I have been single for a while now…like 4+ years. I Got divorced a few years back after I did some really stupid shit, but the marriage had been failing for a while. Work took me to the southwest a bit before COVID, and I was more or less trapped in my neighborhood for the duration. That doesn’t mean things were boring.
Jessica is the subject of this story. She was my next door neighbor. We lived in a semi-private community in a pretty nice neighborhood. It’s the kind of place where everyone’s backyard is surrounded by a white, 6’ high concrete wall. When I moved in, she and her husband had recently had their second kid. Jess is an RN and right from the get-go, we got along well.
The weekend after I’d finished moving, I was in my backyard with my dog, Willy. He’s a half-border collie/lab mix and I was playing fetch with him by throwing a frisbee in my pool and making him jump in to get it. He loves this game, and the length of the pool was one of the reasons I bought my house. It’s really long and narrow, with a sort of bench on one end and a 18” deep “Baja step” on the other end, so the dog can easily get in and out.