—22— Diego #2
“Did you know I went there for my sixteenth birthday?” He chuckles to himself. “She made me a cake. Can you imagine that woman making anyone a cake? I doubt she even makes her own son birthday cakes.” He bites his lip in thought. “Nah, ‘course she does, why wouldn’t she?”
“So … what? You’re paying her back fifteen years later?”
“Seventeen years later, but who’s really mathing? It’s called being thoughtful, Diego.”
“Thoughts don’t put food on the table.”
“Actually they do.” He turns off the engine, then gazes at me, turning cold again. “Maybe if you paid a bit more attention, you’d realize that’s exactly what I’m proving tonight.”
I stare back at him, annoyed.
Then dumbfounded.
Then blankly.
Longer I look in his eyes, the more I lose what the hell I was about to say. And I’m pretty sure I was gonna say something good, something that would nail my point down. Words have never been my thing. They sure aren’t doing me any good now.
And when we’re at someone else’s front door, I hand him the vase of flowers to give to some awkward teenager who answers. “Uh … my grandma says thanks. For the eggs and, uh, the arthritis cream and stuff.”
Eggs. Arthritis cream.
That list I saw on Wyatt’s nightstand …
“Tell her I hope her hands are feeling better, and I’ll see her and you Sunday.”
“Thanks, Mr. C.” The kid goes inside, door shuts.
Next minute, I’m standing by the car, lost in thought, as Wyatt goes around to his side. He stops, seeming to sense me standing here like a telephone pole. “Diego …?”
“I’m paying attention. I’ve been paying attention.”
“Okay, but—”
“My point’s that everyone seems to get something from you.”
He watches me from over the top of the car, waiting for more, those kind, sweet, annoying eyes of his locked on me, patient.
I scowl. “Just wondering what the fuck you get.”
He doesn’t say anything. After a second of thinking it over, or maybe thinking of nothing at all, he just gets into the car, closes the door, starts the engine back up.
Did I say one thing too much again?
Finally go too far?
When I get in the car, too, I stare ahead, refusing to apologize. My points are damned valid. And after dealing with whatever he had to deal with dropping off flowers for fuck-face Bellamy, he should know exactly where my frustration’s coming from.
Then he faces me and says, “I get the pleasure of treating you to dinner after a long day, that’s what.”
I blink at him.
Dinner?
Still don’t know what the hell’s in my head when, half an hour later, I’m sitting across a tiny table from Wyatt in the corner of an old restaurant in town. He’s happily chowing down on a 6-ounce sirloin, well-done. Who the hell orders well-done? Might as well gnaw on a shoe at that point.
I can barely enjoy my surprisingly tender medium-rare cut of meat, eyeing Wyatt over this damned table like I’m itching for a fight, for him to understand what the hell’s got me so hot, why I can’t seem to sit still.
“That was nice,” says Wyatt after finishing his last bite.
“Had better,” I lie, going for a sip of my water.
“I meant bringing me lunch earlier.”
I stop, lower my glass.
He shrugs. “I can’t remember the last time anyone’s brought me lunch. Didn’t get to eat it, but it’s in the fridge at work, and I’m gonna enjoy it tomorrow.”
“Gonna be a soggy-ass mess by then.”
“Well, it’s my soggy-ass mess, and I’m gonna enjoy it because it came from you.” He gazes at me. “I suspect it’ll taste even better because of that fact alone.”
I lean forward. “Fine, is this what you’re wanting me to see?
That life can be all happy soggy salads and old ladies smiling when you bring them flowers?
Sure, you can ignore the assholes in life, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing yourself any favors by continuing to let them walk all over you like—”
“Mr. Bellamy doesn’t walk all over me. He pays my bills.”
“Someone else could be ‘paying your bills’, Wyatt. The cost of being happy isn’t learning to tolerate assholes standing over you.”
“So you want to tell me how to run my business then?”
His happy mask is starting to crack. I feel it. I hear it in his voice. And it makes me push harder. “If it means keeping you from turning a blind cheek and learning to stand up for yourself—”
“What even are we?” he cuts me off.
I stop cold.
Fork still in hand for some reason.
Mouth open.
What even are we, he asks, and I have no answer.
“You’re not my boyfriend,” he goes on, saying it simply. “We aren’t dating. We’re …” He shrugs. “I don’t know what we are. Just neighbors? Fuck buddies? Neighbors who are fuck buddies?”
“I never said we’re boyfriends,” I suddenly snap back.
He chuckles and goes for a sip of water, shaking his head.
The waitress comes by with the check a second later.
I snatch it straight out of Wyatt’s hands, causing him to stare at me wide-eyed.
“You’ve given enough freebies for a day.
” I pull out my card and hand it to the waitress, who probably thinks she’s become a witness to a cute lovers’ quarrel and looks way too giddy about it.
Leaving the restaurant, I don’t feel any better than I did when we entered.
When he heads to the car, I watch him. Then my eyes drop to his ass, which look so good in the jeans he’s wearing today that they alone could stop me from saying another damned word about anything.
I follow him, probably hypnotized, get back in the car, and let the country songs on the radio do the talking.
“You’re not a freebie,” he says while driving.
“You gotta learn to say no.”
“Diego …”
“And I’m gonna teach you one way or another. You’re gonna learn how to put douchebags in their rightful place. There comes a point when it ain’t nice anymore to keep condoning that shit, you get what I’m saying? And if you don’t—”
“I almost did put him in his place.”
His whole tone changes, turning harsh.
He turns hard onto our street. “And had I not stopped myself, I could’ve lost my biggest client.
I don’t think you realize … how … how tough it is to run a business.
To care for something delicate. It takes finesse.
It takes setting yourself aside. Thinking of others.
” He peels into his driveway with a scowl and puts the car in park.
The country music keeps playing, its happy energy fighting the heated change in Wyatt’s tone.
“My business will tank without him. Like it or not, he’s a necessary evil. ”
“Necessary evil? No fucking evil is necessary, Wyatt.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
He undoes his seatbelt and faces me, full angry now. “Great. So instead of me putting up with asshole Bellamy telling me how to run my business, you’d rather me just put up with asshole Diego telling me how to run my business?”
I squint at him. “I’m not telling you how to—”
“I know what I’m doing. I can put up with guys like him.
I’ve been putting up with guys like him.
Until …” He stops, gritting his teeth. Then he lets out a livid huff and says, “Goddamn it, I’m the kind of guy who plants the flowers, Diego, not the one who mows over them because they looked at me funny. ”
He shuts off the car and gets out.
So do I.
But I guess the conversation’s over. Or was it an argument? Our first fight? Because he marches up to his porch and heads on inside. The door slams behind him.
I get the idea pretty fast that I’m not invited in.
When I’m back in my own house, door shut, the silence that swallows me up is fucking awful. Can still smell last night’s stench of Henrietta’s store-bought cookies in the air. I head to the kitchen and look out the window. His house is dark. No lights on.
Like he’s not in there fuming. Pissed at me. Again.
The potted orchid stares at me from across the kitchen. I walk up to it, touch some of its leaves. Does he think I’m not delicate? Am I still the guy who mowed over the flowerbed? Will I always be? I come closer to the orchid. “What’d I do wrong?” I ask it.
It doesn’t answer.