The Struggle (The Things We Can't Change Book 2) (12 page)

“But, he doesn’t really like me,” I try lamely.

My dad gives a little laugh. “You’ll be fine. I promise. I already told him. Look, here he is now.”

Zeke is pushing through the sliding glass door and into the kitchen, looking just as cold and unreachable as always. I feel myself shrink away, mentally if not physically, and for some reason, magnetizing as he is, I really don’t want to be alone with Zeke right now. Especially after what he said to me at the club.

“Come on, you know Clarissa and Hunter aren’t going to take him,” my dad says, almost laughing. He’s already grabbing his briefcase and keys, ushering Uncle Greg toward the door. “It’s your project, after all. I’ll see you later. Just charge the bill. Call me if there are any problems.”

And with that, my dad disappears out the door to the garage. As I hear the soft purr of his Porsche starting up, I slowly turn to face Zeke. A stare down ensues, green eyes versus violet, the entire kitchen between us. I swallow nervously.

Finally, Zeke shakes his head. “Quit looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” I ask, trying to shake off the spell from his eyes, now that he’s released me by looking away.

“Like I’m gonna try and touch you or something,” he grumbles. “Hands off, all right? I don’t feel like cleaning up five spilled drinks, and you’re not really my type.”

The blow to my pride stings a little, and I grab my purse and keys from the counter bad-temperedly. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

“Halle-freakin’-lujah,” Zeke mutters, following me out of the garage.

I point out my Lexus, and then at the last minute duck back inside the garage and grab the keys for the Escalade, since we’ll need the big trunk for the mulch and plants that we will undoubtedly be picking up. “We’ll take Clarissa’s car. We’ll need the room,” I say, and lead the way over to the gleaming black SUV.

Zeke mutters something under his breath that I can’t hear and heads for the passenger door. I pull myself into the driver’s seat and hit the button for the garage door. We’re backing out of the garage and turning in the big driveway when he finally bursts out, “What the
hell
do you need six cars for?”

I hit the brakes out of reflex and then look at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“You have six cars. You realize that’s not normal, right?”

“Actually, we only have five. The sixth belongs to Hunter. The Escalade and the other Cadillac are Clarissa’s, she likes having a big and a small car. The Lexus is mine, and my dad only really drives his Porsche. He just likes the Challenger because it’s a collectible.”

“So I suppose it doesn’t count,” Zeke says, still sounding disgusted.

We’re silent for the rest of the drive, because I can’t think of anything else to say and Zeke doesn’t seem inclined to say anything. We pull into the closest nursery outside of Dublin and unload from the car. I fumble to get all the papers out of my purse, inwardly cursing as they fight me. The stupid gazebo isn’t my idea.

Dr. Gottlieb had suggested to my dad that I needed a sort of therapeutic project for distraction, and he had pounced on the old gazebo. He’d bullied me into designing something, every day until I complied. It was mainly bits and pieces from the internet, all squashed together, things I’d liked that I’d hodge-podged together into something resembling a garden.

I’d wanted my dad to protest, to criticize, but he always just looked, nodded approvingly, and handed me his credit card. He apparently doesn’t care that his backyard is going to look like a five year old has designed the landscaping. The stupid thing is, I
know
my dad doesn’t care. He really will do anything I want. It’s Clarissa who is going to freak out when she sees it, and ask what all her friends will think. It will be almost worth it to see her face when it’s finished, and her horror at how I’ve ‘destroyed’ the yard.

Zeke trails me inside and we talk to one of the workers about the mulch and dirt that we will need and they start to pile it onto a cart for us. Zeke grabs another empty cart and follows me around the maze of flowers and plants and bushes. We spend a half hour in relative silence, with me leading the way and haphazardly picking out flowers at random and throwing them on the cart. It’s a process that mainly seems to be going something like,
ooh, that’s pretty, let’s use it. That’s weird looking, I’ll take that too. I need a big bush for this spot, you’ll do.

Finally, Zeke can’t seem to hold himself back any longer. “You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing, do you?”

I turn to glare at him. “This whole gazebo thing wasn’t my idea, okay? My therapist recommended giving me a ‘project’, and so my dad decided this was a good one.”

“It’s just landscaping. It’s not
that
hard, but if you just keep grabbing stuff because it’s a pretty color, it’s going to end up looking like shit.”

My temper ratchets up a notch. “How did you know that’s what I was doing?”

He shrugs. “It’s pretty obvious. And I saw your plans. They’re not… very precise. You’ve got a big area, you could do lots of stuff with it, if you actually planned it out.”

“What do you know about landscaping?” I sneer.

“I don’t know a whole lot about landscaping,” he admits. “What I
do
know about is design, symmetry, and color coordination. And all of this,” he waves a vague hand at the modge-podge of plants on the cart, “does nothing for the visual eye.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “You, the non-practicing artist, are giving me a lecture about my design skills?”

“What design skills?” he asks, with the straightest face I’ve ever seen.

I purse my lips as I look at him for a long moment, and then I shove the pile of papers at him. “All right then, if you’re so good, why don’t you come up with something?”

He backs away, hands up. “Not my problem. I’m just here for the grunt work, remember?”

I advance on him, papers outstretched. “And since you just said something about how awful it was, I’m betting you’ll find it pretty painful to have to do so much grunt work for something that will end up looking like crap. You’re one of those stupid perfectionists, aren’t you? Go on, fix it.”

I’ve backed him up into a wall of lilac trees, until he has no choice but to stop backing away and finally snatches the papers away from me.

“I guess I could take a look,” he growls, and I stand watching him with my arms crossed as he leafs through the papers, his face expressionless.

He glances up at me and glares when I start tapping my foot, and I desist with a sigh and back away a little bit to give him some space. Finally, he takes a few steps forward and I move to stand beside him so we can both see the papers.

“See, the pond you have is pretty cool,” he begins, pointing to the pond. “The way you’re trying to make it look kind of wild and natural, with a ton of plants around the edge and water lilies and all that. I really like it. But you’re putting this big birm thing in front of it with taller bushes, and you won’t be able to see the pond from the deck or the pool. I’m guessing you wanted it to shield the gazebo from the deck, so it’s private. That’s cool too, but I would put it behind the pond.”

He points to another part of the outline. “And this pathway here. It’s really… plain. I would start the path with really low bushes and flowers and the big flower beds that right now, you have hidden behind the gazebo. Then, as you get closer to the gazebo, start letting the plants get taller and taller, so everything sort of gradually gets higher. The path can wind around here, past the birm behind the pond, and that’s where you can put the really tall stuff, so that when you’re walking down the path, it literally starts to rise up around you and to hide you the further you walk. I mean, if you wanted, you could really turn it into a sort of jungle out there.” He considers the drawing for a moment, then consults the picture of the gazebo I took to carry around with me, and then nods.

“The gazebo butts up against all the trees against the back of the property, so you could plant trees a little closer to it, then put in some really tall bushes, those lilac trees over there.” He waves a hand behind us, and then scans the nursery for more plants, pointing to each one as he sees it.

“Those would look cool. Maybe a weeping willow nearby with a bench under it, I don’t know. You’ve got an unlimited budget, you can really do a lot of stuff, not just cookie-cutter gardening like a few rose bushes and impatiens.” He shrugs and then finally looks me in the eye. “At least, that’s what comes to mind when I first look at it.”

I can only stare at him, shocked. Then I finally rummage in my purse, pull out a pencil and shove it at him. “Draw it,” I demand.

He grabs the pencil to avoid being stabbed by it, but just stares at it blankly. “What?”

“Re-draw the plans. You were right. My ideas suck, and I want to go with your plan. So re-draw it all.”

Zeke looks from the pencil, to the papers, to me, and then repeats the cycle several times. “Didn’t we already have this conversation?” he asks. “I don’t draw anymore, remember?”

I scoff. “It’s hardly a portrait, Zeke. It’s a stupid landscaping design.”

He pushes everything back into my hands and lets go of it all quickly, so I have no choice but to catch it all. “I’m not doing it. I’ll help you, but I’m not going to draw it.”

I wave the papers in the air. “Hello? Didn’t you just insult my drawing skills?”

“Just leave it then,” Zeke commands. “I know what the picture looks like in my head, and I’m doing the work. I’ve got it all up here.” He taps the side of his head knowingly. “You’ll just have to trust me that you’ll like it when I’m done.”

I lower the papers and consider Zeke for a long moment. He’s half-grinning at me, just a slight lift of the right corner of his mouth, a hint of white teeth and a light in his green eyes that rarely makes an appearance. I realize, all of the sudden, that he’s teasing me, just the smallest bit.

Right now, he reminds me of the Zeke I talked with before he lost Cindy; not without a heavy guard, not without scars, but still able to smile. I realize incredulously that he got into my personal space, that we’ve been shoving the papers back and forth at each other several times and I didn’t even think to get scared or nervous about our fingers touching and colliding. Which they did, several times.

“Fine,” I finally manage to say. “And… I trust you.” There’s a long stretch of silence where we both just look at each other, and it occurs to me that I’m not just talking about the stupid gazebo. I clear my throat before things get any more awkward and take a step back, so that I’m standing behind the handle of the cart. I stuff the papers carelessly into my purse and then gesture down the overgrown path of the nursery to Zeke before grasping the handle of the cart.

“Lead the way,” I say, my voice soft. “It looks like you’re in charge now.”

Zeke hesitates for a moment, and then he leads the way down the path.

Zeke and I spend three hours wandering through the nursery, refining the newly made plans for the gazebo and picking out a variety of plants and noting ones that we’ll need to pick up later. I would never go so far as to say either of us let down our walls or guard. But we both… relaxed. Just a little bit. Enough to be able to talk about the plans for the gazebo, to actually have conversations without them ending in arguments or angry shots at each other.

I laugh that day for the first time in what feels like years. We both laugh, actually. Share smiling glances out of the corner of our eyes at some of the little old ladies tottering around the nursery, discuss the color scheme of the flowers we pick out, and that
laugh
. To this day, I’m not sure what even happened, probably because I was just too dumbstruck by the sight of Zeke’s face lighting up, his strange ghostly eyes seeming to spark. He’s such a startlingly beautiful boy; forget art, forget rebelling, forget graffiti or landscaping. Zeke should run away to LA or New York and become a model. One look at those eyes and that smile and he would have been fought over tooth and nail by agents.

We finally finish and pay and spontaneously stop at Taco Bell for lunch since I know I’m starved and figure Zeke must be too. He balks for a moment when I whip out my credit card yet again, until I remind him that feeding him was part of the deal. Then he orders more food than I think is possible for one person to consume. He proves me wrong. We spend a quiet and yet comfortable meal together and then are bound for home once again, and it feels like we’re driving a mini-jungle back to Riverside Drive, the Escalade is so full of plants.

Once we get home, I go inside and receive a lecture from Clarissa about taking her car without asking her permission first, but I endure it because out of the corner of my eye I can see Zeke unloading everything from the Escalade, every bag of mulch, the big trays of flowers, the few young trees that were short enough for us to take in the car. The rest will be delivered sometime next week.

Clarissa is still talking to me when Zeke finishes and I see him disappear from view around the corner of the house as he leaves. For the first time since he and I ever started talking, our meeting today didn’t end in an argument, or unpleasantness. For the first time, I’m sad to see him go. I still don’t understand why that is.