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Then he opened the passenger door and lifted out a tiny human in a tutu and rain boots, and my ovaries did a thing I immediately shut down.

The little girl was maybe four or five, wearing her chaotic outfit like a fashion statement. Purple tutu over jeans. Yellow rain boots despite the complete lack of rain. A t-shirt with what appeared to be a dinosaur wearing sunglasses. She was gesturing wildly as she talked, her father nodding along like whatever she was saying made perfect sense.

That was when she spotted me through the window. Even from across the driveways, I could see her whole face light up. She pointed directly at me and started bouncing, tugging on her father’s arm. I couldn’t hear the words but the body language was clear: new person alert, must investigate immediately.

The man looked where she was pointing and I ducked away from the window, because apparently I’d regressed to middle school. Real smooth, Sam. Very adult of you.

By the time I convinced myself to stop being ridiculous and go outside like a normal human who’d just bought a house, they were already halfway across my disaster of a yard. The little girl was practically dragging her father, who looked resigned to his fate in the way of parents everywhere.

Up close, he was even more devastating to look at. The kind of handsome that made you angry because it wasn’t fair for people to look like that in real life. I pulled my sunglasses off because hiding behind them felt stupid, then immediately regretted it because now I had to make actual eye contact.

The little girl, now walking on her own feet, beat him to the punch, stopping just short of my legs and looking up with confidence only children possess.

“Hi! I’m Noa and I’m five years old and that’s my daddy and you’re pretty and I like your house and do you have any pets?”

All one sentence. No breathing required apparently.

“Noa.” Her father’s voice was exactly what you’d expect from someone who looked like that. Deep. Rumbly. It probably sounded even better first thing in the morning - Geez. What was wrong with me?

“What? She is pretty, Daddy. You said we should always tell the truth.”

I bit back a laugh as color crept up his neck. He cleared his throat and offered the world’s most formal nod. “You bought the Henley place?”

“Apparently,” I said, aiming for casual and hitting somewhere around mildly hysterical.

His gaze swept over the sagging porch, the jungle yard, the general air of catastrophe surrounding my new home. “Bold choice.”

It wasn’t rude or judgmental, just dry statement of fact, delivered so deadpan it almost made me laugh. Which pissed me off because I didn’t want to laugh. I wanted to wallow in my terrible choices and maybe cry into my nonexistent furniture.

“Dad says it’s a fixer-upper,” Noa announced helpfully. “That means it’s broken but you can make it better. Like when I colored on the walls and we had to paint over it.”

“Noa.”

“What? It’s true!” She was shrieking.

“Inside voice.”

“We’re outside, Daddy.”

The look he gave her suggested this was an ongoing battle. She grinned at him, unrepentant, then turned back to me.

“I’m Noa,” she said again, like maybe I’d forgotten in the last thirty seconds. “And this is my daddy Tyson and we live right there. We don’t have any neighbors ‘cept now we do ‘cause you’re here! Do you have kids? We could play. I have a lot of toys. And ants. I found ants.”

“Noa, let’s let Ms…?”

“Sam,” I supplied, completely charmed despite myself. “Just Sam.”

“Let’s let Ms. Sam get settled.”

“But Daaaad.”

“No buts. Except yours, moving back to our house.”

She sighed dramatically, like he’d asked her to clean her room instead of stop interrogating strangers. “Fine. Bye, Sam! I’ll see you tomorrow probably!”

She skipped off, tutu bouncing, leaving her father and me in that special kind of awkward that happens when two adults are left alone after a child has been aggressively friendly.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” he said finally. “If you need anything…” He gestured vaguely toward his house, an offer that was polite but not necessarily genuine.