Hello!

Heinz tried to convince him to sneak into the trunk to get in on the price of one ticket but dropped it when Perry just stared him down. Yeah, the price was a bit ridiculous, but OWCA needed to see Heinz on the straight-and-narrow, and Perry aiding and abetting technically criminal activity wouldn’t reflect kindly on either of them.

Instead, Perry pulled out his wallet and just paid for them both, ignoring Heinz’s protests.

Perry already knew the night was going to be a shit-show as soon as Heinz told him where they were going. The drive-in? Really?

The man had already had at least one disastrous first date there, and yet he wanted to go again?

Had Perry been cursed? Is this what he got for dating Linda’s ex because she married his?

Sure, he was exaggerating a bit. He and Lawrence had never actually dated, and one failed date did not make Linda and Heinz exes, but the parallels were getting to be uncanny, and Perry was not enjoying it.

When Candace pulled out the play makeup kit she’d gotten for Christmas, Perry resigned himself to having the most god-awful combination of colors slathered on his face in quantities that could constitute as a war-crime if anyone other than an eight-year-old was applying it.

⸢Make me pretty, sweetheart,⸥ he signed to her in encouragement. ⸢I need something to match my dress.⸥

If it were for anything other than this, Perry knew he’d at least be feeling a twinge of dysphoria. But Candace was a little girl who simply thought that pretty clothes were for everyone and didn’t see him as a girl too just because he put on a sparkly play dress.

So ‘Prince Uncle Perry’ he would be. Squeezed into a dress two sizes too small that Candace insisted he borrow from Linda, the back left unzipped to fit over his much broader shoulders and waist, worn over his house clothes – in this case, PJs.

It was all a bit silly, but he’d put up with it for his little girl.

Nina had moved into 2306 Maple Drive just a week back and was still settling into the home. She’d gotten a few side-eyes from a couple of the neighbors for being a young woman purchasing a home on her own, but most of them were friendly and inviting.

The neighbors to her right had been out of town when she moved in, but Vivian Garcia-Shapiro kitty-corner to her said they’d be back sometime today.

Nina wasn’t sure why she was so anxious about it.

She supposed because they were the last people she needed to meet. She hoped their reaction to her would be good.

Especially since Mrs. Garcia Shapiro (she couldn’t call her by her first name, however much she insisted. She reminded Nina too much of her own mother) said they all could sign too.

It’d be nice to have neighbors that she could talk to. Though, she’d never seen any Flynn-Fletchers at any of the Deaf community events she went to. Maybe it was just that they had a relative who was Deaf? Or one of the kids, too young to come to the kinds of events Nina went to.

Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro hadn’t said.

Mrs. McGillicuddy was probably the worst offender, but she was far from the first to perpetuate the eternal neighborhood gossip against Perry, Linda, and Lawrence. Everyone on the outside looking in at them had their theories based on how the three of them interacted.

No matter how many times Linda and Lawrence stated Perry was simply a family friend, they were never believed.

After all, all the neighbors had to do was point to Perry and Linda’s flirtations, the way they danced a bit too closely at block parties and local events, the fact that they kissed each other on the cheek when saying hello and goodbye.

One group presumed Linda was stepping out on Lawrence with Perry under his nose. That Lawrence was none-the-wiser to his ‘dear old friend’ fucking his wife while living under the same roof.

Perry wrote those people off.