Dean was currently occupied with two of the kids who lived across the street excitedly showing him something on their phones. They stared up at him with sheer glee while his brow was pinched, body stiff and a little awkward. I propped my chin in my hand and smiled when our eyes met, the connection fleeting.

He was almost too cute.

I waved to a few folks sweeping the sidewalk in front of their stoops. Tipping my face up toward the sun, I inhaled the smell of asphalt, coffee, and the bacon one of our neighbors must have been cooking. I closed my eyes, heard the spray of hoses; the sparrows perched on telephone poles; conversations in multiple languages; the steady, colorful rhythm of a neighborhood waking up.

My heart lodged in my throat, an unexpected emotion and one I couldn’t encourage. After chatting with my too-cute neighbor, I needed to spend the day focusing on where I was going next. The clock was ticking, after all.

When I opened my eyes, Dean was strolling toward the stoop, one hand raking through his hair. I offered him a mug and indicated the spot next to me, but he stayed standing.

“I thought I’d find you with your feet in the kiddie pool down at the other end of the block,” he said.

I grinned and glanced approvingly in that direction. “They sure know how to have a good time. I stopped by the kiddie pool for less than an hour last night and still stumbled back here. Is it just me or can Midge convince a person to do literally anything? Like take shots of Crown Royal even when it’s barely past five o’clock?”

He raised his mug to his lips. “People think I’m the dangerous one in the family. But it’s Midge you need to watch out for.”

“A warning I plan on heeding,” I said, trying not to get too distracted by the veins in his forearms or the coarse texture of his voice this early in the morning. “What’s the deal with you shoveling up beer bottles all by yourself?”

He looked down at the sidewalk then back up at me. “I want to fix the lot and turn it into…well, I don’t know, to be honest. The guy from the city that I talked to said if it looked nice and the city finally got its act together to come out and look at it, they’d probably leave it be if we were putting it to good use.”

I tapped my nails on my mug. “He’s probably right. Are you worried an investor will snatch it up? Although that’s not always a bad thing, depending on what they’re planning to build.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Unless it’s the kind of investing that’ll make it too expensive for folks from here to keep living here.”