Kaya

On my short walk over to Alejandro's house, I did my best not to think about seeing him again. To be perfectly honest, I'd spent the previous two days behind a closed gate hoping to avoid running into him. After leaving his house the day I met him, I realized I'd been far, far too interested in Alejandro Cruz. For a myriad of reasons, that wasn't a good idea. Since Emery had told me that word was that the Cruz house was a family vacation home, not a full-time residence, I figured he was in town for a week. I thought spending that week hiding until he left seemed like a viable option.

Even still, I was endlessly curious about him. I knew his full name, and I could've looked him up on Google, but I'd held myself back from doing so. I didn't really need to know anything about my super-hot neighbor, did I? No, I didn't. That's what I told myself, anyway.

Forcing myself to think about other things, I stewed about Elvis’s new escape mentality and worried about what was causing it as I made my way to the Cruz house. Elvis couldn’t go around just hopping the wall willy-nilly, and that was all there was to it. I knew for a fact that he’d never done any such thing ever before, which made the whole thing even more confusing. He loved his home and his yard—and, normally, he loved me, too.

Every other time I'd taken care of him, he'd been at my side whenever I'd been outdoors, and when I'd check on him at night, I could see him sleeping up in the sycamore tree closest to the patio doors to the room I stayed in. He'd always been a creature of habit, so the abrupt change in behavior made no sense. I could only pray that Alejandro and his brother Rafe weren't the types to lodge a complaint with animal control or something equally as bad.

My breath caught when I walked through the gate and saw Alejandro at the other end of the drive, walking toward me. My steps faltered, and I stopped walking for a few seconds as I exhaled quickly and then took a deep breath in an attempt to calm myself. Something about Alejandro Cruz made me feel anxious and buzzy, more flustered than I'd ever been before in my life. What was that all about? Whatever was going on couldn't stand. I needed to get a hold of myself. I'd just finished giving myself that mental talking to when he smiled—and I was right back in orbit.

“Kaya.”

The way he said my name made my nipples pucker. Fortunately, I was wearing a bra, a pale pink tee shirt and a pair of faded denim overall shorts, so there was no way he was able to get a visual on my nipple situation.

“Alejandro,” I answered. I bit my lip nervously when I realized I’d said it a little too breathlessly. “I’m so sorry about Elvis—”

He waved me off. “Don’t worry about it for even a moment.”

“Where is my bad boy?” I asked.

Without taking his eyes off of me, Alejandro gestured back over his shoulder. “Back at the trashcan area. Let me take you back there.”

I smiled and stepped forward, my skin prickling with awareness when he turned so we could walk side by side.

“How have you been?”

I wished my hair were down so that I could hide behind it as opposed to being done in a complicated fishtail braid. Reaching up with my left hand, I rubbed the pale pink rubber band that held the style together between my thumb and forefinger.

“Um, good,” I answered. “Really, really busy.”

I was stretching the truth since I wasn't all that busy. It was summer, and I was spending the majority of my days out by the pool reading magazines or inside where I was either working on my video stuff or binge watching Grey's Anatomy.

“What’s got you so busy?” he asked.

“I, uh—videos,” I blurted.

Alejandro stopped walking and turned to face me. “Videos?”

I was maybe one heartbeat away from asking him to point me toward the closest shovel so I could dig myself a hole of shame. Why had I just told him that?

“It’s stupid,” I laughed. “Forget I said anything.”

His laser-like attention only intensified.

“Now I have to know.”

His grin made me all kinds of dopey in the brain, and I found myself wanting to tell him everything about me.

“I’m already the crazy bird lady,” I joked. “I don’t want to add anything else.”

Without waiting for him to speak again, I shook it off and started walking back toward the side of his house. He caught up quickly and fell into step next to me.

“Please?”

My will to keep from sharing anything with him was done in by a simple, please. Clearly, I was weak where he was concerned.

“Fine,” I sighed. “I have a… um… well, a channel on YouTube.”

“What kind of channel on YouTube?” he asked.

If one were to count how many ways I didn’t want to tell him, they’d have quickly gotten up over a million. Although I was endlessly proud of my channel and the content I created, there were videos on there I didn’t want him seeing. Still, it wasn’t like I could not answer his question—at least without being rude.

“I make videos about hair, makeup, clothes, food, crafts and that kind of thing,” I said vaguely.

I was surprised that he immediately seemed to get it. “So it’s a lifestyle channel,” he smiled. “What’s your username?”

It was the worst possible thing he could've asked. If he knew my name, he would find my channel, and once that happened I had no guarantee that he wouldn't go all the way back to the beginning where the truly embarrassing stuff was. I couldn't tell him my username, even if it was rude.

“I’m not telling you,” I answered as I doubled my pace.

He caught up with me in a flash, probably because his legs were darn near double the length of mine. “Kaya,” he laughed, “you can’t announce that you have a YouTube channel and then refuse to tell me your username. Of course I’m curious.”

I refused to look at him, choosing instead to focus on the pavers beneath my feet as I walked. “They’re just stupid videos,” I huffed. “I guarantee nothing I do is anything you’d care about.”

"First, you're wrong about that, and second, I very much doubt they're stupid," he countered.

“It’s just silly,” I explained self-consciously. “Unless you like doing hair and makeup, challenging yourself to a ten-dollar transaction at the supermarket or making the perfect fruit salad, it would bore you to tears.”

“Actually, I enjoy fruit salad and I’m more than a little interested in couponing. I find the process fascinating, particularly the sites that tell you exactly what coupons to clip and when and where to use them. I spent two years learning everything there is to know about the intricacies of the coupon cycle. I could teach you things that could get you to a zero check out every time.”

I snorted out a laugh of disbelief. “Yeah, right!”

I believed the rich male model next door studied coupons and knew how to checkout for nothing about as much as I believed that L. Ron Hubbard was coming back from his visit with Xenu to take the helm at the Scientology Centers again.

“You know what they say about assumptions, Kaya,” Alejandro chuckled as we transitioned onto the grass in the side yard.

Instead of answering, I focused on Elvis who was beak deep in a trash bag full of food. I was almost thankful to him at that moment for being a naughty boy because it gave me an excuse to leave my conversation with Alejandro in the dust.

“No! Bad,” I called as I picked up my pace. “Elvis! Get out of the trash.”

He gave me a look that said nice try, Kaya, before he continued eating. When I got to his side, I grabbed the bag and yanked it away, scolding him as I did. Elvis didn't fight me for it, but it wasn't like he needed to either since it was more shredded than I'd originally seen. A small amount of berries, melons, nuts and scrambled eggs rained down onto the grass as the bag split further down the middle.

Elvis jumped to the ground to continue enjoying his smorgasbord as I screeched in horror when a blueberry landed on my white Adidas superstar shoes. Fortunately for me, Alejandro was fast on his feet. He threw open the lid to the trash can and grabbed the bag from me, tossing what remained away before any more could drop onto my shoes. I breathed a sigh of relief when I kicked the blueberry off and saw that none of the juice had stained the leather of my sneakers. It wasn't often that I splurged on full price shoes, but my Adidas superstar collection was something I gladly spent money on without waiting for a sale. I had five pairs, and I loved them all.

My eyes went from my shoes to Elvis, who was busy gobbling up berries like he was Pac-Man. Letting out an annoyed sigh, I crouched down to start cleaning up Alejandro’s lawn. He stopped me when I went to pick up a handful of melon chunks.

“No, no, Kaya, please,” he said as he set a hand on my shoulder, “don’t worry about it.”

His touch sent off a cascade of feeling within my body, all of it good. Too good. I stood up fast and crossed my arms over my chest protectively as I tried to ignore the way he made me feel.

“If I don’t clean it up he won’t stop,” I explained. “And if he doesn’t stop, he’ll get sick. Birds don’t have an all you can eat diet.”

“Don’t move,” he instructed, “I will get the rake.”

After Alejandro hurried around the corner, I tried to shoo Elvis away. "You're being such a bad boy," I scolded.

Nothing. He kept right on eating. That meant it was time to pull out the big guns.

“Mommy isn’t going to be happy, little man.”

He immediately stopped and cocked his head to look at me with one eye.

Ah-ha! Victory. I finally had his attention.

"That's right, Mister. I'm telling Mommy, and she's going to be very sad.”

People will tell you that animals can’t understand the things we say, but I know they’re wrong. Elvis loved Emery more than anything in the world. Whether it was my tone of voice or the use of the word mommy, he changed course quickly.

I couldn’t help my smile as he walked away from the small pile of food, but my smile turned into a look of confusion when he stopped in front of a large pot full of water and began drinking. My eyes darted between the mound of food on the lawn to the pot of water as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

“I found a rake and a dustpan in the garage,” Alejandro announced as he came around the corner.

“Did you purposely set out a bird buffet?” I joked.

His eyes went wide with shock. “I—b-bird buffet?” he spluttered. “What?”

I laughed as I gestured from the mound of food to the water. “I don’t often see kitchen pots outside. Elvis must’ve thought he’d found the Promised Land. Do you leave giant pots full of water out here often?”

Alejandro looked from the pot of water to me twice more. “Crabs,” he finally murmured, so low that I wasn’t certain I’d heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Yeah. Um. Crabs. So, I was thinking of setting up a crab boil on the grill? Got the whole pot filled with water to see if it would fit on there and the grill and then I saw a spider. You know how it is in new houses. Everything is just settling, I guess. Anyway, I was carrying it over to dump out onto the rose bushes when I saw Elvis in the trash.”

“Ah,” I said with a nod. “I get it. No one wants a spider in with their crabs.”

Alejandro barked out a laugh. “Right. No spiders.”

Finished with his buffet and full of water, Elvis walked around us and jumped up onto the wall between the two properties as Alejandro began to rake up the remains of the trash. “That’s right,” I praised, “you go back on the right side of the wall and be a good boy.”

Elvis cawed before doing as I instructed. The husky chuckle at my side caused goosebumps to break out across my already too-sensitive skin.

“He listens to you,” Alejandro murmured as he finished raking and dropped the dustpan onto the ground.

"Apparently not," I coughed. "I'm so sorry about all of this," I said as I gestured to the pile of food Alejandro was moving into the dustpan.

“Please don’t apologize,” he said firmly. “I’ve told you, Elvis is welcome any time. Don’t even worry about it.”

"I can't help worrying about it," I sighed. "He's never left his home base before, and now he's done it twice in a matter of days. I'm afraid he'll branch out and go farther. If he got lost or hurt it would kill Emery. He's all she has left of her…" I stopped talking when I realized I'd been about to share her business with a stranger. Alejandro didn't strike me as a gossip, but still. It wasn't my place to share.

"Elvis will not go any further," Alejandro assured me as he dumped the trash into the can and shut the lid. "It's my fault, Kaya. If it weren't for the garbage we've left out, he never would've come over. We'll do a better job at making sure it goes out the right way."

The way Alejandro studied me as he spoke made my skin feel two sizes too small. For twenty-one years, I'd been all but oblivious to the opposite sex, and suddenly, I couldn't stop noticing every little thing a man did. I needed to nip it in the bud immediately.

“I have to go,” I blurted as I took three steps back.

“You don’t have to go,” he said, a look of displeasure flashing across his features. “Come in for coffee instead.”

“I can’t. I’m going out.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Where are you off to?”

"The Malibu Farmer's Market. It's only open on Sundays, so I don't want to miss it."

He frowned as I took another step back and prepared to turn away. “Wait! I’ve never been to the Farmer’s Market. Mind if I tag along?”