Shayne Topp

Let's call her Elle.

I can't describe it, but it's the first time I've ever met someone and been lost for words and my heart was racing and just thought, oh my God.

She can lift things with her mind.

It's crazy.

I saw her squish a bug with her bare hands.

So after I blushed my way through a welcome to the village type convo, we only saw each other for a wave and a hello for a few days.

To help kind of settle in, I had my dog, Bee, with me for the first few weeks.

During this time, there was a massive increase in dog thefts in a nearby town, not just from gardens, but literally wrestled away from people.

If I'd been working furloughed off and on since March, then I would have taken B back to mom's, but since I was home with her all day, she stayed.

So the local police advised us not to walk dogs alone, but we go out twice a day, a 10K run in the morning and a few miles walk in the evening.

Obviously, this scares me, but at the same time, she is honestly a pain in the arse and gets upset if she doesn't go for a run and needs to be tired out, so I'm kind of stuck at this point.

Then along comes Elle.

She knocked on the door and offered to come with us as she'd seen Bea and me in the evenings, and everything kind of spiraled from there.

I told her about my morning runs, but she didn't really bite, so I thought nothing of it.

Then a few days later, I bumped into her on a run, so she started joining us on those too.

A few months later, and we are spending more and more time together every day.

It has now progressed to a run early morning, afternoon coffee, dinner most evenings, and then the evening walk.

It just seemed to happen without me really noticing.

I didn't read into things that much as I don't want to get my hopes up and ruin anything until another neighbor commented about how much time we spend together and how it's nice to see you young gals getting on and winked.

She actually winked at me.