—29— Wyatt
Wyatt
Then Diego leaves.
In the silence of his words, he just leaves.
What else would he do?
And what could I possibly say to stop him?
Do I want to stop him?
Creak of the door opening, the shuffling of feet, and the door softly clicking shut behind him.
People start talking again. Jukebox carries into its next song.
A hand on my shoulder. Joel says something soothing. Lance, too. I just stare at the door and keep repeating the last words he said over and over in my head.
I’m so confused, I don’t know whether to be hurt, cry, or red-faced and fumingly angry.
Or sorry.
Or none of those things at all.
“I’m sorry, Mr. C,” says Cash sometime later.
He’s sitting next to me at a booth. I didn’t even know he was here.
I don’t know when I sat down at a booth either.
I vaguely remember Lance saying he was ordering me some food and never came back.
I’ve gone back and forth a hundred times on whether or not to rush home, march over next door, and demand another conversation.
But what’s the point? He’s leaving.
I think he always wanted to.
Regardless of whether he got his father’s car up and running again, Diego always had one foot out the door. He told me that the second we met. Shouldn’t I have believed him then?
I’ve been foolish to think, even for a second, that he’d want to stick around. That I’d magically change the mind of a guy like that. How arrogant of me, how delusional, to think I’d be enough reason for him to stay.
It’s not like we’re in love. I apparently made that quite clear when I told him we’re not boyfriends, didn’t I?
Idiot.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Cash tells me, “I don’t think Nico and I are friends anymore.”
“That … does not make me feel better,” I mutter tiredly.
“I gave him a chance. Hundreds, actually. But I don’t think I’m as important to him as I thought.
” He fusses with a pile of napkins on the table like he’s trying to make a tent out of them.
They keep falling. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you liked that Diego guy.
Even though he acted weird that one day at the flower shop. ”
I look at him. “Huh?”
“Nico was weird to me around people, too. Even if he did nice stuff when it was just us.”
I shake my head. “I … don’t think that’s the same thing.”
“Maybe Nico’s in love with me.” Cash chuckles at that. “That’d be so fuckin’ funny. All this time.” Then he stops and looks at me. “Uh, sorry for cussing, Mr. C.”
“Didn’t even notice,” I mumble.
“Are you gonna have to close the shop?”
I look at him. “What?”
“I heard about the Bellamy thing. He was an asshole.”
After the fight with Diego, I nearly forgot about Mr. Bellamy.
And what I’m gonna have to do moving forward.
Changes I might have to make.
“Of course not,” I say, answering his question belatedly. Cash might’ve been in the middle of saying something else and I just cut him off. “I’d never … I’d never close my parents’ shop. My shop. I have other big clients, too.”
“Not really.”
I look at Cash again.
He shrugs, his shoulder bumping mine. “I’ve seen the books.
And, like, I don’t understand a lot of it, but I can see the amount of income Buttholeamy guy brought in.
It was a lot.” He balls up a napkin and basketballs it into an empty cup that might be Lance’s or Chad’s across the table.
“Would’ve been a lot more, had the guy actually paid full price for any damned thing at all. ”
I drop my eyes to that glass, to the napkin-ball he landed in it, watching as it sucks up whatever drops of soda or beer that were left inside.
“My mom was on the PTA,” he says. “I can ask her to, like, put in a word or something with the ladies, if you need business. Or …”
“Thank you, Cash. I’ll just …” It’s so difficult to think of one thing without stressing about the other. My shop. Diego. All the words that just exploded between us. What he’s doing right now. “I’ll just … figure out something. You don’t have to do anything.”
“But I’m your employee. This matters to me, too, y’know.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t,” he says back. I look at him. “Like, why do you gotta take on everything by yourself, Mr. C? Why does this have to be only your problem to deal with?”
After a second, I realize I don’t have an answer for him.
Other than it’s how I’ve learned to deal with everything these past few years: on my own. Parents gone. Sister living it up. Who’s ever really consistently been there for me other than myself and the Rapunzel Posse in my greenhouse?
I pull out my phone and call him. Straight to voicemail.
After a moment, I start typing out a text before I even know what to say.
The first draft is full of anger. Deleted.
Second one politely asks him to call me so we can talk like two normal grown-ass fucking adults, in those words.
I delete that, too. Then I decide to write an apology.
And stop, unable to find the words.
And unsure what I’m apologizing for.
Is apologizing my kneejerk reaction to everything? To assume I’m always in the wrong? To shrink despite my own convictions?
Isn’t that the very thing Diego hated about me?
I clench my fists, frustrated.
I can’t just let him go.
I’ve sat here long enough stewing and thinking and typing, and I’m about out of things to type, think, or stew about.
I need to talk to Diego directly.
“Tell Lance I’m sorry,” I say to Cash, even though I’m pretty sure Lance got lost on his way to the bar or whatever he ordered is sitting on a counter somewhere in the kitchen, forgotten. Either way, I’m out of my seat while Cash stares after me, stunned by my sudden departure.
I get home in a hurry. Pulling into my driveway, I don’t know why I’m surprised to see his dad’s car still sitting out front, as if he might have come home, miraculously solved it in ten minutes out of sheer anger, and hit the road in it.
I’m at his door right away. I knock.
No answer.
Another knock, more urgent. Still nothing.
I put an ear to the door, certain I can hear him. But the longer I stand here, the less certain I am. “Diego?” I call out. “C’mon. Let’s just talk. Please.”
I move across his porch and peek in through the window like a creeper.
Nothing. No sign of life. No light on.
I step back, stumble off the porch, and stand in the grass like a garden gnome. The bed of wildflowers sits eerily in the silence and the darkness of this awful night.
He’s in there, isn’t he? Ignoring me? Being petty? Sulking?
Or I misunderstood everything and he doesn’t want to talk.
He’s already said his goodbyes, whether I heard them or not.
Well, that’s messed up.
“Hey!” Now I’m at his side window like a lunatic, tapping on the glass of the guestroom. “Diego, c’mon! I know you’re in there!” I press my face to the window, trying to see in.
Then I’m at the side kitchen window. “Diego!”
I’m at the front door again, ringing the doorbell over and over and over.
This goes on for fifteen minutes, by the way.
I’m not proud of myself.
And when I finally drop my ass on the front step of the porch, sitting there numb and quiet, I wonder if he really is, in fact, gone. That he didn’t even stay the night.
That he would actually just go. Be done with me.
Just like that.
Where would he have gone without a car?
Headlights blind me as a truck turns onto my street, roars its engine, then stops right by the curb. I sit up at once, blinking the light out of my eyes, my heart swelling with hope.
Then the door swings open.
Oh. It’s Lance.
“Go, go, I got this,” he says to someone—Chad, I’m guessing—then starts over the lawn carrying a doggy bag.
“Have you eaten?” he calls out to me. “Of course you haven’t.
What’re you doing out here on this porch like a lost puppy?
Come on, Wy-Guy, let’s go. Chad’s going home.
I’m all yours tonight. Inviting myself in. ”
He heads toward my house without further discussion.
I pry myself off Diego’s porch, stop in the grass, and look up at the dark window one last time.
I think he really did leave.
“Don’t worry,” Lance says when we’re inside and he’s pulling out one thing after another from the doggy bag.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here with pearls of wisdom or advice or even encouragement.
You know me well enough to know I’m bad at all those things.
I’m just here to feed you and get away from my needy boyfriend.
” He makes a face at me. “I love Chad, but he is so needy lately. Must be tough for him, having such a talented boyfriend whose designs are always in demand. Eat this, it’s a billion calories but worth it. ”
We bring the food to my couch and eat our dignified meal of steak and potatoes plus three gravy-lathered sides hunched over the coffee table with the TV on.
Lance keeps laughing at whatever it is. I can’t absorb any of it.
I have no appetite either, yet here I am, slowly bringing bite after bite to my mouth somehow.
“He didn’t even say goodbye.”
I think Lance was in the middle of saying something. He stops chewing and looks at me. “Did you expect him to?”
I consider it. Shrug. Then go for another bite.
“He obviously cares about you,” says Lance. “He just shows it by … setting fire to everything. But that apparently includes your enemies, too, so at least there’s an upside …”
“He won’t pick up the phone, either. I can’t bear to text him. I’m probably blocked for all I know.”
“I doubt that.”
“You don’t know him, Lance.”
“I knew him a teeny bit. And from the way he took care of you at the Ball?” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t seem like the blocking type. Maybe gets stuck in his feels. Needs time to sort things out.”
“But he doesn’t have time. The house is sold. He’s …” I let out a jagged sigh I pray isn’t a sign of pending tears. “He’s already gone.”
Lance turns to me and, like reading some lame quote from a relationship column, says, “If he truly loves you, he’ll come back.”
I snort. “Oh, great. Then I’m definitely shit outta luck.” I give up on dinner and fall back against the couch.
Lance falls back too, joining me. “You don’t know that.”
“I most certainly do.”
“Love has a thousand weird forms.”
“Spare me.”
“Chad threw a lasso around my ankles and took me straight to the ground. I made him wear a hot pink jockstrap to a party.” He eyes me. “I know what I’m talking about when I say love is weird.”
“But you and Chad were practically fated. Hated each other in high school. Fell in love at your high school reunion. Diego and I … we’re just two people who rub each other the wrong way.”
“You certainly rub each other some way,” he mumbles.
“Why didn’t I stop him from leaving the bar?”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t torture yourself over this.
Just give yourself time. Let him have the space he needs.
Even if it’s … way more space than you want to give him.
You’ll never be alone. You’ve got me and the guys.
You’ve got your gals, too. And you’ve got …
” He gestures at the TV. “… whatever the fuck this is.”
I sigh. “Thank you for the meal. I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t you dare.” He pats my leg, then sits back up to resume eating. After a moment, I do, too.
Sometime later, after cleaning up and putting away the half of a steak I couldn’t finish, we relocate to my bedroom because Lance is suddenly obsessed with looking at old yearbooks since he kept none of his.
We laugh at how we looked back then. He had longer hair that curled at his shoulders he only halfway misses.
I was so skinny and scrawny looking, this being way before I decided to put some time into a gym in my twenties.
After I take a quick trip to the bathroom, I come back to find Lance having fallen asleep on my bed, face pressed to the wrestling team photo in the yearbook.
I cover him with a blanket and turn off the light.
He snores, by the way.
In the kitchen, I sit alone with my phone, no closer to having any answers. Two more tries, Diego’s phone still goes straight to voicemail. After toiling over what to say, I finally decide to send the only text I can think of to get his attention.
SOS.
After all, he told me he’d always come when I send one, right?
It delivers.
Then I stare at the screen, waiting for him to read it.
I’m still staring half an hour later, but now sideways, as I’ve since laid my head down on my outstretched arm on the table. My eyes keep feeling heavy, then light again, then heavier. Suddenly, they’re closed, and all I know is the hum of the fridge nearby.
That hum becomes an engine in the morning.
I lift my head at once at the sound.
Through the kitchen window, a tow truck.
Hooked to Diego’s father’s car.
“Wait!” I shout, bursting from my front door. “Hey! You can’t take that! What’re you doing??” I trip on my way over the lawn, nearly eating the grass. The morning sunlight blinds me. “Stop!”
The bearded man pauses, looking up at me with equally tired eyes. “What?” he grunts. “Get the wrong car?”
I nearly crash into him when I finally come to a stop. “Why’re you taking this vehicle? What’s—Why’re—Give me a second, catching my breath …”
He frowns, reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his phone. “Marcos and Charlotte Valdez.” He points at the screen. “This is their residence, isn’t it?”
I freeze, staring at their names on the screen.
They ordered the car to be towed?
“Oh.” I step back, not understanding. I step back again. Then I drop to my knees in the grass, exhausted suddenly. “Sorry.”
The man doesn’t say much more, getting back to his work. I’m just a pile of limbs as I watch, defeated completely, as he finishes the job. Then the car is taken away, just like that, slowly at first, then vanishing around the corner, out of sight, gone.
Just like him.
Did he finally give up fixing the car?
Do his aunt and uncle know he left, too?
Or is it just a courtesy given to the new homeowners, whoever they are?
This feels like a message.
Even if it isn’t.
Making Diego’s departure official in a way that the empty, unresponsive house last night wasn’t.
He really is gone.