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“I don’t know, honestly. We just haven’t talked about it.” Aspen leaned back in her chair.

“Is she covering Italy?”

“No,” Aspen replied.

“So, you won’t see her for over a week, then?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Are you going to miss her?”

Aspen looked out at the water beyond the sand and said, “Yeah.”

“Aspen, ask the woman out already.”

“DJ, it’s complicated. Chill.”

“Why? Because she interviews us sometimes?”

“And we live next door to each other.”

“Why is that complicated? That seems like it would make things simpler.”

“Really? What if I do ask her out, and she says no, for whatever reason she might have? I’m sure there are many. I’d still have to take my garbage cans out once a week, and we’d bump into each other. Or, I’d be in my backyard, and she’d be in hers, and it would all be awkward. What happens when I see a woman leaving her house in the morning? Or, if they’re on the patio, like, making out or something while they sit on some chaise lounge that she doesn’t have but I’m picturing right now?”

“Do you want to make out with her on the chaise lounge she doesn’t have?”

“Obviously,” Aspen said. “So, it would just be weird. Then, we’d have to see each other at these things, and we’d be forced to make awkward small talk where I pretend that I care about her new relationship while I’m still single and wishing she and I were together instead. It’s all complicated.”

“I think it’s pretty simple, actually,” DJ replied.

“How so?”

“Well, she obviously likes you, too. So, if you asked her out, she’d probably say yes, and you’d avoid that whole thing where she’d have someone else eventually because that someone would be you.”

“What if it doesn’t work out? What if she says yes, and we try, but it’s not there at some point? We live right next to each other. And it’s not like we’re renting these houses; we own them. We’re not moving out after a year when a lease is up. We’d be stuck there. And she won’t be single after that forever.”

“Aspen, you’re worried about things that haven’t even happened and might not at all.”

“Maybe, but–”

“I’ve never actually seen you like this before.”

“Like what?”

“Like it matters,” DJ replied.

“It does matter. She’s special.”

“I can tell. You’re different around her.”

“What do you mean?” Aspen asked, leaning forward in her folding chair.

“You’re impulsive; you know this. And, in your case, it’s not usually a bad thing. It’s not like you’re impulsively stealing cars out there or spending all your money on a bad shopping habit or something. You just usually don’t take time to make a decision, and sometimes, you don’t think things through. Alex is coming to mind.”

“Alex? What about her?”

“You knew she was in love with you, and you still took someone else back to your hotel room, Aspen. You didn’t have to do that. If you really wanted to sleep with her, you could’ve gone to her room on a different floor or just waited until Alex wasn’t in the room across the hall. You didn’t think about the fact that the next morning, Alex would wake up, and there would be a strong chance that she’d see you and her together. And I’m not saying this because I think you did it intentionally to hurt Alex or anything. It happened because you didn’t really think about it at all.”