* * * *
Izzy blamed Patty for it when thoughts of his mom crowded his mind as he worked that day. He and his mom had never had the relationship he’d craved as a kid. She wasn’t like the moms he saw on TV who hugged their children and said they loved them. She never asked him how his day at school was or gave him advice when he didn’t know how to deal with a situation that was troubling him. She was always there for him, but not in an emotional way. Sometimes Izzy wondered if she was like that because he looked so much like his dad. Maybe she’d been different before she met him.
He hadn’t talked to his mom in years, and his dad for even longer. He didn’t even know where his dad was these days, and he didn’t lose any sleep over it. Just, sometimes he looked at families like the Abbots and wondered how they were even real. And he worried that he’d never be able to love Wyatt in a way that Wyatt deserved, because nobody had ever shown him how.
His mom and dad’s marriage had been contentious at best, violent at worst. And then his mom had met and married his step-dad, and there was no violence, but Izzy had also never seen any real warmth between them either. Maybe they saved it for when they were in private, but he couldn’t help thinking that they just didn’t have that depth of feeling for one another that he was starting to feel with Wyatt. That, whatever it was between his mom and his step-dad, it wasn’tlove.
He’d thought, when he was younger, that love like on TV didn’t exist, between family members, between partners, between parents and children. It had never been a part of his world, at least. But every day he saw the way that Wyatt and the Abbots were with each other, and every day he saw the way that Wyatt was withhim, and it was as terrifying as it was beautiful. It was like looking out through a window at a world he couldn’t be a part of yet, his fingers pressed against the cold glass.
Because nobody had ever shown Izzy what it meant to feel loved and to love someone in return, and yet here he was tumbling headfirst into it anyway, just like every other disaster.
He’d crash and burn, he knew, because how else could it end? He only hoped he wouldn’t hurt Wyatt when he did.
* * * *
After lunch, Izzy was organizing the tools behind the greenhouse where the tomatoes were grown. He’d gotten annoyed when he hadn’t been able to find his favorite shovel, and instead of doing a task that didn’t need to be done right then, he’d gone to the spot where people dumped their tools and decided to fix that mess first, for everyone’s sake.
Lou came out of the back door, calling over his shoulder something to—Wyatt?
“Oh, hey,” Lou said when he turned around and saw Izzy’s project. “Well, that’s certainly a smart idea.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d organize these and maybe even divide them to different places around here, just so not everything has to be fetched from here. It annoys me when I can’t find what I need at the greenhouse I’m working at,” he explained.
“Good man. I’ll go check the bees at the sweet peppers next. The ones in there are good.” He pointed behind himself to where the tomatoes—and Wyatt, apparently—were.
“Okay!”
Once Lou was out of sight, Izzy left the tools where they were and sneaked into the greenhouse.
He finally saw Wyatt at the other end of the space, examining tomatoes carefully. He was likely cooking something and wanted the best tomatoes for that. The plants were huge, and the top veggies or, as Wyatt had taught him, fruits, were still waiting to ripen. The ones Wyatt was looking at were cheerful red already.
Izzy wondered if Wyatt was listening to something, because his hips were swaying in a rhythm, as if he were dancing to a mental jukebox.
From here, he couldn’t see if Wyatt had headphones on, so he moved just out of Wyatt’s view onto the second aisle so he could sneak a bit closer behind the plants.
Some of Wyatt’s hair had escaped his hair tie and now framed his face. Gods, how beautiful could one person be?
A bee suddenly buzzed past Izzy’s head, and he jerked back instinctively. He’d been stung in his middle finger less than a week ago and while it had stung like crazy for ten minutes, the swelling had been gone the next morning. It certainly hadn’t prevented his weekend activities…
Izzy grinned. A bead of sweat rolled down from his hair to the back of his neck, tickling him. Absently, he reached to brush it off.
He felt something that wasn’t sweat touch his fingers, and then a sharp pain lanced through the back of his neck.
Another fucking bee.
This time, he gritted his teeth as he pulled his hand back to keep it from stinging him there. Fucking bees. They must’ve been aggressive because Lou had been poking at their nest box or something.
Ugh.
Izzy started towards Wyatt, feeling like he needed some sympathy right then. The pain throbbed with his heartbeat, and it was much, much worse than his finger had been.
Wyatt looked up, through the tomato plants when he saw movement, and smiled at Izzy radiantly.
“Hey, I’m making salad,” he explained, nodding at the basket he had on his arm.
“Hi, I guessed you were—shit,” Izzy cut himself off. He felt a bit woozy suddenly. He knew better than to rub the sting spot.
“What’s wrong? You look flushed?” Wyatt peered at him from the other side of the fucking plants.
“Bee,” Izzy said and gestured at his neck. “Got stung again.” Then suddenly the world tilted on his axis and he went down, hard, gasping for breath.
What the fuck?
