Chapter Text
When Jacob and his brother’s had moved to Hope County seven years ago, they had convinced him to move into a condo. You should live around people, they had said, when he had announced his intention to purchase a cabin in the woods. Don’t isolate yourself.
Well, Jacob’s brothers were known fools, but maybe he was too for actually taking their advice.
Jacob lived in the second from last condo on the right. One of the Fowler brothers – he never did commit to memory the man’s first name – lived to his left, and was a decent enough neighbor in that he never interacted with him in the least, but his neighbor to the right, in the end unit?
A fucking nightmare.
She had moved to Hope County in the early fall from god knows where – hell, probably – and had been a thorn in his side ever since. Whenever he needed to do something, there she was. If he wanted to sit on his porch out back and relax with a beer, she was on the back lawn making a fire pit big enough to see from space with a friend who owned a flamethrower. If he wanted to listen to his music in the comfort of his own home, her music was on and drowned out his. Hell, if he even leaves for work in the morning, her dog Boomer has already been through digging discreet holes in his lawn. For a man who spent a considerable amount of his life as a sniper in the army with a duty was to spot a target hundreds of meters away, he sure hadn’t been able to spot Boomer’s surprises until it was too late. Jacob has twisted his ankle not once, but twice now.
When he sees her in person, she’s perfectly amiable and quiet, but with a strong laugh that’s infectious and a curious nature. (She almost always asked what he was reading after she saw him with a book on evolutionary theory once.) Sometimes he’ll see her at the gun range too and ask him how he did. He’s pretty sure she was asking because she wants to see if she did better, but he doesn’t hold that against her. And while he would never admit to it in the light of day, if he’s being honest, she’s the kind of attractive that makes him feel wildly inadequate whenever he’s near her.
Just the thought of her, good or bad, needled at him, so when he heard her knocking on his front door, he groaned. What does she want?
He opened the door and greeted her with a terse, “Rook.”
She’s a flurry of activity, smoothing her hair out of her face, smiling up at him and greeting him breathlessly like she ran a mile before she got to his door. “Hi Jacob! How are you?”
She waited for his response dutifully although he can tell by the way she’s squirming in front of him that she’s just waiting until she can talk again. She didn’t knock on his door to ask him how he was. She wanted something.
“So listen, have you heard about the Hope County Decorating Contest?”
Jacob had. Hope County was having a Christmas house decorating contest every year with the winner being decided by the town council. Mayor Minkler announced the winner and presented them with a prize of $500 and bragging rights. Every year Eli Palmer won it.
“I was wondering if you wanted to decorate our condos together? I’m going to make my condo the brightest Hope County’s ever seen! I need someone tall with a ladder – that’s where you come in – and we would both benefit if we won.” She paused for a minute to gauge his steely expression and realized it might be a harder sell than she thought. She was persistent though. “If we win, we could split the cash!”
The thing was, Jacob hated Christmas, had always hated Christmas, and especially now that he was older, hated it even more, if that were even possible. When they were children, the Seed boys had been taken from their family and placed in a horrible foster home right around Christmas-time. Ever since, the season had been a sore spot in his life. And it didn’t help that since then, as the Seeds grew, and recovered from their horrible childhoods, and they began to make families of their own, Jacob had stayed stagnant. Celebrating Christmas felt like a chore that forced him to deal with the possibility that he’d die alone.
But he couldn’t tell her all that, so he just told her no. “Don’t think I’m decorating this year for the holiday.” He immediately felt a twinge of regret when her shoulders fell, she averted her gaze, and a blush spread across her cheeks, so he finished with a lame sorry and a shrug of his shoulders.
She assured him that it was no big deal and hurried off, visibly deflated, and that nervous, breathless energy she came to him with, gone.