Love Edy Read Online Free PDF Page B

could make
them, she preferred his mother’s lassis still. Hassan’s
mother had a way of adding special touches just for Edy—flaxseed
for energy, ginger for pain, and extra honey when her sweet tooth
raged.
    Shaded from the heat of a persistent sun in
ambivalent hot-then-cold-then-hot autumn, Edy waited for the new
folks to make an appearance. A baby blue Dodge F-150 sat in their
drive, chipped, rusted, and slumped to one side. Next to it was
yesterday’s truck. The old beat up Dodge, she figured, must have
belonged to a carpenter or contractor of some sort.
    When the front door opened, yesterday’s pair
stepped out. They crossed the yard and disappeared into the back of
the moving truck, emerging later with odds and ends. They retreated
and returned again and again, bearing assortments on each turn—a
lamp, small boxes, garbage bags stretched full and misshapen by who
knew what. When the boy came out alone and with an oversized CVS
bag, hanger jutting from the bottom, Edy knew the contents wouldn’t
hold.
    He struggled with it, even as the man
brushed past him and went inside the house, content with muttering
at his own burden. Edy was on her feet without knowing it.
    “Your stuff!” she hollered and broke into a
trot as the plastic bag began to seep clothes. “It’s gonna
fall!”
    She crossed the street, threw open the gate,
and scooped up the pile of fallen fabric, dashing to his side as
his bag tore completely, vomiting shirts and old Converses,
tattered boxers and ripped jeans right onto her feet.
    They stared at each other, him red-faced,
her cringing, before Edy decided to pick up the escaped clothes and
be done with it. Except when she did, her hand brushed Swiss cheese
underwear and she jerked in revulsion. Resolve melted under the
fury of a blush they both shared.
    “Please!” He puked the word. “Let me do it!
I can—” He snatched the clothes from her and shoved them into his
bottomless bag, so that they fell to the ground at once. He looked
straight at her, at her as if every item was exactly where he
intended it to be, and he had amply proven his point. He looked at
her as if all those shirts and pants and shoes, weren’t piled right
on their feet.
    Edy’s cheeks inflated on a laugh she
wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t let go. She held it until her
insides ruptured and the dam burst, and oh, it broke free. He eased
her a reluctant grin, cheeks aflame, before sliding into a grin
himself. They dissolved into eye watering silliness. Underwear on
their feet and instant friends somehow.
    “I’m Edy,” she said when their laughter died
down.
    He let the bag drift to the ground. “Wyatt
Green.”
    “I live across the street,” Edy said. “At
2260.”
    They stared at each other.
    “Well, then,” she said. “Guess I’ll see you
around.”
    She began to back away.
    His face pinched. “Wait! I mean—”
    He glanced back at the house, just as the
front door swung open.
    “Thanks for your help,” Wyatt blurted. He
scooped the fallen clothes in a single swoop and rushed to the
door, leaving Edy to frown in confusion.

Four
     
    Edy saw the boy named Wyatt Green the next
morning and blushed with the recollection of touching his underoos.
Even as she leaned forward for a better view from the center
backseat of the twins’ Land Rover, two thoughts occurred to
her.
    Wyatt wasn’t hired help.
    He was headed to their school.
    “Stop!” Edy cried, so loud that Matt stomped
the brake. He looked around as if expecting to find an animal, car,
or child in the road.
    “What? What happened?” he said.
    All eyes were on her. Mason, Matt, Lawrence,
Hassan, and even Chloe Castillo, with them once again.
    “I know him,” Edy said, indicating the tall
and rawboned guy standing on the curb and muttering to himself as
he adjusted the strap on a battered backpack. “Give him a
ride.”
    Every male set of eyes turned on the figure,
collectively sizing him at once.
    “No room,” Matt announced and