She put her small hands on my chest, pushing me back slightly. Our lips parted, and it took all I had not to go back for more, to take everything she was willing to give and even the things she wasn’t. But I stopped at the look in her eyes.
“Please help me get back in my chair.” Her request was quietly spoken.
I let her lean on me and turned her so she could sit down. Once she was sitting, she stared at her lap, chest still rising and falling like she’d just swam across a small lake. “No,” she said finally.
“No?” I asked. “I think you need a time machine, Wheels. It already happened.”
“I mean, no. I can’t—I won’t just pretend this summer didn’t happen. Look. Maybe you’re not as much of a complete dick as I thought. But you did all those things to me. You lied. You tricked me. You went out of your way to make me feel stupid, and small. And I don’t care if that felt good, because it doesn’t magically fix you. Okay? So, I’m going to go ask Logan to take me home, and I’d appreciate it if you could control your temper and let me go.”
I had to squeeze my teeth together to stop from talking. It doesn’t magically fix you. I thought it was ironic that the girl with a million diseases seemed to think I was the broken one. But maybe she was right. Normal parents didn’t do what mine did to me. Maybe I was the problem, not them.
I watched her go. For tonight, I’d leave her be.
But she was right about one thing.
The kiss had felt good.
Too good to leave alone. Too good to forget about. And too good to let it be a one and done.15KennedyDisney music played from the phone in my lap while I struggled with my makeshift gardening tool. A few weeks of abusing the broom handle and endlessly taping various objects to the tip was taking its toll. There was a growing ball of used tape on the end that I was doing my best to scrape off, but it was slow going.
I hummed along to the music while I worked at it. It was a nice, sunny morning and I’d started to really look forward to my time spent in the back yard. Granted, I seriously needed to find a little spare time to start building a real collection of tools. Maybe a shovel, for starters. The weeds were relentless, and I found myself constantly battling them back from my half a dozen budding plants.
I still wasn’t sure what they’d grow to be, but they were about twelve inches tall, fuzzy, and mismatched.
Tristan’s car rolled right up to my back yard and came to a stop.
I fumbled with my phone, trying desperately to change the station I was listening to so he wouldn’t hear my childish taste in music. His car door opened, and I tapped a few times, picking a random station.
Rap music laced with profanities started crackling out of my phone at full blast.
Tristan stopped, tilting his head at me. He had a large bag slung over his shoulder, like some dark, porno version of Santa.
“Interesting taste,” he said, just as I managed to finally silence my phone.
“Did you come here to make fun of me?” I asked. “Because I was having a nice afternoon without your help.”
He strolled right up to me, carefully walking around my garden. I noticed the bag on his back was clattering strangely. He turned it over and dumped out the contents in the grass at my feet. There was a shovel, shears, a small hand shovel, one of those little claw things, and a few other tools I didn’t know I’d needed or wanted until I saw them.
I was about to do a celebratory seated dance when I remembered where all of the goods had come from. I looked up at Tristan, who was watching me closely.
“What is this?”
“What does it look like?”
“I mean what is your goal here?”
The shadow of a smile passed over his face. “I need a goal? Is it impossible to believe I might do something out of the kindness of my heart?”
“Yes,” I deadpanned.
“Alright. I stole all of this for you because if you impale yourself on that miserable excuse of a tool you’re always waving around, you’ll never finish my video.”
I scooted my chair back from the tools. “You stole this stuff?”
He grinned. “I’m fucking with you. No. I bought it from a hardware store just now.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “You do realize if I actually died, the school would probably make an exception and let you keep playing.”
“Maybe. But then I wouldn’t get the Kennedy Stills edition of my recruitment video. It’d be some other dweebs take on it.”