Page 14 of Riot

“You guys do this a lot?” Calvin asked.

I set a lid back on the beans and shifted closer to keep the sun out of my eyes. “Stuff like this? Yeah.”

He nodded. His profile caught me for a second. Clean lines. Short brown hair sitting right despite the heat. Hazel eyes narrowed a little from the sun. He looked good standing in the middle of our mess. Too good.

“I like it here,” he said.

“That right?”

He glanced at me. “It feels lived in.”

That sat with me. Simple line. Honest one.

Before I could say anything, Holler came by and stole three cookies off a tray.

“Those are for the people,” Calvin said, a verbal echo of what I’d told Reaper earlier, making me feel like we were on the same wavelength.

Holler kept walking. “They took too long. Snooze and lose.”

I looked at Calvin. He looked at me.

Then both of us laughed.

The afternoon dragged out in a good way. Plates were filled. Coolers became lighter. Drift kept the grill going. At some point Sledge got talked into helping a little kid fix a bike chain. Merk spent twenty minutes in a folding chair letting two older ladies flirt with him while pretending he hated every second.

Calvin stayed close without making it obvious. Sometimes he wandered off for five minutes, got a drink, talked to somebody, watched the basketball court. Then he’d circle back near the food or the shade by our tables. I never asked him to stay. He kept doing it anyway.

By the time the sun started dropping, the lot had softened some. Still hot, but easier. A fire hydrant farther down the block had been opened up, and kids tore through the spraying water in swimsuits, shorts, T-shirts, whatever they had on. Their yelling carried all the way to the rec center. The street got wet, shoes slapping pavement. Parents half watched from lawn chairs and curb edges with paper plates in their laps.

I leaned against the side of one picnic table with a bottle of water in my hand and watched the block settle into that evening mood. Music still played. Laughter came in pockets. Holler and Drift argued over whether the last burger belonged to either of them. Reaper had his feet kicked out in front of him and was talking shit to Merk, who looked two seconds from dumping a drink on his head.

Calvin stood near me with a cup of lemonade and watched the kids in the hydrant spray.

“One of them is going to eat pavement,” he said.

“Probably.”

He took a drink. Condensation ran down his cup over his fingers. “And yet they keep sprinting.”

“Built different.”

He smiled and shifted his weight onto one leg. His shoulder nearly brushed mine. I’d been paying attention to where every part of him was the whole time.

A kid shrieked when another one shoved him closer to the hydrant. Water sprayed across the street, catching the last light. Adults laughed. Somebody yelled to stop running. Nobody stopped.

Calvin looked at me then, quieter than he’d been most of the day. “This is nice.”

I turned the bottle in my hand and looked back at him. “Yeah.”

There wasn’t much else to say to that. He was right.

Being around him all day had settled into something easy. No push. No performance. Just him sliding into the rhythm of things like he’d been circling our space long enough to know where to stand. I liked the way he fit near me. Liked how my attention kept going right back to him without effort.

Down the table, Reaper made a gagging noise at Holler and got flipped off. Sledge laughed. Drift lit a cigarette and stared into the middle distance like cooking for people had taken ten years off him but he’d enjoyed every second of it.

Calvin tipped the cup back for the last of his lemonade then crushed it lightly in his hand. A bead of moisture ran over his knuckles. He looked down at the cup then over at me again.

“So,” he said, “if I wanted to continue my volunteer career, purely for the prestige, what are the hours?”