PS There’s a board meeting at the end of the month and I’m gonna ask them to pull back on the legal stuff. Try to persuade them that maybe you’re exactly the kind of person this place needs, after all.

Oh wow.

Hannah’s eyes filled with tears once she’d finished reading Ed’s latest note, found beneath the door when she got home from work. Given the week she’d had, it truly couldn’t have come at a better moment.

She’d heard nothing from Rob since. The golf tournament was this weekend though, so maybe he’d decided to wait until he was in town before reaching out to her again.

Or not at all.

As it was, she’d had little choice but to set aside her monumental embarrassment, which Hannah was almost certain had been predicated by that errant wandering stray. She’d kept all windows closed in the apartment since then.

Her client list was growing larger by the day, as were the number of alerts on her phone and the size of her workload. While yes, she was keen to impress at the new office, she was now starting to regret her earlier enthusiasm and agreement to tackle such a time-sucking client list.

In short, the pressure was starting to get to her.

So to know that Ed next door had finally come around, and she had one less thing to consider and was safe in the knowledge that she could remain in Courtney’s apartment without worrying about further neighbourly missteps, was a huge relief. She was sure the influencer in turn would be over the moon that Hannah’s little overtures had essentially smoothed the way for her problematic lawsuit to disappear too.

Finally, something was looking up.

She read back through the note (though this one was more of a letter), touched and intrigued too by Ed’s list of truths about men.

Six classic truths, mirroring the Classic Six in which they both resided. She chuckled, wondering if that was intentional; she’d already got the sense that he was a wry and witty old soul, and a lot smarter than he pretended to be.

Regardless, she fully intended to use some of these intergenerational nuggets of wisdom when it came to the men in her life, her ex too. Maybe some straight-talking to Rob had been long overdue and the cat had done her a favour after all?

One male in particular for whom the majority of Ed’s advice resonated though, was of course, Ward McKenzie. A bit of a relic himself by all accounts, though Hannah truly was getting a much better handle on the hockey player these days.

Perhaps too much, she mused, blushing afresh, as she once again replayed in her mind their heated encounter outside the podcast place that morning, when at one point during their bickering she was almost certain (hopeful?) that Ward was going to kiss her.