The screen door flaps shut, and I take a deep breath and straighten as I follow him.
He stands next to a rectangular parcel of land that was simply part of the yard twenty-four hours ago. Now, the grass is gone, there’s a border outlining the perimeter, and rich, black soil turned up in the box. There’s a hose attached to some PVC pipe, which is embedded in the soil with spouts for sprinklers at several intervals.
He looks over at me, almost like he’s nervous of my reaction.
“What is this?” I ask.
He glances at it behind him and back to me again. “It’s a garden,” he answers. “I was hoping you’d want to help with it or something.”
I’m speechless. My heart is beating so hard, and the sun feels so hot. How did…? But then I remember. He knows I love landscaping. He knows I read all those magazines. He knows what I like.
An ache hits my heart. He did this all in one day?
But I’m not melting for him. I harden my voice. “Since when did you want a garden?”
He approaches me, and I cross my arms over my chest, steeling my armor.
“Jordan, I was an asshole,” he says. “I jumped to a conclusion, because I had it bad, and I’m old and jaded. I expect gutter behavior from everyone.” He pauses and frowns. “But it was me with the gutter behavior. You’re different, and I really fucked up. It won’t happen again. I can’t believe I said those things.”
He’s turning blurry, and I can’t stop the tears from welling despite how hard I’m clenching my teeth.
“I want you to stay,” he goes on. “I like having you here. It’s nice coming home and having life in the house. Having people to talk to. It’s nice having help, and…” His jaw flexes, looking angry. “And you shouldn’t have been sleeping on a fucking pool table. You’ll stay as long as you need, do you understand? I don’t want you to leave.”
My chin trembles, and I can’t help it. The tears spill over, and I drop my head to hide it.
“Please don’t cry again,” he begs, “or I’ll have to take out the pool and build you a gazebo or some shit.”
I break into a laugh, sniffling and wiping my eyes. “No, don’t take out the pool. I like the pool.”
Wandering over to the new garden, I take in how big it is and how much work it must’ve taken. It doesn’t make his behavior okay, but it does help knowing that he worked his ass off on something that he thought would make me happy. No one has ever done something like this for me.
I mean, my sister has bought me clothes and taken me out, but Pike did something he knew I would love. Something that’s very much me.
“This is amazing,” I tell him, meaning it. “But I really think it’s best if just I go.”
“This is your house,” he tells me. “You belong here for as long as you want. You and Cole can invite your friends over, play your music, light your candles—”
“Toilet seat covers?” I tease.
“Fuck, no.”
We exchange a chuckle, and I gaze back at the soil. We can fit so many vegetables in here.
“I bought a bunch of seeds,” he says, grabbing a bag and sifting through handfuls. “But I’m not sure how everything gets planted or how much space to allot for each vegetable, so I thought you might want to plan it out?”
I meet his eyes, and we hold the look for a moment. I think maybe he wants me around even more than he’s letting on. Like maybe I’m a buffer between him and Cole, and like he said, he’s enjoying having people in the house.
He hands me the bags of seeds and slowly takes the suitcase from my hand. “I’ll put this in the garage,” he says. “I’m going to go get a shower. Maybe we can get started planting in the morning?”
His eyes seem to search mine, and my breath catches for a moment at his gaze.
I finally nod, turning away.
He walks toward the house again and then I hear his voice from behind me. “And if we need more supplies, just let me know. I have to hit Home Depot tomorrow anyway.”
“’Kay,” I whisper.
And then I look at him over my shoulder. “And you’re not old, you know?” I call out.
He looks at me, amusement in his eyes. “Old enough to have gotten set in my views. And that was wrong of me.”
“Thanks.”
The muscles in his arm flex as he holds my suitcase, and I can’t help but stare at the tattoos running down the length. They look slightly faded, like he got them when he was a teen.
What was he like at Cole’s age? It’s hard to picture him as a…. Well, a guy, I guess. He’s so serious. To a fault, almost.
But he’s sincere.
“The next time you need a ride—or anything,” he tells me, “promise you’ll call?”
I nod again and turn back to my seeds, excited for the summer ahead.
Pike
“Two,” I tell Dutch and toss the cards I don’t want back at him.
Shifting his eyes from his own cards, he pushes two more over to me, and I fit them into my palm and examine the new hand. It’s shit, but I do have two sevens, so it’s not a complete loss.
Not that I care. I’m not a competitive man—at least not when it comes to poker—but hosting these get-togethers once a month at my house gives us something to do while we talk. I dart my gaze up to Dutch and then flash my eyes around the table, seeing Todd, one of my foremen, as well as Eddie, John, and Schuster either exchanging or rearranging cards. Everyone puts a few bucks in the middle, and Todd raises us by three more. Everyone takes the bluff…hoping it is a bluff.
“I am not excited about my girls growing up, I’ll tell you that,” Dutch says, flashing me an amused look.
“Why?”
He just shakes his head, sighing. “That noise would drive me nuts. For now, all I have to endure is the occasional sleepover with a gang of giggling eight year olds.”
I chuckle under my breath, the pounding from upstairs starting to feel like walls caving in. I wince. It’s only about nine-thirty. If it’s still this loud in an hour, I’ll tell Cole to turn the music down or the neighborhood will be on my ass. It wasn’t supposed to be a party, but I’d encouraged him and Jordan to have some friends over, so it’s my own fault, I guess.
“It wasn’t so long ago we liked quite a lot of noise,” I mention, tossing him a grin.
The guys laugh, mumbling their agreement. We’d all graduated together, and it was a happy turn of events that a few of us now work together, although John and Schuster don’t, being a cop and a roofer, respectively.
It hadn’t been long since we were a lot like Cole—making messes and having too much fun in our mistakes. I was the first to get thrust into adulthood, but we still kept close over the years. Marriages, kids, a divorce—we’d all been through the ringer, and it was a wake-up call one day when I realized I’d been waiting for my life to start—my real life—only to realize that it had already happened when I wasn’t paying attention.
That train I was waiting to catch raced by me without stopping. There probably wouldn’t be a wife, and I would never know what it would be like to have my kids grow up seeing me every day. At this point, I’m too used to being on my own that I’m like an only child.
And an only-child doesn’t know how to share his things.
Todd raises another dollar, and I’m out, followed by Lin, Dutch, and Eddie. Todd collects the pot, and Dutch shuffles all the cards, dealing again.
The muffled music from upstairs all of a sudden blares louder and clearer, and I hear footfalls on the stairs followed by a slammed door. Bare feet appear on the stairwell, the legs coming more into view the lower they descend.
Jordan bends down, peeking under the basement ceiling at us. “Hey, do you mind if I grab the Otter Pops out of the freezer?”
Everyone glances up at her, turning their heads, and I gesture, barely sparing a glance from my cards. “Yeah, go ahead,” I reply quickly.
Liquid heat runs down my arms, and I stare at my hand, struggling to concentrate, because she’s all I’m aware of now.
She hurries down the rest of the stairs, her footsteps light and quick like she’s trying not to be seen or heard as she dashes over to the wall to my right and lifts the lid of the big freezer.
The room has grown quiet, and I’m not sure if the guys are afraid to talk normally, because there’s a woman in the room or if they’re distracted. I stare at my cards and search my brain. What were we talking about a minute ago?
Oh, kids. Right.
I hear things being moved in the freezer and glance over, my gaze immediately falling to her feet. She’s on her tiptoes and bent over, holding the lid up with one hand as she digs in the huge container. She seems to be aware of her shorts and that she’s bending over in front of a table of guys, because she keeps straightening every few seconds and pulling her shorts down as much as she can.
Her toes are painted a soft pink, and I can tell she’s wearing a bikini top under the gray T-shirt. The strings are visible tied behind her neck, and I can see more of it through the sides of her sleeveless T-shirt which are cut out, showing off the curvy, sun-kissed skin of her waist. The muscles flex in her thighs, and my stomach swoops up and around.
I start to glance back at my cards, but I catch her pushing her hair behind her ears, and that’s when I notice the little holes in the T-shirt. Up on the shoulder, by the seam.
Is that…?
“Isn’t that your shirt?” Dutch leans in, whispering.
I squint at it a little, and then I notice my baseball number in faded, chipped green peek out from behind her hair. I knew I recognized those holes.
I look away. I must’ve left it on the furniture the other day, and she picked it up, thinking it was Cole’s maybe? He was in baseball, too, I guess.
And she cut out the sides of it? I kind of want to be angry at the loss. I’ve had that shirt since high school, but…