—2— Diego #2
My tía sure wasn’t kidding. This lawn is overgrown as all hell. Blades of grass poking out this way and that, a rope of it trying to grow across the sidewalk. Knee-tall weeds springing up wherever they want.
I start tearing it all up and taking names as I wipe the lawn clean with this old dinosaur, row by row.
Just under the front window is a whole-ass empire of weeds reaching up nearly as high as the windowsill. Colorful weeds, I’ll give them that, but weeds nonetheless.
Like a tedious chore Tío Marcos left me to deal with.
So I deal with them.
Run the thorny bastards right over until the mower’s spitting out shreds of blue and yellow back at the lawn.
When I come around the corner to do the side, I hear a shout.
I already know it’s Wyatt, even before I turn around to find him standing there between our houses, mouth open, eyes wide like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
I was joking earlier about the noise police thing.
Now I wonder if I should’ve taken it seriously.
“What’d you do??” he cries out, turning his shout into words.
I release the mower, leaving it clicking and rumbling in idle, then follow Wyatt’s line of sight to the colorful weed confetti I left under the front window.
I look at him. “What’s the problem?”
He slowly turns his two blank-ass eyes onto me. “You … You mowed over the …” His eyes crinkle in disbelief. “Did you seriously not see the flowerbed here?”
I actually spend a second being amazed by how differently his face looks without one of those fake-ass smiles stretched over it.
He looks so much more real. Raw.
Halfway handsome, even.
If he wasn’t such a pain in my ass. “They were just weeds.”
“They weren’t—” His eyes drop to my chest, lost for a second. Then he flinches like a bug just bit him, throwing his gaze to the grass. “They were wildflowers, Diego. Not weeds.”
I rub at a spot on my shoulder, glancing back down at them—or what remains of them.
Chewed up stems, in other words.
I don’t know what it was a minute ago, maybe being so lost in my own head with my tío’s damned breath on my neck when he isn’t even here, but the second I ran the mower over those weeds, something felt wrong. Instantly wrong.
Maybe the way they were arranged in rows.
Intentional bursts of color.
Not quite natural enough to look like an actual mess.
Almost nice to look at.
Shit.
“It’s fine,” he decides suddenly. “I’ll … I’ll just replant them. Lottie doesn’t have to know. I mean, it was only her favorite thing about the front yard. No biggie.”
“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.