Page 21 of Control (Everyday Heroes 3.50)
“Don’t avoid me, or else I’ll sic the cops on you.”
“Oh, please.” Her husband already has.
“I’ll make up a reason—a well check or something—because we all know how much you don’t want that to happen.”
“I’ll send you a day that works. Happy?”
“Very.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I open the garage door and get out of my car, preoccupied with the bags of groceries I’m carting inside. Once the rustling of the plastic settles as I set them on the counter, I hear it.
It’s a distinct sound. One I can’t place, so I stand completely still with my heart lodged in my throat to see if I hear it again.
It happens. The thunk of metal against dirt. The squish of sodden mud.
The curse muttered under a breath.
“What the hell…” My words fall flat when I fling open the back door to see Reznor in the backyard with a shovel in one hand, on his knees in a slew of mud, and said mud covering so many parts of him I can’t see them all.
“This pipe is really a bitch. Whoever laid this sprinkler system needs to change careers.” He looks over at me for a split second and then goes back to digging like it’s completely natural that he’s in my yard fixing my sprinkler system.
And I don’t know how it makes me feel. On one hand, that means he noticed the plumber never showed—so that means he was watching...and I kind of like that he was watching. On the other hand, he just stepped into my life and took over, and I’m not sure I like that—the domesticity of it.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing your sprinkler system,” he says with a grunt as he shovels a scoop full of mud onto a tarp that’s blanketing a corner of the back patio.
“But why?”
“It’s broken, isn’t it?” He’s fiddling with a pipe, with the piece that connects them—or that looks like it connects them—and is putting some blue goop around the inside before joining them together. “I already fixed the damn thing once and then when I turned it back on, your pressure regulator wasn’t turned right so it blew another fitting off. It’s as if the guy forgot to glue the pieces together.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“But, Reznor...why would you do this?”
“Because I’m a nice guy? Because you had your water off, and I didn’t want your flowers to die?”
I snort, not buying it for a second.
“What? You don’t believe me?” he asks as he takes a second to look my way behind his tinted lenses. He has mud smeared on his cheek and sweat running down his temple as he holds the pipe, but the slight smirk tells me my hunch is right.
“Why are you fixing my sprinklers?”
“So you wouldn’t have an excuse to miss class next time.” The smile he flashes me is as bright as the sun beating down on him and without saying another word, he turns back to the muddy trench and glued pipe and everything that is not me.
I should be pissed at him. I should tell him that no one tells me what to do or where I need to be. Instead I watch him. I stand and study him from my back stoop as my mind whirls over what to do about this man who has single-handedly pushed his way into my life and thoughts.
I have groceries on the kitchen counter that need to be put awa
y. I have bills I need to pay. I have clients to call back, and yet I don’t move, unwilling to tear my eyes away from him.
“It’s a lot easier to talk to me than to have me try and read your mind, you know,” he says, breaking through my thoughts.
