I pack the dirt around the white snapdragon flowers, as my neighbor Chris comes out of his house with his wife and dog. I can’t help but stare at his chest. He isn’t all that attractive, but when he without a shirt is the closest you’ve ever been to any man, you can’t help it. “Asa, happy mother’s day!” His wife Sarah says, snapping me from my stare. “Yeah, you too. What happened to your other dog?” I ask, noticing only Lacy. “We gave her back.” Chris says sourly. I laugh. “Was he too active?” Chris turned on his grill, then looks at me. “No. He ate my leather couch. So I told Sarah either she could move out with the kids and keep the dog, or loose the dog.” Sarah forced a smile. Cheyenne, their older kid, came out. “Honey you’re going to get hot wearing that white thing.” Chris says, pointing to a small, jacket over her t-shirt. “I can just take it off.” She sits in a fabric chair on their small lawn. I look down to the pots of flowers. She should be happy I haven’t told Chris that she told me she had a crush on me. Let’s see. Ten years old and a fifteen year old? I don’t think he’d be too thrilled. “Your dad still out of town?” Sarah asks as she puts her curly red hair up in a ponytail. Cheyenne eyes me through her bangs, sipping her lemonade. “Yeah.” I look back down at the dirt and dig another hole with the trowel. “Your fathers out a lot since your mom…” Chris trails off, slapping raw hamburger meat onto the grill. “I know. A lot of people say I look like her, and I don’t think he handles it very well.” Nathen, their youngest son who’s seven, comes out with a small football. “Hey dad, can I go see if Bob wants to play catch?” he asks. “Oh Nathen, leave him alone. He plays with you everyday. The man’s almost thirty!” Cheyenne says rudely. Nathen sticks his tongue out at her, then throws his football at her. Her lemonade spills on her white shirt, revealing a training bra. “Nathen!” she shrieks, standing up, embarrassed. I laugh and take a snapdragon from its pot, and put it in the ground. “Nathen apologize to your sister right now!” Chris says, fork in hand. “Well sorry.” She huffs and runs back in the house. “Oh, Asa, did you know we have new neighbors over where Alice, Jake and Savannah used to live?” I shake my head. “No, I didn’t. Any kids?” I ask. “Yes, they have a son.” I look up at her from my planting. “I think he’s your age. Looked about right… though he might be just a little older.” I pick up my empty flower pots and trowel. “Oh.” I turn on the water and wash the dirt off the sidewalk with the hose. “Anyways, I’m going to go say hi to the Jefferies.” I smile and go inside. I walk through out to the garage and put the trowel on the rack, and flower pots in the trash. I go across the street, and pick up the pace because the as fault was hot on my feet. That’s when I run into him. “Hey.” He says, smiling. I stop and stare. “Hi.” I say after a few moments. She never said he wasn’t wearing a shirt. She never said he was totally hot. Then again, she doesn’t know I’m gay; Sarah wouldn’t think that’s important to me. “I’m Alex.” He says as sets up a lawn chair. “Asa.” I look over to the Jefferies, two doors down from him. A woman comes out of the house. “Alex, honey, can you move my bed please? It’s too big for me to do it.” She asks. “Uh… yeah. Mom, this is Asa he’s…” he trails off. “Over there.” I point to my house, across the street and over two. She smiles. “I didn’t think anyone Alex’s age would be here. This either has elderly people, or new couples.” She looks up at the side of the house, thoughtfully. “Oh! Are your parents around? I’d like to meet them.” She says turning to me. “Ah… my moms dead.” She takes a step back. “Oh. Sorry. And your dad?” she asks. “He’s not home.” Won’t be till Friday, but I leave that out. “Oh… then if you want to come over for dinner later, you can.” She offers. Alex looks up and laughs. “I thought you said we were going out.” She frowns. “Well I don’t think it’s a big deal if he comes. I mean unless his dad would care.” I shake my head. “He wouldn’t but I usually eat at the Jefferies’ when my dads not home.”   Alex goes inside the house. “Is your dad gone a lot?” his mom asks. “He travels for business.” She nods and sits on the fence around their porch. “Shame.” She says looking up at the sky. “I didn’t catch your name…” She kicks off her shoes. “Sandra.” I nod. “Do you need any help moving in?” as if right on time, Alex leans out her bedroom window. “Well, I can’t move it either.” He says, out of breath. She looks at me. “Will you…?” I smile. “Yeah.”

“The rooms up the stairs first on the right.” She says. I don’t tell her I already know where it is. I go inside and up to the room. “That is… big.” I stop at the doorframe. “Yeah. Don’t she why she doesn’t downsize. There’s only her in it anyways.” He frowns and pulls up his pants a little. “You push I pull?” he says as he climbs over onto the other side. “She wants the head under the painting.” I nod and put my hands on the bed frame. “Go.” I push, and he pulls. We hear a crack, then the front left corner of the mattress falls. We both just look at it. “…That’s… not supposed to happen.” He says, kneeling down. “Damn. The screw stripped and came out of the head.” He gets back up. “Do you guys have any screws?” I shrug. “I don’t break things, so I don’t have to fix. Though my dad has a lot of tool stuff in the garage if you want to look.” He nods and heads for the door. I follow. “Hey mom I’m going to run to Asa’s really quick. Your bed broke.” She looks up from her flower pots. “How do you manage to break my bed?” he laughs. “Well, its big, we tried to move it, and we stripped a screw that held the frame to the head board. Now your mattress is partially on the floor. Im going to Asa’s to see if they have any of the same screws, since dad took all his sh… crap.” He forces a smile at her glare that he almost cussed. “Fine. If not I can just run us to a tool store.” She says, but Alex and I are already walking to my house. “Where’s your dad?” I ask, catching up. “Trophy wife in Santa Fe.” I open the garage pad and type in the code. It opens. “Help yourself.” I point to the rack of tools hanging on the wall, as well as the shelf and toolbox. He whistles, before looking the drawers of nails, screws, and bolts. He picks some out of a draw. “Here we are.” He says. “Now the million dollar question; where is the screw driver?” he looked at the top of the screw. “Do you have any Philips heads?” He looks at me, but I have no clue what he’s talking about. One, I don’t know tools. Two, he’s still not wearing a shirt. His hair is a little shorter than mine, about the middle of his neck. Its darker too, brown and mine is too, but of a lighter shade.  His eyes are light though, blue; and mine green. “I’ll take that as a no.” He opens the red toolbox and pulls out some of the shelves. He picks up a screwdriver, and compares it to the screw. “Found it.” He closes the box and puts it back. “Put the bed back together, then I get to weed the yard, lay sod down, fertilize, and plant well… plants. Oh fun.” He scowls and puts the screw deep into his pocket. “I… can help with the gardening.” I offer. “I just finished planting flowers for mothers day a few minutes ago.” He tilts his head. “I thought you said she was…” he trails off. “She is. That doesn’t mean I can’t plant her favorite flowers.” He looks at the boxes of stuff on metal shelves on the sidewall. “How did she…? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.” I shrug and look at the ground, thinking it needs to be swept, all the sand from the winter tracked in. “Car accident about four years ago. The roads were iced and she lost control of the car. A semi swerved to try and avoid us, but the back of it, the really long part, rolled and crushed us. She was crushed from the waist down and put in a coma. I only got a few broken ribs and a fracture though. She… died after a few days.” He to looked down a ground, but more from guilt of asking than to see it needed to be swept. “Sorry I didn’t mean to…” I force a smile and look at him. “Its alright. I’ve told it enough times already.” I try to sound like it doesn’t hurt to talk about it, even though it does. “Ah… so do you want me to help you with the gardening?” He starts to walk out. “Sure. Let’s fix the bed first, then we can come back for whatever garden stuff you need.” I nod and follow him back over, not bothering to close the garage door. His mom was sitting on the porch, looking at us, but not looking at us. “Do you have the right screwdriver?” she asked, feeling the tip. “Good. Philips. Anyways, the Stanley Steamers are coming in an hour. They want us out while they clean.” Alex nods and walks past his mom, but I look at her closely. Her eyes are light, really light, and she’s smiling at nothing. She blinks and her eyes shift to me. “Yes?” I shudder and follow Alex in, saying “Nothing.” I catch him on the way up the stairs. “Hey, is your mom blind?” I ask, hand on the railing. “Legally. Her mom was blind, but my dad isn’t. She can see like figures and stuff, but she cant make out details like facial structure or eye color.” He makes gestures with his hands, pointing to his eyes as he says it. “Can’t she wear glasses?” He shakes his head. “No. Glasses only help if you don’t have twenty-twenty. Blindness has nothing to do with it. That’s why I have to do most the house work, because she can’t make out what she’s doing.” He turns to me. “She breaks most of the stuff, not me.” I remember my comment from earlier. “Oh.” He continues up the stairs, and into her room. He gets down on the floor and takes out the old screw from the oak wood. “Pull the headboard away a little.” He tells me. I do, and watch as he re-attaches the frame together. He hits it with his fist and says, “Done.” He tosses up the screwdriver, and I almost drop it because I wasn’t expecting it. He sits up and looks at me from the floor. “What?” I say, looking down. “Nothing.” He stands up and wipes some wood dust on his jeans, which I now realizes have holes the size of my fists on his thighs and knees. More bare skin. “Do you have to sod?” I ask, looking away. “Yeah. It’s in my garage, as well as all the plants and stuff. I’ll go get the sod and fertilizer so we can do that first. You can—“ I cut him off. “If we walk on the sod after we lay it down it will mess it up.” I pause. “We should do flowers first.” He shrugs and starts down the stairs. “Okay. Then we can weed.” He wipes his hands on his jeans again, this time out of habit. He goes down the stairs with heavy feet, pounding his heals into the stairs, sounding as though he’s stomping. I don’t ask why, because I know some people just walk like that. We go out into the garden, his mom still sitting on the steps. “It’s hot today,” she says into the air. She turns her head to us. “Do you two want lemonade?” I think about Cheyenne, and how she must be wondering where I am after the training bra. I laugh. “What?” he asks as he kneels into the dark dirt and starts to pull up the little grass that was already growing. “Nothing.” I say and bend down, picking a prickly weed from the flowerbed. His mom goes inside, from the heat or to get the drinks, I don’t know. “How long since the people before us moved out?” I looked over at him, but he wasn’t looking at me, so I let my eyes linger. “Little over a year.” He yanks hard at a weed that wont come out. “Get the roots too, so they have less chance of growing back.” He pulls it up, roots and all. “I know. I’ve weeded a garden before. Anyways, is there a reason that place smells like shit? I mean, it comes out of the carpet or something when it’s hot.” He complains. “They used to have this dog, Ginger, I think she was thirteen, she had bladder problems.” He wrinkles his nose in disgust. “Gross. You mean like piss, or shit?” I try not to let his cussing get me down. I don’t cuss, so I have to admit it makes me a little awkward. “Both.” His mom comes out with two water bottles. “I couldn’t find the lemonade.” She hand as she handed one to each of us. “Its okay.” He twists off the white plastic cap and chugs half of it. I take the cap off, and take a few sips. He wipes his mouth with his arm and looks up at the sky. “Hot.” He points out the obvious. “And it might snow later.” I say. He turns to me. “You’re kidding.” I laugh and shake my head. “Welcome to Colorado May. It’s not unusual for it to be nice in the morning, and snow or rain by the afternoon.” He scowls and yanks another weed out. “I hate snow.” He mumbles. “Is that the cleaners?” she asks, following a yellow Stanley Cleaners van with her eyes. Alex looks behind him. “Yeah.” He turns back to the weeds. She smiles and watches as two men come out from the van. “Ms. Louwry?” one asks, with a clipboard. “Yes.” She continues to smile. “Will you please sign?” he pushes the clipboard her way. “And what am I signing?” she asks. The man looks at her, confused. Alex stands up and snatches the clipboard, looking down at the paper. “Satisfaction guarantee, if they break anything they’re not liable… price… and we must be out of the house.” She nods and motions for the clipboard. “Pen?” she asks, the man pulls one from his chest pocket, just below his nametag. Stanley. Ironic. “Mom, do you want me to sign?” he holds his hands out. “No its fine. Where do I…?” He points to a place on the paper. She scribbles and hands it back to the confused workers. “I’m going to go get my purse really quick.” She runs inside the house. Alex mumbles something to the men, and they nod; now understanding why she was having trouble seeing. Alex comes over and we finish weeding the garden. He sits back onto his knees and looks back up at the clouding sky. “I wouldn’t plant till tomorrow, incase it snows.” I think about my moms Snapdragons. Will they be okay? I stand up and brush the dirt from my pants. “I have to go put a blanket over my flowers.” He looks from the sky to me. “Blanket your flowers?” I shrug. “Well I will if it starts to snow. If it rains, I’ll leave them. Saves me a watering.” He stands up as well and brushes away the dirt. “Can I come over?” he asks as he picks up the weeds we pulled and gathered them in his hand. “Yeah.” He throws them onto the sidewalk. “I’ll throw them away later.” He mumbles. I hesitate. “…Shirt?” I gesture to his chest; he looks down. “Do I have to?” Well, it’d be one less thing for me to stare at. “No, I was just… since it might rain or snow…” He shrugs and starts to walk to my house. I follow; he doesn’t know how much its going to kill me for him to have his shirt off. In my house. Possibly, in my room. We go through the door of the garage, and into my house. Suddenly I realize how messy it is. My shoes on the kitchen floor, knives and plates from breakfast on the kitchen counters, fridge magnets I’ve made with my favorite sayings on them clutter the fridge. Blanket on the living room floor along with couch pillows, and food on the end table next to the couch where I ate dinner the night before. “Cleaner then I keep the place.” He says, looking around. I look at the answering machine on the counter to our right. “One sec.” I press the flashing green button. “You have one new message, left Sunday, May eleventh at two-forty-three pm.” And electronic beep sounds. Then my dad. “Asa, I’m sorry but they moved the meeting from Thursday to Sunday, so I won’t be back from China until Monday. I’ll see you after school then.” The beep sounds again. “End of messages,” Says the machine’s female computer voice. “When did he leave?”

“Last Saturday.” He doesn’t say anything for a moment, then, “Sorry.” I force a laugh. “It’s okay. I’m used to it. Anyways… this is kinda it.” I change the subject from my dad to the house. “And your room?” I have to admit I’m a little skeptical of letting him into my room. First off, there are some things in there I’d prefer he didn’t see — Books about homosexuality, though those are secure on my book shelf under inconspicuous titles like The Realm of Possibilities and Wide Awake. Also, my Mac laptop that has a Support Love sticker that had two girls holding hands, and two guys holding hands. “Asa?” he asks. “Sure.” I say without thinking. I lead him up the stairs and into my room. I throw a shirt on my bed over the Support Love sticker of my laptop. The sky is fully clouded now, a dark gray and some far in the distance looks as if it’s falling to the ground, because it is. I open my window next to my bed and I can smell the rain in the air, though it hasn’t come yet. “Anything war can do, peace can do better.” He reads off one of my shirts, thankfully not the one over my laptop. “Nice.” He says, still looking at it. I shrug and turn back to the window. A dog of one of the neighbors is out running around. They’re about to get evicted too, for not paying their rent. A single mom, three kids, and three dogs? I think that’s a little unfair even if the don’t care if the dogs, like the one running outside, crawl under the fence and get out. “It seriously is going to rain, isn’t it?” Alex chimes in, now looking out the window too, but from the other side of the room by my closet. “Yup.” Then he does what I was hoping he wouldn’t. He moves the shirt from my computer to look at what it says. “Only when the last tree is cut down, Only when the last lake is poisoned, Only when the last fish is caught will we realize we can’t eat money.” He reads, then looks down at my computer. Then back up at me. “Your fine with all that?” I’m at least glad he didn’t go straight off and ask Are you gay? “Well, yeah. My moms… sister… is lesbian.” I say, lying. My mom never had any sisters. He nods and lays the shirt back down. I’m not quiet sure he believes me, but I’m still glad he’s not asking about me. I feel something wet land on the back of my neck. I look out, and it’s starting to rain lightly. After a few seconds, it starts to rain harder and harder until it’s now pouring. I slide the window shut, thinking I needed to loosen it, because it sticks. “Great.” He says sarcastically. “You can just stay or something.” I don’t know why I said that. What if he really does get that I’m gay? “No, that’s fine. I should…” he trails off and looks out the window. “But the cleaners are still there.” I see his mom sitting under the stoop of the porch, keeping dry but out of the house. “Do you want me to go get her?” I’m trying to ignore the fact he’s so close to me that I cant even back up without backing into him. I try to ignore the fact his hands are on the windowsill and around me, trapping me there. Doesn’t he think this is… well, more than friends acting kind of? I press that thought out of my mind as he walks away, and starts to wonder around the rest of the house. He goes into my dad’s room, looking and pictures of my mom on the mahogany dresser. “She does look like you to an extent. With facial structure and stuff.” I shrug again and look around, not at him. I remember painting the wall behind the bed with my mom, to see if she liked the color. You can see where we over lapped, where one segment is darker than the other. The other three walls are the same color but a lighter shade of tan, matching the comforter on the bed, with a mahogany frame matching the dresser and bed table. For a second I imagine him throwing me onto the bed and kissing me, all while it’s raining. But he doesn’t. Instead, he walks back out of the room and down stairs. What am I thinking?