The Strange Man

Columbo

Charlie was enraged. His bag of clothes was flung over his shoulder as he walked down the hall, mumbling angrily and making dramatic hand movements. 'If I never see her again, I'm gonna make Frank pay...', he thought to himself.
His fit was suddenly interrupted by the sound of running and a familiar voice calling out, "Charlie! Wait!" Charlie turned to see Dahlia running towards him frantically. Her long hair and oversized coat flew behind her. She was a mess, but somehow that kind of attracted Charlie more to her. Maybe because he was a mess too.
"What... what are you doing here?", he asked. He was incredibly confused. Dahlia stopped and said, "I live right next door to you. We need to talk."
To that, Charlie nodded and responded, "OK," before motioning for her to walk with him. Dahlia was now the confused one. 'Why is he so calm?', she thought to herself before following the man. Actually, that was a good question. "Why are you so calm?... Aren't you weirded out?", she asked. He laughed and shrugged. "Why would I be weirded out?" To that she responded, "Because I've been living next to you without you knowing and I didn't say anything even when we met at your bar... where you work...?" Charlie stopped for a moment as he processed her response. "Why didn't you tell me that you knew me when you visited the bar?" His face was scrunched up with confusion.
She was digging her own grave, wasn't she? It was too late to stop though. "I'm a private investigator and my business hasn't really started up yet, which means that I have no cases, which made me bored...", she rambled on. "I heard you and your roommate fighting last night, then I saw you at the coffee shop and you just... intrigued me. You actually have your own section in my notebook, you see. I called you the 'strange man next door', which made you seem even more ominous to me..." She clumsily pulled out her notebook and showed him his section (which was surprisingly extensive for a day's worth of research). Dahlia continued, "I heard you talking at the coffee shop and learned that you worked at Paddy's Pub and that your life is basically a sitcom, so I decided to investigate. It turns out you're much nicer than your section makes you seem, which reminds me why I should be doing more research 'in the field' rather than at home on my computer."
They stood silently for a bit as they stared at each other. Dahlia thought to herself, 'Is he scared or something? There's no expression on his face and no physical indicators of how he might be feeling.' She just waited until he nonchalantly said, "So you're stalking me?" Dahlia's eyes widened with shock. "No!", she said. "Definitely not! I was gathering information on you..." she began to trail off, then said, "Maybe I was kinda stalking you...", she considered his question, which she found to be quite valid. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't even stop to think about how weird I was being." Her face now displayed a sad, shameful expression as she stared at the ground. She began to bite her at her already chapped and chewed-up lips (it was a bad anxious habit of hers).
Charlie saw her expression and felt bad. "It's not weird," he said softly. "It's actually kinda nice that you found me so interesting, especially considering the fact that you're an actual, real life private investigator." His voice had hints of excitement in it. "And you're probably like really smart and cool like the PI's on TV."
Dahlia looked up. 'Not weird?', she thought. 'Smart and cool?' She was shocked and flattered by the man's comments. Charlie continued, "...and you have a trench coat just like Columbo!..." She couldn't believe what he was saying; no one ever seemed to realize that she was trying to look like Columbo (who was one of her absolute favorite detectives). His comments made her smile. "No one ever seems to notice that I'm trying to look like Columbo, so... thank you. It actually means a lot that you seem to think so highly of me." Dahlia made Charlie smile. He stared into her eyes for a moment before saying, "You wanna get something to eat?" She nodded happily and followed the man out of the building.