I was startled by a voice asking me, “Are you okay, Laida?”
In my trance, I’d forgotten thatmy new pal, Jesse, was right behind me. Shaking my head, I let my thoughts spew out of me. “This used to be my home. Now it’s just a house with a slanted porch, an overgrown farm, and a barn that’s falling apart. Who knows what I haven’t noticed inside the house yet. It doesn’t seem like the same place I once knew, at all.”
Jessie frowned, then grinned and said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.” I squinted at him, confused. He rolled his eyes and took off toward the backyard. “Just come on.”
Reluctantly, I followed him. When I went through the back gate, it was like stepping back in time. Nothing had changed. The brick patio that my grandfather had laid by hand, all by himself, was still there. I could feel the emotions catching in my throat and I tried to keep the tears pushed back. When I looked up, Jesse was way ahead of me. “Wait!” I ran to catch up to him. “Where are we going?” He didn’t say anything and kept walking.
We reached the furthest part of the back yard, where my grandmother dumped her kitchen scraps for composting. I watched as Jesse knelt down to move brush away from something. “Kneel here,” he said. As he gently moved more brush away, he said, “This is still the place you once knew, Laida. It’s still your home.”
I wanted to burst into tears but held back. The old rhubarb plant was still there, too, red stalks and all. “How did you know? She told you?”
“She always told me stories about you. This was one of them.”
Wiping away the tears that had finally spilled over, I said, “I should’ve visited more.”
“Don’t do that. It doesn’t serve anyone to go backwards. Thisisyour home, though, Laida. I did all I could to help her keep up with it, but it needs work. That’s all. Especially since it’s been sitting vacant for almost a year.” All I could do was nod at him. “I’ll help you though,” he offered.
Sitting there reminded me of when I was younger. Those days in the garden with my gram, when the weather was perfect, the birds were chirping, and the wind was blowing. The place felt like home again, and I wanted to hold onto that feeling forever. That’s what Jesse was offering me, even if he didn’t know it. He was a stranger to me, but he somehow seemed like my only friend in the world, and the only one left that knew my grandparents. It couldn’t hurt anything to try, and at least I wouldn’t feel so alone. “Okay. Yeah. I’d like that.”
He stood and offered his hand to me. There was a flutter in my stomach as I placed my hand in his and he helped me up. “Thank you, Jesse.”
Chapter 2
Jesse
Laida’s eyes were filled with so much hope when I showed her the rhubarb plant. That look in her eyes only added to her breathtaking beauty. A week had passed and I had gone back there as often as I could. Spending my time at the farm, fixing things wasallI wanted to do. Well, that, and be close to Laida. It seemed like giving her the space she needed was the right thing to do, though, so I tried to focus on work and only visit every other day or so.
She had opened up a little more to me the last time I was there, telling me all about her love of herbalism. The first time I saw her, she was dropping off salves that she had made that would help if any of the guys ever got burned while fighting a fire. It was a sweet gesture and we could use it.
The barn doors were practically finished. I cleaned and greased the tracks, repaired the parts of the barn doors that were busted, and finished painting them. They were like new and ready to be hung up. I worked at the front of the barn whileLaida spent much of her time in the back of the barn cleaning and setting up her gardening supplies.
“Laida! Can you help me?” I yelled out to her.
She ran up to the front with her shiny black hair swishing behind her and asked, “What’s up?”
“These doors are ready to go back on. Do you think you can help me lift them up?” It wasn’t a huge barn, so the doors weren’t massive either, but they were made of solid wood, it was still a two-person lift. Even though Laida has a petite frame, I didn’t want to count her out without asking.
She smiled and replied, “Yeah, sure. I can do it.”
“On the count of three, we’re going to lift straight up, and then I’ll drop it onto the track.” She nodded. “One, two, three…lift.” She was stronger than I realized. “Whew. Alright. Can you just hold the ladder while I climb up and do some minor adjustments to the tracks so that the doors stay in place?”
“Of course.”
As I worked up on the ladder, I thought I’d try and engage her in more conversation. Learn more about her. I loved having her close. She smelled like all the plants and flowers she was working with. “So, do you want a greenhouse or are you going to store things in the back of the barn there?”
“Well, I do…”
She was talking with her hands, so I interrupted her. “Laida, please don’t let go of the ladder.” I loved saying her name.
“Oh! Right, sorry.” She gripped the ladder with both hands as she went on. “Um, I just want a small greenhouse, but it’ll take me some time to build. For now, I have a bunch of stuff in the living room, sitting in front of the sliding glass patio door for sun. In the back of the barn, I’ve been trying to clean up the shelves and get some of my tools organized. Those shelves are amess, and something tells me everything is just going to take so much longer to clean up than I thought it would.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get there. Alright, I’m coming down.” Making my way down the ladder, I stood in front of her. She was short so I had to look down at her. We were standing close and neither of us said anything. My mind was racing. I wondered what it would be like to kiss her,to wrap my arm around her waist and pull her into me... Hell, I didn’t even know if she was attracted to me. I brushed the thought aside and offered her some encouragement, even though I was feeling a little gloomy, myself, that the doors were finished. “This place needs work, but you’re doing great.”
She flashed what looked like the firstrealsmile since we’d met, and it was the prettiest one I’d ever seen. “Thank you. At least I’m enjoying it, right?”
“That’s the most important thing in all of this. Listen, I gotta get to work. My shift starts soon. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Oh, right! Mr., I like to run into burning buildings.”
