Me and Santos just ended up sleeping in my bed again. At first I got the camping mat out of his room and I was gonna sleep on the floor. As soon as Santos noticed what I was doing he got up and pointed at my bed.
“You sleep here.”
“You’re hurt. You sleep there, and I’ll sleep on the mat.” I hate it when you do something nice and someone doesn’t wanna let you. Even worse I wish I could say I was just doing it to be nice, but I was really gonna need his help in the morning so he needed his rest. I put off a bunch of things around the farm for us to do together cause it was so much easier.
He folded his arms and shook his head.
“Really, you can sleep on my bed.”
He must have gotten dizzy from how much he was shaking his head, so I got the dictionary. “OK, compartir,” let’s share.
I got in my bed against the wall and made sure to leave plenty of room.
He nodded and grimaced. His face must have still hurt pretty bad. “Vaya pues, compartimos.” Fine, let’s share. Sometimes it’s nice the air conditioner doesn’t work well cause nobody in their right mind would have slept with a blanket that night. It wasn’t weird to lay on the bed next to each other but it would have been really weird to get in the covers with a guy. Especially cause we were both just wearing my boxers.
When the alarm went off, I realized I was sprawled across the whole bed. Santos wasn’t in the room anymore, so I really hoped I hadn’t rolled over and pushed him out of bed on accident. That would’ve been classic me though. Trying to do something nice and just ending up pushing a guy out of a bed after he got beat up.
Turned out he was already awake and showering. He didn’t look like he was gonna fall anymore so I let him be and went to the sink to shave. He limped to the sink next to me. He pointed at my razor then at his face. I’d figured he was trying to grow out a beard but I guess he just didn’t have a razor. Good thing he wasn’t growing a beard though. He didn’t look good with facial hair. It was all spotty and didn’t ever really fill in even after a week. One of the days I went to school the health teacher said not to share a razor, so I gave him one of the extras from the pack in the medicine cabinet.
My mom made us breakfast and we started work a little later than usual so it was already super hot outside. Eli didn’t even look up from his plate when I picked up our food from the kitchen. He was probably used to me grabbing food and heading out quick anyway, but we used to at least grumble “morning” at each other. I never understood why he got so upset about Santos when he could have just not hired him in the first place.
We both finished the eggs, sausage, and toast and he finished getting dressed while I took the plates back to my mom. He told me to say thanks to my mom. At least I think he did. I understood gracias and mama.
Working the farm was always hard in the summer cause everyone else I knew got to have a break. Some of them got jobs moving pipe or doing odd jobs but a lot of them had all the free time in the world. Jacob’s mom didn’t let him work over the summer. Said you only get one shot at being a kid and don’t blow it working yourself to death. Eli said he needed the help and my mom said it would at least build character, so I had to work the farm all summer.
Sometimes Jacob’s dad would bring back coupons and things from work. I guess they give you that kind of stuff when you work in one of the offices in town. So while me and Santos were moving a stack of hay Jacob showed up. I saw him climb the barb wire fence the way I showed him so he didn’t get cut and he said he got a couple movie tickets. Asked if I wanted to go. I said we had too much work and Santos fell and got hurt pretty bad. I always had to make crap like that up cause if word got back around to Eli that I’d been talking about him, I probably wouldn’t be able to leave the house for a month. It’s not like he would actually get in trouble though. Sherrif comes to Eli’s poker nights and I guess he owes Eli a lot of money.
“You sure? I bet my dad’d even give me the five bucks for the extra ticket. Hey they even have a few shows tonight after you’re done working.” Jacob’s dad was always giving him money. Eli gave me a few bucks to go on a date once but he said I had to wash his truck before he would give it to me. My mom would sometimes buy me a candy bar or something and tell Eli the cashier gave her the wrong change or something rang up wrong. But I could never just ask for money. That was out of the question.
“Alright, let’s do it.” I didn’t know the Spanish word for movie so I figured I’d tell Santos where we were going later. I hoped he liked movies. It sure beat sitting around wishing Eli would turn off the news so we could watch something we wanted.
I took us a while to finish our work since Santos couldn’t lift as much as he used to. I had to keep telling him to take it easy. He didn’t like that. Every time I told him to sit down and take a break he would stare at the door to the house, probably wondering when Eli was gonna come outside and see he wasn’t working. Poor guy was so jumpy sometimes.