June Bug by Jess Lourey Read Free Book Online Page B

treating you?” I asked nonchalantly. And quietly. In my head. No way was I going to destroy this moment with my own brand of dorkism.
    He was getting ready to plant marigolds around the shed. I knew the flats of flowers he was unloading from the back of the pickup couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds each, but when he grasped one of them, his arm muscles flexed and the lean ropes of his back defined themselves. His dark Levi’s hung below the waist of his boxers, the whiteness of his underwear contrasting nicely with the brown muscles of his back. When he turned, I couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses, but his full lips were closed tightly as he concentrated on his work.
    Once he had all the flats out, he leaned over the side of the shed with a garden spade in hand. He dug down deeply, removing divots of earth, which he placed off to the side. Then he methodically and gently removed a marigold from its four-pack, placed it in the hole, held the earth clump over the flower, and shook the dirt loose from the sod. He repeated this for every flower. By the time he was halfway down the side of the shed, the hot sun was sending trickles of sweat down his back, through the soft valleys made by his lean hips, and into his shorts.
    “Ready to go, Mira?”
    I blushed and kept facing forward when I heard Jed’s voice behind me, thanking God almighty that you can’t see a woman’s hard-on. I shook my head to coax some blood back to my brain and turned to look into Jed’s friendly eyes.
    “Oh, there’s Johnny!” Jed pushed me aside. “Hey Johnny, Mira’s looking for you!” He yelled and waved simultaneously, pointing over to where he had pushed me, out of Johnny’s view. “Here she is!” He held my hand out the window and waved it. I peeked my head around the corner and smiled lamely. Johnny gave one brief wave, flashed a short, solemn smile, and strolled over.
    “Hi, Mira.”
    I looked down at my shoes, certain that a movie reel of my impure thoughts was playing on the big screen above my head. “Hi, Johnny. What’re you planting?”
    He looked back over his shoulder. “Marigolds, mostly. Have you gotten a chance to plant the zinnias you bought last week?”
    My blush returned. He remembered I had bought zinnias. Could it be that he thought about me as much as I thought about him? “Not yet. You’ve been too hot outside.”
    Johnny cocked his head. “Excuse me?”
    My face turned purple, and my internal switch flipped to Loser. “ It . It has been too hot outside. To, you know, plant. Well, you better get to work, right? And I have to get to work. Not work, so much. More like investigating, you know. Underwater. I’m like a detective fish, but I can walk, too.”
    Johnny nodded his head at me, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Okay. Catch ya later, Mira. Jed.”
    Jed nodded dopily, and I slid down the wall into a pit of shame. With Johnny out of sight, I was able to flip my switch off Loser and onto Self-Loather. Could I be more of a moron? But that man, that body, those hands. I sighed. I liked Johnny just as he was—that is, at a distance—but I would have to seriously consider unpacking my vibrator out of homage to him. I had retired it a few months earlier because I was concerned about overuse. It got to where I was having a Pavlovian response to the sound of any small electric motor. Even the buzz of a blender on liquefy could get me going. After watching Johnny garden, though, I made a mental note to dig out the pink kangaroo from the bottom of the closet. If I didn’t take care of myself, I was going to do something silly like ask the guy out. “You got anything to drink, Jed?”
    He peeked his head through the archway that led to the little resort store. “We do have Coca-Cola. Or do you want to buy some pot?”
    I grabbed Jed’s hand and pulled him back into the porch. “Forget it. I gotta get out of here. Which BC do I get?”
    “That black one in back