I continued down Maple Street and then turned left onto Oak Street. Six blocks down and on my right was Ms. Jones’ old house. She had a corner lot house and it was beautiful. What a shame that she had to sell and move to Florida. She had a colonial style house w/ a beautiful weeping willow tree in the front yard. Someone had definitely moved in and started making changes. She had some gorgeous rose bushes in her front lawn and those were ripped up and replaced with some small lilac bushes and there was fresh mulch all along her fence line.
Her garage was detached and since she was on a corner lot, her house was on Oak but her garage was actually facing out onto Pine. I turned the corner and started to jog past her garage and that’s when I ran into him. Literally, I ran into Cole.
“Ouch! Do you watch where you’re going?”
“I am so sorry”
“Were you stalking me? Why were you jogging past my house staring at it?”
“No I was not stalking you! I knew the previous owner and I was sad to find out she moved. I wanted to take a jog past her house because I felt bad that I never said good bye to her”
“Well, she’s not here to say goodbye to”
“I know that”
There was a brief silence and I couldn’t help but notice how amazing Cole looked in lounge clothes. He had on gray sweat pants and a black t-shirt. His hair was a mess and he was holding the morning paper in his hand.
“Well, since she’s not here to say goodbye to I suppose you could say good morning to me instead”
“Good morning Cole”
“Good morning Shelby”
“So I see your family has made some changes to Mrs. Jones’ old house.”
“You wanted to stand here and talk about landscaping?”
Could he have more of an attitude? Has Cole never heard of small talk?
“No not really. I’m going to finish my jog now”
I started jogging away when Cole called out after me “Hang on, I’d like to jog with just let me get my shoes”
Was this really happening? Now I was going to share my morning jog with ‘Mr. Attitude’. I don’t know why I waited but I did.
A few short minutes later Cole was by my side and we were jogging back into town. Not sure what to say to him I played tour guide and showed him local stores and told him about things to do in town. I don’t think he was really paying attention but at least it made our run less awkward for me.
