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But at one point he was out front pushing the lawnmower around wearing a backwards cap. Shirtless, of course.
Then, a bit later, he came out front with Violet, and she waved in the direction of her flower bed, which resulted in Sly appearing a few minutes later with a bucket and some gloves on, and then he proceeded to kneel down and weed the front bed. Shirtless. That took a while. Not that I was timing it.
It appeared to be pretty hot out there.
Hot, and sweaty.
And really, really sexy.
Ahem. Not that it mattered to me. At all. And honestly, was the guy even wearing sunscreen? Did he know anything about the risks of skin cancer?
At the end of the day, he was in the back with his father and Beck, waving his arms around and pointing at the falling-down fence between our backyards. I knew this because I’d decided to finish work on the covered back patio with a glass of iced tea. That old fence had been a shambles for years, and though my father had mentioned plans to fix it in the past, it never seemed like Sam was on board. And when neighbors shared a fence, I guessed they had to agree about how to fix it.
No one came to talk to me about mending fences, and I didn’t get to see the conclusion of that shirtless endeavor, because I had to go pick up Katie from school, and then we spent the next couple hours at Peppi’s and Freezy Pete’s. By the time I was pulling very carefully back into the driveway, dusk had fallen, and the Remington house was quiet.
No shirtless hockey stars wandering about outside.
Good. That was for the best.
CHAPTER7
SLY
WAXING AND OTHER SECRETS
Ispent Friday night into the wee small hours working on my group project. Every time I’d tried to sneak upstairs to work on it, Mom and Dad had found yet another chore for me to do. I couldn’t tell them why I was anxious to get up to my room, and part of me was happy to hang around outside the house in some insane and masochistic hope of bumping into Clara again.
You’d think after she practically tried to murder me with her car, I would have been wise enough to steer clear. But no one had ever accused me of being smart. In fact, just this afternoon, she’d basically asserted that I was just a dumb overpaid jock.
I mowed the lawn. I fricking pulled weeds when Mom made her most desperate pleading smile and promised me a grilled cheese sandwich when I finished. And then Dad seemed to decide that I’d only come home to do chores and mentioned some long-overdue backyard fence project, which was a whole lot more than a one-afternoon kind of gig.
Even so, by Saturday morning, I’d caught up in my classes and turned in a rough draft of my part of the project for the rest of the group to check out. I was proud of myself—it hadn’t been easy. But I’d buckled down and gotten the thing done.
I had a bachelor’s already, but it wasn’t like I’d really earned it myself. There’d been help at every turn when I was in college, with everyone in my life right there to make sure I didn’t miss a game, never took my eye off the all-important puck.
I mean, I love the game, don’t get me wrong.
But sometimes it felt like everyone else only loved me for the game. If that made any sense.
“Sylvester, come out here please,” Mom was calling from the kitchen. I’d just gotten back from my run, had managed to avoid being almost mowed down in Clara’s driveway, and was not feeling my freshest, but I didn’t like to keep Mom waiting.
“What’s up, Ma?” I asked, stepping into the kitchen, which smelled delicious. “Ooh, bacon.”
“Help yourself,” she said, smiling. “Now. Have you given any thought to what you’ll wear tonight?”
“What? No. Not really. I mean...a shirt, for sure.”
Mom made her don’t-be-an-idiot face. “You’ll need to look nice.”
“So I should shower?”
Now she rolled her eyes.
“I just don’t want you to give Clara the wrong idea.” She wrung her hands in front of her and looked concerned about me giving my neighbor, who definitely hated me, an idea that would not be right.
“What would the right idea be? Just so I can compare.”
Mom lifted an eyebrow as I took a third piece of bacon and leaned against the counter. “The right idea would be something like, ‘that Sylvester is very handsome and polite, and perhaps I would enjoy getting to know him a little better.’” Mom delivered this in a high-pitched voice I assumed was meant to be Clara’s, and then she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
