Zaire stepped around to face her, head tilted, sweat glowing across his forehead. His chest rose and fell steadily, not nearly as tired as he should’ve been considering how many balls he’d just knocked into the horizon.
“You obviously don’t got it,” he dismissed, nodding at the hose. “You been fightin’ with that since I came over here.”
“How long you been watching me?” Meadow asked, narrowing her eyes.
He smirked, lips barely tugging. “Same amount of time you been watching me.”
“You must have eyes in the back of your head then…”
He laughed, “Hell yea…the hood’ll give you that.”
That little pull inside her chest showed up again…annoying.
“Go finish your bucket,” she snapped lightly. “This thing just old and stubborn. Like most men.”
His brows jumped. “Damn. I ain’t even do nothin’ yet.”
“You breathed.” She hunched her shoulders, then turned her attention back to the coupler.
He shook his head, but she heard the quiet laugh he tried to hide. It did something strange to the air around them.
“Aight,” he said. “Move, cuh.”
She bristled. “Excuse me?”
“Move, Meadow,” he repeated, more patient than she expected. “Let me try.”
She considered telling him to mind his business on principle. This was her domain… her land… her hoses… her busted irrigation system she knew better than anybody.
But his wrist was still taped under that brace. She’d seen the way he flexed it after certain swings…The way pain flashed across his face before he smoothed it out.
“You don’t need to be grabbin’ nothin’ with that hand,” she pointed out. “Doctor probably told you to rest and here you go tryna wrestle hoses.”
“You don’t know what my doctor said,” he argued, stepping closer anyway.
The doctor hadn’t said anything because the pain didn’t come until after his upsetting loss. After he got so mad, he punched the wall in his bedroom.
“You don’t listen to doctors,” she shot back. “You give hard-headed.”
“You give bossy,” he countered.
“Somebody gotta be.”
His eyes did that thing again, searching her face like he was trying to figure out what lived behind her words. It made her throat feel restricted in a way she refused to analyze.
“Move, let me handle it,” he grunted. That breathy curl of his words tickling her clit.
She huffed, but stepped aside, and crossed her arms, watching him carefully. “If you hurt yourself, I’m tellin’ your mama myself.”
He snorted. “Lesha don’t care ‘bout no hoses. She care about me gettin’ my head right.”
Lesha…
She wondered what kind of Mama he had…wondered what the hood had done to him to make him have eyes in the back of his head, but she asked none of that.
Instead, she folded that into the growing folder in her mind labeled ‘Things I Know About Zaire Cooks’. Mama named Lesha, from the hood, plays Nar, talks to her Daddy with respect, has a wrist he pretends ain’t injured and lost his footing somewhere back there even if he didn’t admit it. She observed him closely.
He crouched by the hose, braced his good hand around the coupler, then used his taped wrist just to stabilize, not twist. The veins in his forearms jumped.
