“You need a hobby that doesn’t include mooning over your hot British neighbor.”
“Says the one filling up water balloons with flour to throw at her own hot neighbor.” She took the flour bomb I handed her and tied it off.
“He put a rubber spider in the mailbox and about gave me a heart attack. He deserves to be flour-bombed.”
“Didn’t he do that in college?”
“Mm-hmm. He said it wasn’t him, but that’s what he said when I found one in my panty-drawer.”
“I remember that. You screamed so loud you woke the dead.”
“It wasn’t that loud.” Except it was. It really, really was.
I’d only wanted panties.
Not a heart attack.
“So what are you going to do? Throw these out of the window whenever you see him?”
I handed her another balloon to tie off. “Well, I’m not going to block his exhaust pipe with them, am I, genius?”
“That would be a hell of an explosion.” She grabbed a cloth and wiped flour from the counter right as the door opened.
Two old ladies I knew lived at the senior center waddled in, their fabric shopping bags slung over their hunched shoulders. They beelined for the knitting yarn as their carer, Melissa, ran in before the door could fully shut behind her.
“God, they’re fast.” She blew out a long breath and frowned when she saw what I was working on. “Is that for a class?”
“It’s for a kind of lesson,” I replied vaguely. I didn’t need everyone knowing what I was going to do to Mason. “How are the ladies today?”
“As sticky-fingered as ever,” she answered brightly. “But that’s what I’m here for.”
I grinned. Marsha and Constantine were almost ninety and both had been battling dementia for almost as long as I could remember. Their weekly visits to the store were a point of contention because they almost always tried to leave without paying for something.
It wasn’t their fault. They simply forgot.
“I better get to them,” Melissa said when there was a clatter of what sounded a lot like knitting needles to the floor. “Oh, Immy? If you’re using those to teach a lesson to someone, I’ve always had great success with throwing a water balloon first.” She winked and disappeared to where the ladies could be heard fussing about the mess.
Hannah turned to me. “Water first. That’s genius.”
I shoved a handful at her. “Get filling. I have taking over the world to do.”
“I’m not sure this counts as taking over the world, Immy.”
“Do you want me to flour bomb your car?”
“I don’t know how I put up with you,” she muttered, grabbing the empty balloons.
“You don’t have a choice,” I called as she walked into the back room. “We share DNA!”
“Unfortunately!”
Yeah, for me.
***
My bedroom gave me the perfect vantage point to throw water and flour bombs at Mason’s car.
This wasn’t mature at all. I wasn’t going to pretend this was a remotely adult thing for me to do, but I was going to enjoy every second of it.
The truth was, I knew Mason would be expecting this. Flour bombs had always been my chosen method of retaliation, and I’d once gotten him on his way to class. He hadn’t had time to go back to his dorm and get changed, so he’d spent the entire lecture looking like Jack Frost had taken a huge, snowy shit on him.
Flour was apparently difficult to remove from your clothing.
I wasn’t aiming for his clothing, though. I was aiming for his car. I was going to sludge the shit out of it with my water and flour bombs.
The problem was I had to get the flour to hit immediately after the water. I didn’t exactly always have the best aim, but Mason would know exactly what I was doing the moment he heard the water bomb explode on his car.
I’d also watched him earlier like a little stalker to make sure he didn’t have his daughter with him. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally hit that sweet girl in the process of pissing off her dad.
I did have a heart.
Somewhere.
It was buried under my inner bitch. I was pretty sure my inner bitch ate my heart for breakfast, to be perfectly honest with you.
I pushed my window open to see how far I could lean out of it. Far enough to get a good swing on the bomb and throw it with enough force for it to break.
That’d do.
I grabbed one of the water bombs in my right hand and took a flour one with my left. I was going to do this, and I was going to do it right.
I drew in a deep breath and focused on the car. It was a nice car. Shiny. Probably new.
Not for much longer.
I threw the water bomb with all my might. It was a dud and didn’t break on impact, so I muttered a cuss word and tried again with a second.
It hit the back of the roof, exploding all across his car. The late afternoon sun glinted off the water that was already beading on the vehicle, and I quickly switched to the flour bomb and did the same.
Unfortunately for me, Mason was in my way.
Fortunately for me, my aim was spot on, and I hit him on the back of the head, covering him—and the car—with flour.
It could have been worse.
I clapped my hands over my mouth and dipped down, crouching beneath the window. Ridiculous. He already knew it would be me.
That was what I got for using my signature move.
Also, that thump on the head probably hurt a little.
“Imogen!” His voice carried up to the open window. “You’re the worst hider ever!”
All right. I was.
I peeked up over the window ledge and peered down at him.
He was not happy.
“Hiya,” I said, wiggling my fingers. “In my defense, I warned you.”
He folded his arms across his chest and glared up at me. “This is it, is it? We’re regressing back to our college years?”
“You started this with the spider.”
“I told you; that wasn’t me.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“You’re lucky you’re up there, or I’d toss you on the mess you’ve made of my car.”
“If you try to so much as touch me, I’ll scream and kick you in the balls.”
“You know as well as I do that threat loses its effectiveness after one too many times.”
I paused. “I only did it three times!”
“You didn’t get me once,” he said smugly. “You needed what you were aiming for.”
“Yeah, well, that was then, and this is now. The only long, hard thing I need is on my nightstand.”
Mason’s eyebrows shot up.
I grabbed it and hung it out the window. “Yeah, my baseball bat.”
“That’s not what I was expecting.”
“Do you really think I’m going to flash my vibrator to the neighborhood?”
“You may as well, considering you just announced to everyone that you own one.”
“Most women do. They don’t answer back, see.”
“Let me guess: unlike men, who do?”
“Are you answering back right now?”
“It’s a vital part of conversation, Imogen. It usually requires at least two people to speak.”