A little story we wrote a looooong time ago. It's been prettied up and is complete, so updates should be pretty regular. Thanks for reading! - Lo & Christina
June 3rd
He moved in quietly in the middle of the night. A large truck sat at the dark curb and three men shuffled boxes and a few pieces of furniture inside.
She watched from her living room, awake as usual.
The truck pulled away with a deep shudder and the street fell silent again.
June 4th
Parents ushered their kids into cars, and husbands kissed wives goodbye at the doorway. She sat on her stoop, watching the house across the street. Dusty blue paint curled at the windowsills, and the grass had overgrown since the previous tenants—a young, scruffy couple—had moved away.
The house had been silent since the last box was unloaded and the door shut behind polite waves and whispers of thanks.
She waited to see him again, wondering if he was the one who stayed, or if he was one of the two who left in the truck.
The blue house was never rented for long. Three months, six months. Once it had been rented for almost a year. The neighborhood had grown tired of the revolving door of tenants and had learned to ignore the quiet house. Kids passed it over at Halloween, neighbors borrowed sugar two doors down instead, and Fourth of July parades never lingered in that yard.
But she always noticed the house. She noticed the transient tenants. The neighborhood's general disregard made her feel protective of it, defensive. She felt the house deserved better. She always made a pie for new tenants, in hopes it would convey to them that it mattered to her they were here, that someone cared about the house.
June 7th
The asphalt was melting in the heat and the air was distorted close to the ground. She parked and began unloading groceries when she saw him again, noticed him deep in his driveway, washing a car she had never seen before.
It was a late 80s Volvo station wagon: rust colored and dusty. He was beautiful and shirtless, his arms covered in blues, reds, and yellows. His hair was damp from sweat and his shorts were drenched with water from the bucket on the ground. She let her eyes linger on his arms, on the stories told atop the muscles of his forearms and the taut lines of his biceps. His back was bare but for words in black along his lower spine.
He stood and stretched, turning to crack his back. Their eyes met and lingered.
“Hi,” his lips said in a smile.
“Um,” she mumbled, before turning and walking into the house with her bags.
June 8th
His pie had crust latticed over apricots, blueberries, and scattered purple plums. Colorful and beautiful. She hoped he wouldn’t notice, and she hoped he would. She carried it over, hopping barefoot on the hot street, balancing the pie. She reached the door and knocked once on the familiar wood.
Footsteps slapped along the hardwood and wavy brown hair appeared in the row of windows before hazel eyes peeked over and then disappeared again.
Several moments of silence passed and she feared he could hear her heart beating. She also feared he had walked away. The knob turned and he appeared in front of her. Clean but scruffy. Beautiful but, sadly, clothed. His ears were stretched with small black bands, his eyebrow pierced with a small ring, and he had a silver vertical labret in his lower lip.
“Hi.” She smiled, nervous now. “I brought you a pie.”
He blinked from her gaze abruptly and looked down at her hands. “For me?” he asked, grinning.
She nodded, looking at the blue and red ink spanning his neck. “It’s what I do whenever someone moves into this house.”
His face registered this, and what looked like disappointment and excitement mixed over his features. His lips pressed together for a moment, possibly in recognition that other lips had tasted pies she made just for them. She hoped the way his eyes brightened meant he’d guessed, correctly, that she had only ever blended color like this for him.
“I went a little crazy with yours,” she confirmed, nodding to the pie. She bounced on her toes on the hot porch needing to leave, but wanting to stay.
He took the tin and lifted the corner of his lip as his smile widened. “I like a little crazy.”
She laughed and turned to leave, waving at him quickly. “Bye, Colorful Neighbor Guy.”
“Bye, A-little-crazy Neighbor Girl,” he murmured.
She felt his gaze on her the entire way back across the street.
June 9th
His light was on when she woke at 2am, hot and unable to find comfort in the big house. A steady beat moved from inside his house and across the heavy air, the sound of his fingers on a drum. She sat on her porch swing, sipping water, imagining him eating her pie in the middle of the night.
~
She climbed out of bed and pulled a T-shirt over her head, padding to the door to fetch the paper. On top of the Times was a small piece of white stationary, folded in fourths.
Bending to retrieve it, she smiled. A drawing of a stick figure, smiling and holding its belly, was scribbled across it. She laughed, walking back inside.
The rest of the day her thoughts lingered on the man across the street as she worked in her office. The slightest sound from outside would send her into the kitchen to peer out the window.
From there, if she bent ever so slightly, she had the perfect view of his little blue house. She scanned the yard in search of the sound, ready to be disappointed again, when movement near the fence caught her eye.
He walked around the tall oak in front, a tool box in hand and stopped at one of the smaller front windows. Shirtless again.
She watched as he bent and focused on his task, completely unaware of her wide-eyed spying. The muscles of his back flexed and twisted as he finally forced the old window open. Her eyes were drawn down his torso as he moved down the length of the house, trying to make out the colored markings that began along his ribs and disappeared below the waistband of his shorts. He was so different than anyone she'd ever known before, and yet in the few minutes they had spent together, she felt inexplicably comfortable and known.
Reluctantly pushing away from the counter, she sighed and looked at the clock. She opened the refrigerator and began mechanically removing items to make dinner, pausing with a smile as the lawn mower started across the street.
An hour later she had a piping hot pan of lasagna in her oven-mitted hands, and it occurred to her what she was doing. Without realizing it, she had prepared two pans and was in the process of securing foil over the glass dish and getting ready to cross the street and place one on his porch. Before she could second-guess her actions, she stepped out into the waning sun.
The sound of children playing bounced off the hot pavement. The air was thick but cooler now, ripe with the smell of freshly cut grass and family barbecues.
She was surprised by the noticeable difference in the old house. Gone were the waist high weeds that spiraled around the weathered mailbox, the overgrown lawn that she used to watch sway in the breeze from the window seat in her bedroom. The grass was now short and cut in a crisscross pattern. The flowerbeds were bare but weedless, and the once desolate looking windows were liberated from their broken blinds, proudly streak-free and framed by the freshly-sanded blue paint.
Silence greeted her as she hopped up the warm sidewalk, balancing the hot pan in her arms. She put the dish down and turned, quickly scurrying back to her house. A lone purple flower, saved from the twisted mass of overgrown weeds caught her eye as she passed. It struck her how that defiant little flower seemed to belong. Strong, unusual, and exotic in such ordinary landscaping.
The next morning, she stepped out onto the porch to retrieve the paper, once again surprised to find something there waiting for her. Her clean dish held another folded piece of white stationary. She bent to retrieve it and laughed out loud, her hand moving to cover her mouth as the sound echoed in the quiet morning. The paper displayed a simple sketch of two stick figures eating together.
She glanced up then and met his wide smile from the front window. She looked down momentarily, blushing, and was greeted by his wave when she lifted her gaze back to his. She quickly returned his wave and turned back to the house, already planning their dinner.
Next chapter soon!
Thanks for reading!