Page 50 of Down Bad

Then delight. “Great.”

Despite him telling me to wait, I hop out of the car same time as he does, then the pair of us bolt up to the front porch. After he shakes off his green umbrella and sets it by the bench, he goes in first and kicks off his shoes on a mat by the door. I do the same.

His house smells so clean. Looks clean, too. It’s weird, having caught glimpses of the inside of his house through the windows, and now standing inside it, breathing the air, socked feet on his cool, hardwood floors.

He returns to me with a towel—a warm yellow one with tiny green stripes. “The minestrone will take a bit to warm up,” he tells me, “so make yourself comfy, kick back, look around.” His voice is a little strained. Not its usual easygoing self. “But not the garage.”

Rubbing my hair with the towel, I stop at a display case full of decorative dishes and porcelain figurines. Tiny white horse. Tiny white ballerina. Tiny white owl. My reflection in the glass covers a porcelain cottage, placing my face over it. “What’s in the garage?”

“It’s where I stash the bodies.” He pauses for laughter. There’s none. “My, uh … dad. He had hobbies. The garage is where they’re all ‘coexisting’, we’ll call it. I never go out there. There’s probably a hundred brown recluses lurking between his things, I don’t want to press my luck just to poke around some hubcap collection.”

I look back at him. “Hubcap collection?”

“Seriously, don’t go into the garage. It’s so awful.”

“He collected hubcaps …?”

“Among many odd things. Exhaust pipes. Old gas tanks.” Then he stops and smacks his head. “Oh, crap, I just made it even more interesting. I forgot you’re into cars. Just forget I said anything.”

“Well, now I can’t.”

“Didn’t I mention the brown recluses? If you want something interesting to look at, you should see my greenhouse. It’s a total vibe. Especially when it’s raining like this.” He stops suddenly and peers at me. “Wanna … see it?”

I stop, too, towel dangling from my hands.

Would it be weird if I told him I already have seen it through a slit in the backyard fence a few nights ago?

I shrug.

That’s my way of saying: sure.

He understands.

I’m not sure whether the soup is still warming up or he just ditched it altogether, but Wyatt leads me through the house and out the back door. His patio is a small rectangular cement slab that is covered by a slanted tin roof—loud as hell when it’s raining—but leads right into a greenhouse that has the opposite effect. Second we step inside, the rain is muffled and soft. It’s more spacious in here than it seemed with a distant glance through the fence.

Wyatt launches right into introducing every plant.

They have names. Like Harold. Sally.

Mortimer.

His voice is refreshingly calm, even if I don’t really catch any of what he’s saying. I just follow him slowly around the table in the center, nodding, watching his lips move, seeing the light in his eyes every time he gets excited. He’s about to trip over a bag of soil as he talks on and on, not paying attention to his feet, so I slip past him and tug it out of the way. “Oh, thanks,” he says, then just carries on.

I notice one of the shelves is crooked and give it a little nudge. Still crooked. When I notice Wyatt’s stopped talking, I give him a look. “I’ll bring my tools next time. To even out the shelf. So your vine thingy here doesn’t fall off if you bump into this.”

Wyatt blinks. “Next time …?”

I freeze.

Was that weird? To assume he’d invite me over again?

I shrug. “If you want.”

After a minute, he nods, then says, “Her name’s Rapunzel. The ‘vine thingy’. Because of the … the long vines. Get it?”

I don’t. But I nod like I do, then gently nudge the plant away from the edge so it isn’t so close.

I don’t realize my hand is resting on the counter below. Right where he’s got his own. Our fingers graze.