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“How can the app tell? I mean, photo identity wouldn’t work, right?” Olivia asked.
“You bump phones together. ‘Tap the app before you tap that.’”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, well, worse if you found out that guy you’ve been screwing around with is cousin Olaf or something. Can you imagine?” Jaylen asked.
“Wouldn’t their family names clue them in?” Olivia saw the neighborhood gossip walking her schnauzer, waving a hello hand in the air. Olivia pretended not to notice and turned around, dragging Henrietta away from the delicious smell she was snorting. “Sorry, Hen. I’ll let you sniff that tomorrow.” Once they’d picked up their pace, Olivia said. “I’m assuming you looked up Icelandic naming conventions. And for anyone else, I’d think they were bored out of their mind to have done that.”
“I am bored out of my mind. Thank you for noticing. Your calls throughout the day are my touchstones of sanity.” Jaylen laughed. “My gladstones. Get it?”
“Cute. Yeah, but Jaylen, this is something you’d do anyway, chase a detail down the rabbit hole.”
“Guilty. Okay, in Iceland, there are traditionally no family names. It’s usually the dad’s first name plus son or daughter added to the end. So I’d be Jaylen Geraldsdottir, and you’d be Olivia Darensdottir.”
“Yeah, I like Gladstone better. By the way, you were right. Nutsbe’s last name was changed at Ellis Island. It was some Nordic name meaning protector.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes, but I looked it up, and he was right.”
“See? You do the rabbit thing, too. In the end—Tilly, don’t lick that frog, please. Put it down. We look, don’t touch—you tried to throw me off the subject of Nutsbe, yet here you are circling around.”
“He's too good,” Olivia said, starting up her drive. “I don't trust it.”
“Teeth pulling it is. Prior to this kiss, did Nutsbe make any advances on you something besides being neighborly that makes you think he’s not too trustworthy? Love bombing you? Gaslighting you? Telling you how great he is?”
“No. Nothing.” Olivia fished her keys from her pocket.
“Do you think he likes you?”
She slid the key into the lock and opened the door, letting Henrietta in first before she turned to scan the neighborhood. She still had bogeyman vibes, which made sense, given how her week went. “Hard to tell.”
“Why?”
“Cause he's not love bombing, gaslighting, or trying to convince me he's the best thing that ever walked into my life,” Olivia chuckled as she shut the door behind her.
“Okay, get to the juicy stuff. Who kissed whom?
“I kissed him,” Olivia admitted.
“The cad!”
“Stop.” She felt guilty about it.
“Did he reciprocate?”
“It was a nice kiss.” Olivia unhooked Henrietta and put the lead on its peg. “Right track, wrong timing.” Damn the timing. “But very nice. Too nice.”
“How can a kiss be too nice? I hear a tad bit of regret in your voice. Get it? Tad bit—”
“Yeah, I got it. Well shoot,” Olivia moaned. “I’ve been doing that to him all along.”
“What?”
“The tad thing,” Olivia said. “A tad bit this, tad bit of that, it’s embarrassingly obvious.”
“Low-hanging fruit.”