Chapter 213: Dog Dates and Drive Times

“How boring,” Ellis muttered. With that, she sidestepped Morty. After waving goodbye to Maya, she walked straight ahead. Unexpectedly, Morty followed.

“It’s lonely walking by yourself; let me join you for a bit!”

His words made her involuntarily glance back at him.

“Really idle!” she said, not bothering to hide her disdain. “Stop following me; it’s bad luck.”

“Me, bad luck?” Morty pointed at himself, feigning surprise.

“If you’re not bad luck, who is? It’s like a dark, dirty thing clinging to me on this black night.” Ellis was seriously annoyed, not just with Easton but all of them. Being around them always seemed to bring nothing good.

Morty was silent for a moment. “I haven’t offended you recently, have I?”

Ellis didn’t respond, focusing straight ahead. At that moment, Maya barked a few times, but Ellis didn’t look back; instead, she put on her headphones and started playing her favorite songs, immersing herself in a faintly detached world, isolated from everything else.

Just as she was nearing the gated entrance to the villa area, fate seemed to frown on her, and a light rain began to fall. Caught without an umbrella, the raindrops started to soak through her clothes. Ellis quickly ran under a nearby awning to check her phone to see how long it would take for her ride-share to arrive.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a man and a dog—Morty and Maya—entering her peripheral vision. She looked up, somewhat perplexed. “Coming out here following me, you must be really bored.”

Before she could finish, the light rain turned into a downpour, causing her to frown deeply. The rain splashed up, wetting the bottom of her pants. She instinctively tried to move back, but there was a wall behind her, and the sheltered space under the awning was too narrow to fully escape the rain.

“Since I’m idle anyway, and you’re Maya’s godmother, it’s only right for me and Maya to walk you a bit,” Morty said, gauging the rainfall. “You don’t have an umbrella or a car, and if you walk to the road from here, you’ll be soaked.”

“No need to point out the obvious.”

Ellis wanted to borrow an umbrella but couldn’t, so she pinned her hopes on the ride-share driver. Unfortunately, the driver was blocked by the storm and couldn’t make it, asking her to cancel the ride and order another.

“Shall I have my driver take you?”

While reordering the ride and hesitating over which car to choose, she heard Morty speak from above her. Originally thinking Morty was just aimlessly hanging around, upon hearing his offer, Ellis scrutinized him carefully. He strangely gave her a sense of unfamiliarity, especially with the gentle smile on his face at that moment.

“You really are idle,” she finally said, unable to think of anyone else in her life who seemed more unoccupied than Morty. Idle, not in the sense that he was a loafer, but that he appeared excessively unoccupied around her. With all this free time, why not do something productive?

Morty didn’t respond but made a call to his driver.

Chapter 213: Dog Dates and Drive Times

The driver arrived incredibly fast, parking in front of them within three minutes and bringing two oversized umbrellas. Before Morty could signal, the driver handed one directly to her. However, Morty was quicker, grabbing the umbrella from her.

Ellis didn’t understand what Morty was doing. The next moment, Morty opened the umbrella and shifted it over her head, completely shielding her.

“As you said, I really am idle. Since I’m already here, I might as well drive you home,” Morty then signaled Maya to get into the car.

Then, Ellis saw Maya dash into the back seat of the car. What’s going on with this man and his dog!

She hadn’t responded to Morty’s earlier offer to have his driver take her home, already having placed a new ride-share order, thinking about using the umbrella to get home if the rain didn’t stop by the time she reached her complex. But Morty insisted on driving her home himself, overly familiar in his approach.

Seeing Ellis still standing there, Morty urged, “Come on.”

“Speechless,” Ellis muttered softly. She had made her dislike for Morty quite clear all evening, not even bothering with pleasantries, yet he still insisted. What was he thinking!

“What was that?” Morty, who had actually heard her, asked teasingly, “Thanking me?”

Ellis decided to remain silent, refusing to engage further with Morty. Feeling like she was being roasted over a fire, she saw Maya looking at her expectantly from the car, so she finally got in and sat in the back seat with Maya.

Normally, to be polite when someone is driving you, you’d sit in the passenger seat, to avoid the awkward implication of treating them like a chauffeur. But she didn’t care about that; let it be awkward. It was Morty who insisted on driving her, not her asking for it.

Once everyone was settled—two humans and a dog—Morty started the car.

“What music do you like?” He tapped the screen. “Want to connect your phone to the car’s Bluetooth and play something?”