Chapter 15

“Funny. I hear his ego is too big to notice anything else.”

Leo laughed. “All right, all right. I’m just kidding. Mostly. I mean, I ama genius, but…”

Gordy looked away. “You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m not really in the mood for joking.”

“No, I know. I know. I’m just—” Leo stopped an excuse before it fell off his tongue. “I’m sorry. Of course you’re not. I’m terrible at knowing when to not try to defuse things with humour. Or sarcasm. Or whatever. What I was trying to say, is that I thought, you know, if you knew who I was and what I did, and I was also being bothered by the whole Belinda schtick, that you might have reached out. Kind of a win-win, right? Meet the neighbour you’ve been stalking—”

“Noticed,” Gordy said irritably. “I said I had noticedyou. I wasn’t stalking you.”

Leo continued without offering a rebuttal, “And maybe get some cool ideas on how to deal with the problem.”

For the first time that night, a spark of interest lit in Gordy’s eyes. “Like what?”