Page 9 of Overdue Feelings

I told myself I wasn’t going to say shit to him. I was just going to walk the bottle of water across the yard for Gigi and carry myself back home. That was it, but when I saw him out there sweating, shirt clinging to his back about to pass out cutting the grass in his grandmother’s yard, I paused.

Out of the two of us, Ares was the one that hated manual labor.

He didn’t do outdoor work. He used to pay me in hot fries and Skittles to do his chores.

I smirked watching him move across the lawn.

He was bent low, shoulders tight, trying to make the lines straight.

It wasn’t pretty, but he was out here doing it when he could have just paid someone.

It wasn’t the Ares I knew, and it made me start thinking.

Maybe he was trying to be better; show up in a way he never had before; become somebody worthy of being let back in, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.

Because for the first time in a long time…

I wasn’t mad at him anymore. It didn’t mean I had forgotten, but maybe it was time to dap him up, call it even, and move on.

“Yo,” I said as I entered the yard. Ares turned, and I tossed him the water. He caught it.

“Appreciate it,” he said, rubbing a wad of sweat from his forehead.

“Gigi sent it. Said she ain’t about to be using her phone to call the ambulance if you pass out.”

“Tell her thank you.” He laughed a little before taking a sip.

“I will.” The silence stretched, and we both stood there glancing around the yard. “So are you officially our neighbor or what?” I asked.

“Apparently, I never stopped being y’all neighbor.”

“What you mean?”

“My parents never told me… guess it was in the will. She left it to me before she passed.”

“Wait, so all this time you owned the house?”

“Yeah, it’s like she knew I would need a place to come back to.”

I nodded my head. I was happy seeing the place be restored, but having Ares across the street from us again… I ain’t know how to feel about that. I looked down at the patchy lines he’d mowed. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I could hear Mrs. Knight’s voice now yelling at me to fix it.

“Go ahead and take a break. I got next.” I pulled my T-shirt over my head and tossed it on the fence.

He glanced at me, his eyebrows wrinkled. He looked like he was waiting for the punch line of the joke… waiting for me to give him the cold shoulder halfway through.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, man. Go sit down somewhere before you pass out and Gigi blame me.”

He chuckled a little, stepping back, wiping the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt before pulling it off completely. I grabbed the mower and got to work, fixing his lines like second nature. Straight, even, clean.

“You still cut like your mama trained you!” he yelled over the lawn mower engine.

I didn’t look up. “She did used to beat me until I got it right.”

He leaned against the fence, quiet for a second. “How is your mom?”

“Good. Living her best life going out of town every other week with her new husband. Barely got time for a nigga, but I love that she’s enjoying her life.”

“That’s what’s up. I love to hear that. Wish my mom would do the same.”

“She still up yo’ ass?” I paused mid-cut, glancing at him.

“Yeah. She not too fond of me returning to this place.”

“I bet. Your moms hated Harvest. As soon as she got your grandma’s insurance policy and you got into Howard, she was out.”

“Faster than the speed of light.”

We both burst into laughter. I was stuck on how easy it felt. How natural it was to fall back into a rhythm with the man I had sworn I’d never talk to again.

“I wasn’t living up there, bro. I was just existing. Woke up every day, did the same shit, felt nothing. I was like a damn zombie.” He looked back at me. “Shit, one day I realized I missed feeling something, and the only place that ever gave me that was here.”

My grip tightened around the rake.

“You think that fixes it? You think a clean fade and a sad story means you get to slide back in our life?”

“No.” He looked me in the eyes. “I don’t expect to be forgiven, Zae. Not by you. Not by her.”

“So what do you want?”

He let out a long breath. “I want peace, happiness. The kind money can’t buy. The kind I had when I was a seventeen-year-old kid. The kind I had when I was with y’all. But I’m not here to force anything. I just… miss being part of something solid.”

I stared at him. Not because I didn’t believe him, but because I did, and that made this harder.

“I don’t do second chances. You walked out on our friendship, and I made peace with that, but C…”

Ares didn’t move. He just let me say what I needed to say, so I continued.

“I had to put her back together. I had to be the one to sit with her when she couldn’t get out of bed. When she wouldn’t eat. When she cried in my arms.” His jaw clenched. I saw the guilt settle deep in his chest. “I was there, and you weren’t. And that hurt more than you breaking the pact.”

“I know.” He didn’t say it like it was an excuse or some fuck-ass cop out, but like it was the truth. “I think about that every damn day.”

“Good. You should.” I took a deep breath. “But you standing here now not running, not deflecting? That’s more than I expected.”

“Better late than never, right?”

We both fell quiet again. We weren’t kids anymore. I was a man… One in love with a woman who still hadn’t let go of the one in front of me, and maybe I was finally grown enough to admit that she didn’t have to. I scratched the back of my head and nodded toward the house.

“Come over for dinner tonight.”

“You serious?”

“Creek’s cooking. You bring the drinks. It’ll be a good opportunity for you two to talk.”

“I don’t know, man. Creek barely says anything to me.”

“She just needs a little push. I think it’s time we all heal.”

“Alright. I’ll be there, but if she stabs me, it’s on you.”

We laughed. I nodded and cut back on the lawn mower. We didn’t shake hands, didn’t hug, didn’t say some dramatic shit like, “I’m proud of you” or “I missed you.” We just went back to the yard, side by side... like no time had passed between us.