“I’m telling you that he’s just a figment of your imagination, Ian.” My best friend Reggie Wolf dug another scoop-shaped chip into the homemade salsa and swallowed it down following a deliberate crunch.

I smashed the avocado against the side of the bowl with a fork and growled, “Blake wasn’t a figment of my imagination, but I guess he might as well have been. He’s gone now.” I reached out and slapped at Reggie’s hand. “And don’t eat all of that yet. I’ve got guacamole and tacos on the way, and I want a little salsa too before you down it all.”

Reggie said, “I just eat what you put in front of me. That’s the advantage to having a serious cook as a friend. If you don’t want me to eat it, take it away.”

I dropped the fork and pulled the bowl of salsa away from Reggie placing it to my left far away from his searching chips. “That’s taken care of.”

He frowned, but picked up his beer bottle instead. After a quick swig, he said, “Of course if you really did see him, and he was…what did you say? A minor league baseball player?”

I nodded as I turned my attention back to finishing up the guacamole with some chopped cilantro and another dash of lime juice. “He said the smashed up leg was likely to end his career, but I bet that it could be fixed up well enough that he could still play softball.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Reggie. “Is he a gay guy?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know for sure on that. He made a sort of cryptic comment about how I looked. Straight guys don’t normally do that.”

“Cryptic?” Reggie swallowed another mouthful of the beer.

“Okay, he complimented me. He said I looked nice.”

Reggie reached a hand up and ran it through the wiry, curly dark hair on his head. “Well, you do. You have that kind of boyish charm, Ian. Just don’t let it go to your head.”

I turned around and took a longer look at Reggie. We dated two years earlier after meeting on the softball field. It didn’t work out after about two months of fireworks both in and out of the bedroom. As soon as we decided a romantic relationship wasn’t in the cards, a solid friendship between Reggie and me flowered. I said, “Well, thank you, and I know you’re not just saying that. You told Rachel the same thing.”

Reggie sighed. “Is nothing kept quiet anymore?” He said, “Well, it’s too bad your imaginary neighbor didn’t stick around. On the team we can use all the help we can get. I’m not looking forward to another year in the league’s basement.”

I cringed but said, “You know it’s all just for fun.” I was parroting the league principles, but losing all but one or two games wasn’t a lot of fun by the end of the season.

With a laugh, Reggie said, “I’ll remind you of that when we’re pulling up the rear one more time. We’ve clinched last place this season. If we don’t bring in a ringer in the off-season, we’ll get it again next season, too.”

---

Blake didn’t reappear, but no one moved into the house next door either. The “For Rent” sign didn’t show up. Instead, the house just sat empty and someone hired neighborhood kids to keep up with mowing and snow shoveling. By late winter, the house started to take on that difficult to describe forlorn look of a building that has remained uninhabited for months.

I was tempted to call Blake’s number. It was still on my cell phone. I didn’t delete it, but I didn’t know exactly what to say. We didn’t spend enough time together to be friends, and as the winter wore on, I started to wonder if Reggie was right after all. Maybe Blake really had been a figment of my imagination.

The next spring came early. The weather felt like early June by the first of March. In the last week of March, I took a calculated risk and planted cool-weather flowers and vegetables. A late frost could sabotage all of my efforts, but I was eager to dig my hands into the dirt and add color to my yard as early in the spring as possible.

My grandmother was a dedicated gardener. Her talent skipped a generation, but I was determined to pick up the family legacy. I remembered sitting at her knee as a young boy while she flipped through pages of a photo album she kept showing each year’s flower and vegetable gardens. Some years there was a riot of orange and red while other years were dominated by cooler blues and pinks. She taught me that perennials were the backbone, but annuals made all the difference in the overall color scheme.

As a twenty-seven-year-old man, I knew how lucky I was to own my own house. I saved up half of the down payment from my own earnings as an accountant, and my parents loaned me the other half. I bought my house when I was only twenty-four. Each year I made significant changes to the garden adding a few perennials as well as shrubs and small ornamental trees, but the biggest job was filling it all out with brightly colored annuals. My current round of purple and orange pansies were my first step in the new growing season.

I started early on a Saturday morning planting the pansies in free-form clusters along the edge of my front porch. Then I spent two hours cleaning up brush and trimming back perennials in the back. Tiny nubs pushed up out of the ground giving me the promise of another outstanding gardening season.

After lunch, I returned to the front yard pulling out weeds before they got a chance to take hold. The earlier they were pulled, the easier the work was overall. I refused to use any chemicals at all on my gardens. The entire process was organic and utilized plenty of physical labor on my part. If a job was too big for just one person, I usually called on Reggie for assistance. He helped me dig out a particularly difficult shrub the previous fall.

I was on my knees leaning forward and digging into the still damp spring soil with a trowel to remove the roots of a particularly stubborn weed, when I heard soft footsteps on the sidewalk behind me.

Before I could turn, I heard a familiar voice call, “It looks great Ian, and I think you are the first on the block.”

He was back out of the blue like he fell from the sky. I turned to see Blake Powell standing on the sidewalk, hands stuffed into the pockets of a pair of crisp, deep blue jeans. He was slowly swaying slightly forward and back with a huge smile replacing the pinched look of his face when I last saw him.

In a slightly bewildered tone, I asked, “Blake? How are you?” I turned as I slowly rose to my feet and brushed at the soil caked on to the knees of my own jeans, worn and stained with years of garden work.

He swiftly climbed the concrete steps from street level to the edge of my porch. There was no hesitation. His leg was healed. He said, “I’m doing pretty well. I thought I would ask if you were interested in a new neighbor. It’s for real this time.”

I held out my hand to shake his. I was still in a state of shock that I was actually seeing him again. I hadn’t yet begun to process the idea of him moving in next door. I asked, “Are you taking the house for the long term this time?”

Blake gripped my hand. His shake was firm, but I didn’t feel as if the bones of my fingers were being crushed. It was more a sensation of my hand being embraced than squeezed. The tone of his voice was light and good-natured when he said, “The physical therapist released me, and I did some checking with the minor league brass. I was given the old, ‘Well you can try,’ while one of the coaches I trust said, ‘Honestly, Blake, it’s over. Go on and live your real life now.’ I still have a little nest egg from my parents, and my uncle suggested that it’s time to be on my own. To quote him exactly, he said, ‘You’re twenty-five Blake. You’re not a child any more. It’s time to be a man.’”

I stared back into his deep brown eyes and said, “Well, welcome to the neighborhood.” I gestured toward the porch and said, “As you can see, I do like to garden. It’s a good neighborhood. Mrs. Riley down the street is house-bound, but the advantage is she watches and sees everything on our block. She doesn’t hesitate to call the cops if there is anything out of order. The Parkers across the street have two adorable little kids. Like I said, it’s a good neighborhood, Blake.”

He wrapped his arms over his broad chest and said, “I’m sure I’ll be able to settle in before long, but I did have another question for you, Ian.”

I furrowed my brow. “A question, for me?”

Blake said, “I want to know more about the softball league.”