Mar. 7th, 2023 at 11:16 AM
He stood under the ladder and looked up with a hand on his waist in a relaxed pose, and the tips of their fingers touched for a split second when he stretched out an arm to hand the gloves back to the man.
He withdrew his hand as fast as lightning, his movement extremely brief, like he’d stolen something and hid it behind him, skilfully going undetected by the other party as he said a few words at the same time to cover up his actions, “Is there something wrong with the roof?”
He scratched his head with his other hand, his eyes alert, exhibiting curiosity and innocence.
He was fair, thin, and with a pretty good figure, although he looked somewhat indolent. He wasn’t that tall, but he seemed to be “that tall”, and he had a face of summer, somewhere between immature and mature.
The man said “Thank you”, and his gaze stayed on the other’s face for a wink. “The wind was strong last night, and I heard a few noises while I slept. The boards seemed to be a little loose.”
“Oh, I think that was there when the previous house owner still lived here, it shouldn’t be a big problem.” Talking about this, he fixed his expression and spoke responsibly, “Really, it’ll be fine even if it rains.”
“Will it?”
The man nodded, looking like he wasn’t going to look further into it. The man’s hands were slender and strong, matching his tall stature, and the veins in their backs protruded slightly as he deftly used those seemingly unwieldy tools to set the corners of the boards in place, hammer down the nails, and smooth out the edges, then he put the gloves back on and applied a layer of protective paint. It was a simple process from beginning to end, without the slightest unnecessary movement.
He inadvertently caught a glimpse of the man’s empty ring finger and seemed slightly surprised, then immediately shifted his attention, holding the shaking ladder to keep it steady. The man jumped down and came face to face with him.
“All done.”
This was their first close contact, they were less than three feet apart, and he could smell the scent of the man’s sweat and evaporating cologne. It was the scent of palm trees after a rainstorm, of warm wind blowing across a pond, of an embrace and a breath. All sorts of thoughts caused a burst of itchiness in his heart, his back tensed, and he turned his sight — which had nowhere to land on — onto the man’s chest, which was wrapped in a thin cotton T-shirt.
That was a figure that only someone who strictly looked after himself for a long time would be able to achieve, strong but not excessively so. After that came the neck, jaw, lips and brows. The man was a head taller than him, and his figure covered the sun shining directly on them. The sky behind the man was a clear blue, with the rich green shade of trees and thick pure-white clouds, its vast expanse spreading over the entire month of July.
“Want to drink something, little neighbour?” The man stuck out the thumb of his right hand and pointed behind him, joking in a friendly manner, “Unfortunately I don’t have much to entertain you with.”
He came back to his senses, giving an inconsequential answer, “Ah, whatever, anything’s fine, I’m thirsty.”
He followed behind the man’s steps as the latter turned around and headed towards the house, but didn’t go in. He waited under the eaves for a little while, and the man came back with a glass of mineral water with mint leaves, citrus, and ice cubes floating inside, the hand holding it damp and cold.
He came in contact with the man’s hand for a second time when he took it and said thanks.
If he was right in his visual assessment of the other’s age, the man should have settled down and gotten married at his age. But there was no ring on that hand, it was clean.
This caused a few inappropriate associations to emerge in his mind, he was nervous about the questions he was on the verge of blurting out and the secret, indescribable joy he felt, so he drank all the mineral water in one big mouthful, only feeling relief when his tongue was numbed by the ice.
“Do you live alone?”
He hurriedly licked the water drops on his lips after saying those words with veiled intent, afraid that his motives would be exposed and he’d have no way to explain himself.
“Yeah.”
But the man was more candid than he’d imagined, shrugging, as the ice cubes collided within the glass.
“I just got divorced.”
That tone, that smile, that easy-going calm bearing and expression with ambiguous boundaries.
He saw it, his longing, his yearning, everything he didn’t currently understand but would sooner or later come to understand.
His objective was still unclear, and so his intuition took the lead. He didn’t even have time to think about the reason, but his heart had already silently thought, right, this is it.
This is just what I want.
