A wet sponge landed on my face with a splat.
“What the—”
“How skinny do you think they are now, jackass?”
The sponge fell to the floor, and I had water dripping from my face onto my T-shirt, blobs of soap hitting the floor with a splatter. “Okay, okay, I deserved that.” I chuckled.
I grabbed the big hose to wash the car down and turned on the sprayer. I didn’t realize the setting on the nozzle had changed because one moment I was pressing on the handle to release the water, and the next I was struggling to contain the water flow as it went in Joel’s direction.
“Fuck!” he shouted.
“There’s something wrong with it,” I shouted back in a panic, thinking I’d broken Joel’s granddad’s hose. “It won’t turn off. It’s stuck!”
Joel came over and took the hose from my hands. He managed to fix it and turn it off, but not before he managed to soak himself further.
“Fuck you, Lima. You’re going down.”
Up until that point, I’d been fairly dry, but Joel’s revenge was served in the form of a hose-down. I ran to the other side of the car, but the sprayer had a long reach, so despite my best efforts, I was getting wetter by the second.
I saw the smaller hose I’d used for the buckets and decided to retaliate. I pinched the ends of the hose to add pressure and create the same effect as a sprayer and pointed it over the car to the other side, hoping it would hit Joel. I heard his scream and congratulated myself for hitting my mark.
“This is war, Peterson!” I declared.
“Fine by me.” I felt a wet sponge that he must have thrown go sailing past my head.
“Hey! My face is my best asset!” I crouched and went around the car to catch him, but he predicted my move.
“No, it’s not. It’s your ass,” he said as he used a wet towel to whip me in the butt.
I lost balance as I was trying to defend myself and tried to grab hold of Joel. We both fell on the grass by the car in a fit of giggles. We were drenched from head to toe.
The water had definitely been a great help to cool me down, but I wasn’t sure for how long. Joel positioned himself so that he was lying on the grass next to me shoulder to shoulder. He looked at the blue cloudless sky and then turned to look at me.
His blue eyes were so much lighter in the sunshine and shiny from the beads of water on his eyelashes. His full lips stretched into a small smile, followed by a grin.
He whispered, “David, it’s raining.”
Drops of water fell on us like a rainstorm, cold against the warmth of the sun above. I hadn’t realized that Joel was still holding the hose with the sprayer when he fell down. He’d simply pointed the sprayer up and made it rain on us.
We smiled until we were both laughing out loud. When we were kids, we loved playing with water, although it had always been me who started it by whispering, “Joel, it’s raining.”
Of course, we’d been scolded by Joel’s grandparents each time and sent home with burning ears. Afterward, we always agreed that the scolding had been worth it for the fun we had.
We still had a car to finish up, so we got up off the grass and went back to work. In the midst of our hose wars, we actually managed to get Ladybug hosed down too.
I picked up some clean clothes to dry the body of the car, but when I turned around, Joel had discarded his cargo shorts and T-shirt. What the fuck? He was standing in front of me in his tight black boxer shorts.
“What are you doing?” I said in what I was sure was a too high pitched voice.
“My clothes are wet.” He shrugged.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I ran my hand over my face. I was going to need a lot more cold water to keep my lust at bay.
And if things couldn’t get any worse, Joel’s grandparents turned up. I saw them out of the corner of my eye and willed them away with the power of my thoughts, but when I looked back up, they were still there. In height order, from left to right: Great-grandma, Grandma, Granddad.
I instantly jumped in front of Joel to cover him up, which earned me a giggle from behind me and a grin from Vovó Deolinda. I turned around and told Joel to put some freaking clothes on.
“No.” He challenged.
