Page 38 of Back for More
“Don’t bother,” I say, just as my dad says, “Sure. The more the merrier!”
“Really,” I insist. “You’d just get in the way and slow things down.” I immediately regret being such a dick, but I don’t seem to be able to be any other way with her until I can be…the way I want to be with her. “But thanks,” I add. “Go read your book.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “I’m pretty sure your dad is the boss when it comes to landscaping projects.”
I offer her a quick, obnoxious fake smile, one which she returns in kind.
My dad scratches his head, and I can practically hear him thinking:Well shit, boy. It’s even worse than I thought.
“I appreciate the offer, hon, but despite how it may look at the moment, we got this covered. You enjoy your day off.” He winks at her.
“Okay, well…you know where to find me if you guys change your mind…about my assistance or your dire need for a cup of coffee.” She strides back toward the patio, leaving an invisible cloud of fragrant impertinence in her wake.
I don’t even look at my dad. “Do not say a word.”
“Oh, I won’t,” he whispers. “Not here, not now.”
After placing a few more pavers onto the cleared ground, I pull my T-shirt off over my head and shove it into the back pocket of my jeans.
I try not to smile when I hear a big book drop to the ground over on the patio and Lily’s muffled curses.
I’m transported back to the summer when I first kissed her. She was fifteen. I was seventeen. I was out here mowing the lawn. She was sunning herself over there on the patio. I could hear her talking to Alecia on the phone, giggling. There was never anything particularly girlish about Lily, even when she was fourteen. Feminine, yes. But ever since I’d met her, she’d carried herself like a young woman. An impossibly pretty, graceful, smart-mouthed young woman. Or, more precisely, she carried herself in the way that an impossibly pretty, graceful, smart-mouthed girl imagined a young woman would carry herself. It was only when she giggled with her friends or had one of her rare emotional meltdowns that I’d become aware of our small difference in age and how vivacious and fragile she could be.
I don’t know what it was about that particular day that made her more bold or frisky than any other. Maybe it was just that her dad was out of town, my dad was off at Home Depot, and Vicky had gone to Costco. She had remained out on the patio, in her tank top and cut-offs, even though I was using my noisy equipment. I caught her staring at me every time I looked over her way. When I’d turned off the leaf blower, she’d called out, “Are you finally done with that awful noise?”
I could hear Rihanna blaring from her phone. “Yeah. Are you?” I always gave her a hard time about her pop music, and she teased me about being an old man because I liked classic rock. She switched from Rihanna to some Britney Spears atrocity and turned up the volume, smirking as she stretched out in her lounge chair. I raised my fist in the air and shook it, like a cranky old guy. “Damn kids and your soulless music!”
But she didn’t look anything like a kid, and I felt exactly like the horny teenage guy I was, despite how I behaved.
A short while later, when I was putting the lawn equipment back in the garden shed, I took the opportunity to shift things around in my jeans. I was looking forward to a long, cold shower, when I heard her clear her throat just outside the door. I pulled my hand out of my pants and ran it through my hair before turning to face her. She was holding a glass of iced tea, and the cocoa butter fragrance of her suntan lotion battled with the scent of freshly cut grass. If there’s a more appealing and youthful and summery sensory experience than the scent of freshly cut grass and suntan lotion and the sight of a pretty girl in cutoffs holding a glass of iced tea, then I’d never experienced it.
“You lost?” I asked. I doubt she’d ever seen the inside of the shed before.
“No,” she said. “Exactly where I want to be, thanks. Brought you some iced tea.”
“That’s for me?Merci.” I started to step toward her, but she came inside the shed and blocked me from going outside as she handed the glass to me.
“De rien.I need someone to run lines with me.”
“Someone?”
“You.” She reached behind herself and pulled a folded-up piece of paper from her back pocket. “Monologue. I’m auditioning for Mrs. Naylor’s summer stock play.Midsummer Night’s Dream.By William Shakespeare.”
“I know who wroteA Midsummer Night’s Dream.We studied it in English Lit this year. Which part?” I ask before looking at the page she’d handed me.
“I’m doing a Juliet monologue fromRomeo & Juliet,when she drinks the poison, but I want to play Hermia.”
I gulped down the rest of the iced tea, put the empty glass on the floor, and wiped my mouth with the back of my forearm. “You’re a little young and inexperienced to be doing this monologue, don’t you think?”
“Juliet’s only thirteen. And I don’t have to experience being desperately in love to play it.”
“Good thing.”
“Yeah. Great thing.”
“‘And though she be but little, she is fierce.’”
“I’m not little!” she protested.
