Page 5 of Lakeside Little
He stumped me. I didn’t have an immediate answer to him. I’d come here to get away from thinking and stress. “I’m a second-generation American, my folks immigrated from Mexico, expression for me was to dance, you know, a little salsa, but I’m not a dancer. So maybe my expression was to make things.”
“I forgot you just lost your job,” he whispered.
Shaking my hand in his direction, it wasn’t his fault that I was beginning to fall down a brain hole. “I got a decent severance package,” I chuckled. “It’s fine. I just need to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life now.”
“Orrrrrr,” he said with such a lighthearted tone it was a relief. “You don’t have to decide, and you can just stay and fish, and maybe I can take your mind off that by giving you somethingto make-slash-fix for me.” He bat his lashes so adorably. “But it’s totally cool if you just wanna hang by the lakeside for a bit longer.”
I slapped my hands together. “Well, we’ve got two fish, that’s one each. I’m ready to come help you now and take my mind off all that.” And truthfully, I wanted to see what other surprises Jack had, I didn’t know if I was getting a certain signal, but there was something there I needed to explore.
“Yay!” He applauded. “But you’ll have to keep the fish out. I don’t want my cabin smelling.”
3. JACK
I thought I was pushing my luck when I asked Diego if he would help fix my dollhouse. I’d managed to deconstruct it just fine when I was packing it away to come over here, but then when I began rebuilding it last night, one of the panels snapped and then two of the pole pieces were chipped when I tried to use them as supports.
The cabin was a mess. My clothes were everything, my dolls were in random spaces, and the half-built doll house was sitting in the center of the living room.
“I don’t want to alarm you,” Diego said, standing in the doorway. “But you might’ve been robbed.”
“I was trying to find stuff,” I said. “Leave the bucket outside, please.”I was adamant about keeping this place a smell-free zone. The last thing I wanted was any of it getting on my things.
“I’m leaving it,” he said. “And before I forget, you needed sunscreen. The sun doesn’t play around, you need to know that.”
As I kicked around my clothes into manageable piles that he wouldn’t get sucked into like the vortexes they were, I found the bottle of sunscreen hiding amongst them, as well as a smaller bag of toiletries.
It took Diego all of ten minutes to tell me I’d need wood glues and other adhesives to fix the house. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I wasn’t going to throw a hissy over it.
“Well, I needed to go into town anyway,” I told him.
“As did I,” he said. “If you’d like to go together.”
“Perfect! What do you need?”
“Groceries, if I’m making dinner,” he said. “Assuming we still have dinner plans.”
Was it just me, or was Diego really hot? Like, everything about him had me want to fan myself from my pits to my feet. And I didn’t even know if he was flirting with his dinner plans pitch. I was very obviously gay in front of him, and he hadn’t run a mile. Maybe he was just friendly, maybe this was being nice to a neighbor, especially one so drastically in need of a helping hand.
“You can make me dinner, but I don’t put out on the first date,” I said, throwing myself out there like I was shooting an arrow in the dark like some type of blindfolded cupid seeking an answer to the question in my tingles. And my tingles hadn’t been wrong… that often.
My cousin’s husband, Mason owned a hardware store in Pineberry Falls. It’s where we headed to as soon as I’d applied a nice layer of sunscreen. We took Diego’s car, it was a little beat up, but he wanted to drive, and he had to take those fish to his cabin for refrigeration.
Once we got to the hardware store, Mason immediately noticed me. I carried Nory with me hooked in my arm. His eyes lit up from behind the counter and he put down the wood and whittle he was working on.“Oliver said you were in town,” his voice boomed. “And—I didn’t think I’d ever see you coming in here.”
Diego looked at me, his brows together, trying his best to figure out how he knew me. I might’ve left a couple details blank on why I kept coming back here year on year. “Hi, Mason,” I said. “I’m here because I was building something, and—”
“You should’ve asked me,” he said. “And I take it he’s with you.”
“Diego,” he said, introducing himself.
“Oh, right. This is Diego, he’s in the cabin by mine near the lake,” I said. “And he’s helping me. Look at his hands.” I grabbed one and yanked it forward. “He’s clearly skilled, lookat these.” I prodded at the callouses I’d been more careful with earlier. There was something about the familiarity of being around Mason that gave me a small boost in confidence.
“They’re not that bad,” he laughed. “Just need a moisturizer.”
As they began talking about hand moisturizers and exchanging tips, I moved conversation back to why we were really here. I needed my doll house fixed, otherwise the dolls would not get a good night of sleep, and the followers could always tell since I would post them in their beds and wish them a good night. They’d sniff out a repost the moment I went live.
“Well, we need some wood glue,” I said. “I think that’s what it’s called. Right?”
“What are you working on?” he asked.
