Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
“How was I supposed to know?”
His jaw clenches. “You need to be instructed not to mow over a flowerbed?”
“Didn’t I say sorry?”
“No, actually, you didn’t.”
“Why the hell didn’t they have a border?”
His eyes find my chest again. Blink away with irritation. Then snap to my eyes. “Say what?”
“A border,” I repeat. “Around them. Protective border. Like bricks. Something. They needed one. How was I supposed to know they were so precious to my aunt? You can’t leave something like that out in the open. Defenseless. Unprotected. Otherwise …” I watch him look at me again and again, then look away. Why’s he so dang twitchy? “Otherwise some asshole’s gonna mow over it.”
“Can you please put on a shirt?”
I freeze. “Huh?”
“I’m trying to be civil with you.”
I’m lost. “What does me wearing a shirt have to do with—?”
“You’re not some asshole. You’re just …” He takes a step back. “You just need to be more careful with the things entrusted to you. Like this house. And all the precious memories it holds.”
“I don’t need you telling me that.”
“Lottie and Marcos—”
“You think I don’t know this house holds memories?”
“They treated this house with love, with respect—”
“I have love. I have respect.”
“You just destroyed a flowerbed.”
“By accident.”
“Not to mention ripping down her curtains—”
“Curtains?” I don’t realize we’ve stepped closer, practically in each other’s faces now. “The hell’s this about curtains?”
“All I’m saying is …” He lets out a huff of agitation. “You need to be the border, Diego. Not the mower.”
His words stop whatever I was about to say.
Leaves me staring him down, confused. Then struck.
Then annoyed again.
The mower continues growling behind me, clicking in its own kind of agitation, waiting.
What am I supposed to say now? “I can go and … pick up some bricks. Or wood. Something to make a border.”
“Don’t bother.” He turns and walks away.
The hell? “I said I—Hey!—I said I’ll get some bricks and—” My eyes drop to what looks like a full grocery bag sitting in the grass where he stood. Was he holding that the whole time? Didn’t even notice. I pick it up. It’s heavy. “Hey, you left your—!”
But he’s already back in his house.
It’s over.
Yet feels far from.
He doesn’t have to like me. But going from smiling nice guy to whatever that was? Telling me to put on a shirt because we can’t have a civil conversation otherwise?
I look down at the bag.
At the top, a Hadley’s Hardware sticker slapped on a package.
It’s a toolbox.
Receipt tucked in next to it, folded nicely in half with its price scratched out.
I look over at his house again, the front window, the one he was looking at me through earlier.
No eyes are looking back.
I throw the bag into the garage by the door, wanting nothing to do with it or him, then return to the rumbling mower, release the brake, and get my ass back to work under the punishing early evening sun. Despite trying not to, I keep eyeing his house every few seconds, confused.
—3—
Wyatt
I ask my parents for advice.
Y’know, on what to do in a hypothetical petulant man-child-next-door situation.
But ever since leaving on their cross-country “journey of self-discovery”—which we all knew was code for “midlife crisis/second honeymoon”—it’s difficult to get them to take me seriously. Mom always sounds high. Dad’s always in the middle of a nap. I’ve been on my own for the last few years and no one’s fooling anyone.
And is this really something worth bothering them over?
Lottie and Marcos’s nightmare nephew?
I invite a few friends over after work on the guise of a movie night, which is just an excuse to hang out and blow off steam. We always throw on a movie everyone’s seen a hundred times. All the lights stay on. We talk through the whole thing. Someone’s always in the kitchen making something. That would be Billy tonight, his hubby Tanner in the armchair with tears of laughter in his eyes from the movie, glued to the screen with a beer in hand. It’s one of those nights both of their boys are staying over with friends and they’re free. Mindy and Joel weren’t as lucky tonight, turning my invite down. Lance and Chad are here, which is nice, because even without kids they’re always busy. We all grew up together, same age give or take a year, but with the exception of me and Lance, none of us were all that close in high school.
Times were different even fifteen short years ago.
Sadly, the last thing anyone cares to chat about tonight is my next-door nightmare situation. Whenever I try to bring it up, the conversation steers elsewhere. “Yep, Trey’s ten-year reunion, you heard me right,” says Lance, “and I don’t think many people from his class are flying in for it. RSVP count was low, last I heard.”
“He’s already found the love of his life, anyway,” says Chad on the couch next to him. When he gets a look, he shoots a funny one right back. “What? You already forgot how the hell we happened?”