I pull on my robe, shove my feet into flip-flops, and march out the back door.
The fence reaches my shoulders. I peer over. “Hey!” I call out. “Brody!”
The lawn mower drowns me out. He’s at the far end of the yard, pushing away from me, and it’s clear from here that he has his phone propped in one hand, angled toward himself. Mowing and livestreaming while I’m disintegrating fifteen feet away.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” I wave a hand in the air to grab his attention.
Nothing. I pull my robe tighter, swear under my breath, and stomp down the side of my house and around to his yard. My flip-flops are sliding, and my robe keeps fluttering open at my legs while I’m clutching it across my chest where it’s gaping.
I emerge from around the corner, and he kills the motor, then turns toward me. He’s standing about ten feet away. I keep pulling the robe tight where it’s slipped. “What are you doing?”
He’s taller than I expected, but everything is gauzy and vague through these useless lenses. However, with the dark hair and broad shoulders, it’s definitely Brody. The general silhouette of a very large and fit man. His face is mostly a handsome blur with a grin attached, which is unfair because even my broken eyeballs can apparently identify handsomeness. His head bows down andthen back up as if he’s looking me over, slowly, head to toe and back again, and my stomach flips even through the haze.
“Mowing the lawn,” he states in a deeper voice than the other night. Thicker as though he swallowed gravel. He’d better not be getting sick. “What areyoudoing?”
“Coming to get you because the wedding starts soon and you’re out here gardening.”
He tilts his head. “I… was?”
“Yes. Currently. Unless this is some kind of lawn-based meditation or you changed your mind.”
His grin widens. “Could be.”
“Don’t play around, please. I’m already having the worst contact lens experience of my life, and I can’t add lateness to the list.” I press my fingers to my closed eyes, then try to blink the world into focus. It doesn’t cooperate. “And are you sick? Your voice sounds croaky.”
He coughs into his fist, like he’s trying to decide not to laugh. “Claire?” He says my name carefully for some reason.
I blink at his blurred shape. “Yes? Are you okay? You’re being very strange.”
“I’m fine.” His voice dips around the words, amused and cautious at the same time. “You just… caught me off guard.”
“Well, consider yourself caught. Now please get uncaught, go have a shower, and put on pants that are not grass-adjacent.”
His eyes travel again, over my robe, my legs, my feet in flip-flops, and I suddenly remember I am standing in his yard half dressed, half blind, and fully losing control of this day.
“I’m sorry,” I add, because apparently my manners have decided to arrive late and underdressed. “I’m not normally this bossy.”
“No?”
“Well, occasionally. In kitchens and emergencies. And this is both, emotionally.”
That grin is still there. “So you want me to come with you?”
I keep rubbing at my watering eyes, making my blurriness worse. “That’s what I’m asking, yes. I’m panicking, and you’re standing there, but I need your help.”
He scratches the back of his neck, one hand still holding his phone, the lawn mower humming somewhere behind him as if it’s also waiting for an answer. “A suit I can do.”
“Thanks. It’s a semiformal wedding. Not a lawn wedding, that I’m aware of. Though, at this point, who knows? Maybe I’ll trip into a hedge and marry a shrub.”
His laugh comes out fast, and something in my stomach tightens despite the fact that I’m irritated, visually impaired, and one breeze away from flashing my gorgeous neighbor.
“Okay,” he says. “Count me in.”
Relief floods through me so fast my knees almost buckle. He’s not bailing. “Really appreciate it. Be out front in ten or fifteen minutes. I need to go get dressed and convince my hands to stop shaking.”
I turn, then pause and squint back at the blur of him standing in the cut grass, enormous, grinning, and somehow still making me burn from the full force of his attention. “Do you mind driving? My contacts are genuinely trying to blind me.”
“You got it,” he says.