—10— Diego
Diego
I sleep facedown in the pillow like I’m smothering myself.
It’s all I can do to keep from fucking the bed in frustration.
The next minute, I’m in the kitchen with the orchid, like it’s my only friend in town. Depending on me to keep it watered. And if I let it down, it dies. Slowly.
Didn’t think about all this when I bought it.
But I swear, its petals are looking at me.
Judging me.
“You tell me what to do, then,” I bark at them, annoyed. “Tell me what to do about the guy next door. You know him better than I do, sitting on a shelf in his store for however long.”
The orchid gives no advice. No wisdom. No guidance.
It just sits there like a member of plant royalty on a throne.
I look through the window. Wyatt’s house is dark. He’s asleep at this hour, no doubt.
I really do wonder if he was trimming those roses for that guy.
In the middle of the night. Tirelessly giving to these people who wouldn’t do the same in return. Spending his spare time to make everyone else on earth happy. All these sacrifices they don’t ever see. They just demand more and more.
And he just gives and gives.
Why doesn’t he see it that way?
Why does it seem to bring him joy, serving others like that?
I take my thoughts to the couch. The living room is where I spend the least amount of time. No idea why. It just reminds me of something I can’t put my finger on that disturbs me. Childhood. Or my selfish mom. Or my tío and his judging glare.
Or Dad.
Before I know it, I’m waking up on that couch to the sunlight cutting in through the back window, blinding. I push myself to the bathroom to piss my brains out and take a shower.
It’s while getting dressed that the rain starts tapping on the window.
By the time I’m ready to head to the shop, it’s full-on raining.
Great.
I’m on the porch deciding whether to wait it out or walk in it for the two or three blocks to the auto shop. For all the junk my tía and tío left behind, can’t find a single damned umbrella.
A flash of green.
I look to the side.
Wyatt stands on his front porch looking back.
Green umbrella opened in front of him pointed down—green with swirly pink flowers all over it. Seriously, it isn’t enough that he works at a flower shop? He’s gotta have a floral umbrella, too?
Why do I find that so fucking adorable?
I don’t say or do a damned thing, but suddenly he walks down his driveway, across the sidewalk, and up to the front of my porch with his cute floral umbrella.
His eyes shine through the rain.
His lips curling into half a smile.
Wearing a plain t-shirt that’ll have his cute floral apron over it when he gets to work.
Hair looking like he fixed it in the house only for the humid, rainy, gusty air to fuck it up the second he stepped outside.
He asks me something.
I have no idea what. I’m mesmerized, staring at him.
He asks again. The same question, I think.
“Huh?” I grunt, snapping out of it.
Third time, his face goes flat and his voice hardens. “Do. You. Want. A. Riiide …?” He really stretches out that last word, cupping his hands around his mouth.
I frown. “Nah, I’ll walk.”
“In this? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I got legs.”
“Those legs are gonna be underwater.”
“So I’ll swim.”
“Diego.”
I shuffle my feet, annoyed for whatever reason.
Then my gaze snaps to his again.
I remember my helpful little one-sided conversation with the orchid in the kitchen last night.
“Fine,” I grunt, then step off the porch under his umbrella.
He walks me to his car.
Our shoulders keep bumping.
I didn’t realize how close we’d be walking under this thing.
Cuddled up together.
His face next to mine.
Arm around my waist.
Wait. His arm is around my waist? When’d that happen?
Then we’re by his car. He opens the passenger side door. I slip in. The door shuts. Muffled rain tapping the windows and the roof. Then he opens the driver’s side and in he comes, too, shaking off the umbrella as best as he can before pulling shut his door.
Even in the car, it feels like our shoulders are just as close as they were beneath the umbrella.
Is his car tiny? Or am I huge?
“Don’t know what you, um …” He fiddles with the radio. Then leaves it on some country song I don’t know. “This guy’s all I seem to hear them play lately. Do you like Chase Holt?”
“Dunno who he is.”
“Really? He’s kind of a big deal around here. Well, recently. In fact, um …” He clears his throat and shakes his head. “Never mind. If I start talking now, neither of us will get to work.”
I glance over at him as he pulls out of the driveway and starts off down the road.
I don’t think I’d mind not getting to work. Staying right here in this car, listening to him talk my ear off about country music nonsense and whatever the hell he wants. I think I’m minding him less and less. Or maybe just minding him in a different way.
If that even makes sense.
But he doesn’t say anything else. The country music is on so quiet, it’s basically noise underneath the squeaking of windshield wipers, the pattering of rain around us, and the engine humming.
He stops suddenly to let someone cross the road, an older lady with an umbrella that barely covers her, her whole side drenched. She waves at him as she hurries across the street.
At the next intersection, there’s another car, and even though we have the right of way, Wyatt politely gestures at them to go.
I don’t understand it, honestly.
His incessant courteousness.
His consideration for others that never feels fake.
Then suddenly he stops and parks by the curb.
Oh, we’re already here.
“Give me a sec, I’ll come around with the umbrella,” he says.
“You don’t need to—”
He’s out of the car anyway.
Again, with that incessant courteousness.
I let myself out before he’s all the way around, and in a flash, he’s right in front of me, nearly crashing into my face, umbrella over our heads.
My arm even swept around him and gripped his waist to keep him from falling.
And now we look like romantic lovers under an umbrella.
His eyes locked onto mine.
Me, panting, terrified for a reason I can’t quite pin.
“I could’ve walked,” I tell him.
He squints at me. “Is it really that hard to say ‘thank you’ …?”
I squirm my way through a hundred uncomfortable responses before grunting, “Whatever,” and head off.
And when I’m under the cover of the garage, I look back.
And find Wyatt smiling.
Like he won something.
I frown. “What?” I call back at him, like his smile is an attack.
He shrugs, still smiling, looking cute, then heads back to the car and drives off to his flower shop a few blocks down and around the corner. I watch him go from the edge of the garage, frustrated.
Then cracking a smile. That guy, I swear …
It lasts half a second before I put that shit away.
Joel’s off. Carl’s here today. And in the first three hours, the rain never lets up, and we get exactly one customer, which means I spend most of the day doing meaningless shit that does nothing to take my mind off Wyatt.
Except for a moment when suddenly-chatty Carl goes on about planning a trip to the beach to see his stepson Toby after the summer’s over and it’s more affordable, thinking it’d be good for Marly and Lee to get out of town, too—whoever the hell they are.
“You good with dogs?” he asks me. “I’d need a dog sitter if we go.
You seem like a dog guy.” I give Carl one hard stare, thinking of Mr. Shithead from the flower shop, and say, “The hell you mean by that?” Carl shrugs back and says, “You sure don’t seem like a cat guy.
” “I can’t be trusted with a plant,” I bark right back through a boom of thunder.
I don’t remember him saying much else to me after that.
Rain’s still dumping down hard when it’s time to call it a day. I head out. It’s just a few blocks home.
I barely make it halfway down the street when Wyatt pulls up out of nowhere in his car. “Get in!” he shouts from the window.
I don’t fight him this time. It is coming down pretty hard.
“Thanks,” I grunt after shutting the door behind me.
He appears surprised I thanked him. “Of … Of course.”
Then we resume down the measly handful of blocks home.
Windshield wipers wiping.
Country music playing softly.
Maybe the same music from this morning. Or someone else. I don’t know. Country’s never really been my thing.
He pulls into his driveway, then sits there a second with this pensive look on his face like he’s debating something.
I don’t know if it’s the weather right now, how it feels like a ton of curtains hanging around us, keeping the world out, making us feel like this isolated bubble, but I don’t have the instinct to just up and go from the car. It’s actually comfortable in here.
It’s safe in this car bubble.
Even the music’s fine.
“I, uh …” he starts, stops, clears his throat, then faces me. “I … I made a lot of … of s-soup.”
I stare at him.
Huh?
“Last night,” he goes on. “Not sure why. But I did. I made a lot. Weather like today, feels … feels like soup weather.” He shuts his eyes tightly, then pops them open and smiles. “Wanna come in for a bit, dry off, and … and share a bowl of hot soup with me?”
My eyes are lost in his lips as he asks me that question.
All I see is pink. Plump. Cute.
Curly corners and a dimple.
Did he just invite me inside?
“What song’s this?” I ask.
He blinks, looks at the radio, then says, “Another Chase Holt one. Think it’s called ‘Down Bad For Him’.”
“For him …?”
“Chase Holt’s gay. Thought I told you. He’s dating someone from our town. Allegedly this song is about them. Oh, and also—”
My eyes keep drifting back to his lips.
He’s saying stuff, but I’m not really hearing it.
Just being obsessed with the way his mouth moves.
More we sit in this car, the worse my ideas get. I’m having a difficult time thinking of anything else.
Being this close to him is starting to become a problem.
“Y’know what I mean?” finishes Wyatt with a chuckle. Then he frowns. “Did you … get all that? Or did I talk too much? Was I talking too much?”
I could lean right over this center console.
Bring my face up to his.
Do something else with our mouths that isn’t talking.