front seat. “Morning.”

She stopped pushing snow and waved as he pulled into his driveway. He’d skipped shoveling, she noted, as his tires crunched over the previous set of tracks in otherwise unblemished snow. The garage door closed behind him, but a few minutes later, the other side rose.

Justin reemerged with a snow-blower. He left it idling and made his way across the yard to her. “I usually do all the sidewalks down to the corner of Coturnix. With the exception of us, the median age around here is about seventy. They’ve known me since I was a kid, and I know none of them should be out here in the cold clearing it themselves.” He blew on his hands, which were bare, despite the work gloves peeking out of his jacket pocket. “So, you don’t need to bother with your sidewalks, and I’m happy to do your driveway, too. I can do the rest now, and next time, don’t worry about it unless you need to be out before I get to it.”

“Justin, I couldn’t…”

“Why not? I’m literally out here anyway, and it’ll take me maybe five minutes to clear.”

It wasn’t as though she was going to get a better offer. Wasn’t that one of her problems, according to Mike, that she couldn’t be gracious about accepting help?

“Thank you.”

He beamed. Miranda finished shoveling the lane she was in, then retraced her steps back to the garage. For the first time since she’d moved in, she really considered her neighbors. Bobwhite Lane was a short cul-de-sac with seven houses. Hers and Justin’s were on the round end, at a slight angle to one another. She wondered how many of the residents had raised their children their, and if they’d all played in the cul-de-sac. She imagined pick-up games of street hockey or basketball, bike riding, probably sledding. There were definitely some hills in the neighboring state park.

If they were all her parents’ age, maybe there would be grandchildren to ride bikes, and sled, and play games in the street.

All the things she hoped Elliot would still have a shot at.

Justin left the garage door open and led Miranda––pretty name––through the laundry room and into the den. He hadn’t socialized with anyone on Bobwhite Lane since he was a kid, but the feeling of our houses are all the same or mirrors of each other came back to him on a wave of nostalgia. He packed that away quickly, since nostalgia had a funny way of opening the door to grief.

When his parents were alive, this room had been his dad’s den. TV, fireplace, Barcalounger, screen door to the back patio where the grill lived…To fill the massive void, Justin filled the room with his gaming equipment, leaving the room looking like a well-worn, Seventies-Cyberpunk villain’s lair.

In the middle of the lair, Marvin sprawled, delicately cleaning his paws and looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

He turned to Miranda, shrugging an apologetic shoulder at the room. “The doors are all unlocked behind you, if you want to take the cat and make a run for it.”

Instead of running, she was peering at his 31.5-inch, curved monitor, displaying the launch lobby for Armageddon Impact, including his avatar, a lieutenant in the black-ops section of the Spectre Armada, who stood facing the camera, gently breathing, sidearm holstered while he waited to be sent into the game. 

Justin stood a little straighter, tightened his stomach muscles; he suddenly wished he looked a little more like ComdrEllustin13.

“The cat seems fine.” Miranda was still squinting at his monitor. “Is that Armageddon Impact?”

“Yeah.” Okay, this was interesting. “Do you play?”

She snapped out of her inquisitive trance with a little laugh. “No, but Elliot––my son––he wants to get it. I was going to get him the download for Christmas, but his father says it’s too violent.”

“Nah.” He could hear himself dragging out his soapbox. “I mean, there’s some shooting, but it’s all futuristic sci-fi stuff, no gore, and kills aren’t the point. It’s kinda RPG, mission-based. You develop a character over time and complete objectives. You can play with a crew on a starship, or do solo stuff, so if you don’t want him talking to internet weirdos, chat and social stuff can be shut off in the settings.”

Miranda drifted toward the monitor. “Did Marvin interrupt you? Were you…completing an objective?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. How lame was he, that he’d been planning to raid a syntholeum refinery on Clarisca Prime on a Friday night? “Not really. I was mucking around with my crew. I play with a bunch of people I’ve known from other gaming servers. We’re sorta between major campaigns right now, so we’re taking small quests and resourcing for this new map that’s supposed to come out in January.”

“I know this one,” Miranda said, turning to him with a broad grin. “Serentian V. It’s all Elliot talks about…” Her grin faded. “When he’s talking to me at all.”

Justin remembered the couple of years when he’d considered his mom the single lamest person on this or any planet. He also remembered a secret desire that she care about the stuff he was interested in, but she hadn’t wanted to hear about grunge music, Myst, or how actually awesome Philip K. Dick’s stories were.

“You want to crack the cool teen shell?” 

She fidgeted with her fingers; the corner of her lip quirked. “Is that even possible?”

“I promised the finest boxed wine I’ve got. Let me grab you a glass and I’ll take you on a tour of the game. The next time it comes up, you just casually drop any knowledge you pick up here. If I’m right, you’ll have a foot in the door.”

He jogged upstairs and dispensed two cheap wineglasses-full of surprisingly palatable Cabernet, and carried them downstairs. Miranda had discovered his dad’s bookshelves, now a bit cluttered with his reading habits. The double bookcase housed his father’s collection of espionage and conspiracy fiction, from mid-century pulp novels to John LeCarré and Daniel Silva. Justin’s books were crammed into the spaces above his dad’s.

He really didn’t want to think about emptying those shelves.

“Your wine.” He crossed to her and handed her the glass. “Now, let’s explore the quadrant and give you some talking points.”

“To research,” Miranda said, offering a little toast.

Miranda made it as far as her laundry room, located just off the garage that was a mirror image of the man next door’s–she hadn’t even gotten his name, before the panic attack came. She slumped down in front of the washer and focused on breathing in and out, even as her vision closed and her heart raced in her chest.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there pushing air in and out of her lungs before she could reliably move her limbs again. She hadn’t had one in months; almost long enough to forget how weak they left her. 

Before Mike left, she’d thought panic attacks were people being melodramatic. Her first one landed her in the ER thinking she was having a heart attack.

Not daring to look at her reflection, lest she lose what nerve remained to her, Miranda fished through the dryer for clean yoga pants and her softest sweatshirt. She slipped her feet into the sheepskin boots she kept by the garage door and grabbed her phone from her purse. Who knows what the pajama-clad cat whisperer next door was thinking, she’d been gone so long.

A tiny voice in her heart whispered that she ought to be thinking about how cute he was under the layer of bachelor neglect that clung to him like the lichen on the north side of her new house. The face under the scruff was handsome and kind. He wasn’t so tall as to be intimidating, and in possession of a very huggable, reasonably-fit-at-first-glance dad-bod.

Which was irrelevant, because dating––like so many other things––gave her panic attacks. Thanks, Mike.

She took the shoveled path to save her boots and returned to the scene of Marvin’s crime to find her neighbor had already righted the wire shelving and replaced the Rubbermaid bin.

“You didn’t wait for me.”

He shrugged. “Really it’s no big thing. I should get rid of the lights anyway.” A shadow crossed his features. “And the paint is no good anymore. Once you take Marvin home, I’ll close the garage and crack the cans open so they dry out.”

When had she gotten so old that a man who treated his refuse responsibly was a turn on? And where was Elliot’s demon familiar?

“Where is the cat?”

He pried the lid off a pain can’t with a screwdriver from the nearby workbench. “Batting a prawn around what passes for my den.”

He might care about the planet–or following the rules?–but what kind of man let a cat play with seafood in a furnished room? “If he retches that up in the night, I’ll bag it up and leave it on your doorstep.”

He laughed out loud. “I’d have no right to complain. Do you want to come in for a glass of wine or something? If you stay a bit, maybe he’ll barf it up here and save you the trip.”

In front of her friends, or Mike, she’d have pretended to be grossed out, but all bets were off with her strange neighbor who drank wine in his pajamas and shared his leftovers with destructive house cats. She giggled; the lightness was welcome. 

He fidgeted with with a can handle. “I’m sorry. That’s probably weird.”

His anxiety was as appealing as his recycling; it spoke to hers in a language she understood. “Not if we introduce ourselves before we drink to my pet’s digestive abilities.”

He stopped prying open cans long enough to give her a baffled––and embarrassed––half-smile. “Justin. Pearson.”

“Miranda McC––“ She stopped. That hadn’t happened in a while. “Brewer. Miranda Brewer.”

He scrubbed a hand across his five o’clock shadow. “Come on in, Miranda Brewer. I just cracked a box of Cabernet with our names on it.”

She waited a beat for the wave of cold sweat and racing pulse, but it didn’t come. “Okay, Justin. I will.”

Justin watched the woman next door wandering around her snowy yard in sensible pumps and a long wool coat, by the anemic LED light from her garage floods, wondering what on earth was wrong with him.

He’d seen her around, usually coming and going with the kid, for a week; he’d meant to walk over and introduce himself. Instead he’d slipped into his comfy chair and his noise cancelling headset, grabbed his keyboard, and let the complex politics of his Spectre Armada: Armageddon Impact crew swallow him whole.

The woman next door crouched in the snow, peering under the bayberry hedge that bordered the other side of her front yard. She dropped a crumpled something in order to chafe her palms together, and a frantic orange animal exploded out of the hedge to pounce on it.

With a grace Justin admired, she whipped off her scarf and wrapped the creature in it like a straightjacket, then rose and made her way across the yard. The struggling cat–for a large ginger cat it was–clutched a balled-up piece of red paper in it’s paws.

Justin had a moment of communion with both the cat and its capturer. He’d also crumpled up the holiday lights contest notice. His made it to the recycling bin, which was still sat the end of his driveway, because he’d been too embarrassed to go back outside for it after the woman next door  waved to him while he stood there in the freezing cold in his pajamas like an ass.

He only hoped the trash bin wouldn’t be too lonely in the garage until morning.

His casual observations had gone on long enough to seem creepy; he was about to walk away when a gust of wind snatched the cat’s prize away. It unfolded like a sitcom sequence. 

The paper danced out of the cat’s paws. The cat grabbed at it, wriggling loose from the woman and her scarf. The wind tossed the flyer toward his house, cat in hot pursuit. Paper and cat rolled into…his still-open garage.

He heard his father’s rack of paint cans go over, a metallic cacophony followed by a more solid crash, punctuated by the clacking of the woman next door’s heels on his driveway. He rushed down the hallway that led to the mud room and the garage. Her voice, unexpectedly melodious considering her string of creative profanity, met him when he burst into the garage. 

The cold–and the sheer volume of destruction created by ten pounds of feline–greeted him like punch in the chest.

“Marvin, you fucking monster. Come out from under the goddamn car.”

She sounded like a princess; her voice was soft and low with a touch of accent he couldn’t place. A righteously pissed off and embarrassed princess, judging by the fierce red stain on her cheeks and the angry glint in her eyes.

“I’ve got some tuna in the kitchen. Maybe that would help?” Or maybe say hello first, you idiot?

Her attention snapped to him. “I’m so sorry. He’s not adjusting well to the new house, and I–“

Whatever she was, she was also completely overwhelmed, he realized, as she burst into wet, noisy tears and buried her face in her hands.

Justin stood there, feeling helpless and foolish while this stranger wept in his garage. When the cadence of her crying slowed, he fell back on humor. “It doesn’t have to be tuna. I’ve got three-day-old soba noodles in the fridge.” 

She hiccuped a laugh and swiped at her eyes. Her cat chose that moment to saunter out from under his car and twine around his slippered feet. Justin scooped the up the cat. The demon settled into his arms and purred noisily.

“Goddamn Marvin,” she said, her voice raw and shaky from the tears. She stared at the dozen paint cans and several study plastic storage tubs scattered across the empty garage bay. “I’ll go home and change, then I’ll clean up this mess.”

Justin scratched the cat’s chin. He was a rather magnificent beast, with paws like half dollars and bobcat ears. “Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s just my dad’s old paint cans, and,” he squinted at his mother’s handwriting on the plastic bin, “the Christmas lights.”

“I can’t just leave all this…Marvin isn’t a bad cat–“ 

“He’s just misunderstood,” Justin said.

“He’s just…” She smiled, a blotchy, puffy-eyed smile, and Justin saw what he hadn’t noticed before. She was lovely. Not rock-your-world, too-hot-to-touch stunning, but quietly lovely. 

“Tell you what,” Justin said, hardly believing his own ears. “You go get changed, and we’ll clean all this up together. Meanwhile, I’m going to have a man-to-man conversation with Marvin here over cold shrimp soba noodles about how to behave around the woman who feeds you.”