Wedgie

Four

"I really don't understand why you two just cannot get along," Edna tutted.

Theo tipped the mandarins out into an empty wooden box, then fished the lemons and limes out of her pockets moodily. She had apprised her grandmother of her exchange with Luca the second she'd returned to the stall in the hopes of some feminine loyalty.

Those hopes were short-lived.

"Because he's so..."

"So, what exactly?" Edna waited for a response.

"I don't know. Immature. Rude. Mean. Up himself." How else could she describe him?

Taking the clean tissue her grandmother was offering, Theo gave her cheek a cursory wipe. The blood from the lime tree face piercings had cemented itself into every pore that it had trickled over and wasn't going to budge without warm water. She gave up and instead stuffed the tissue down the middle of her bra where it could at least soak up some sweat.

"Sounds to me like you weren't exactly very nice, either."

Theo scoffed, "Well he started it."

"Not according to what you just described."

"Ok, fine! So what if it was me that started it this time? When we were younger, he was an absolute menace."

"And you don't think that maybe that was on account of him feeling awkward around you?"

"Oh you did not just say that!" Shocked, Theo shook her head as she pulled out the pink and yellow chalks from a carton she found on the stall's bottom shelf. "As our matriarch I look up to you, Grandma. You cannot use the old 'he teased you because he liked you' bull crap."

Edna smacked down a torn off piece of an old envelope, the prices she wanted the fruit marked up at were listed on it in her shaky, cursive writing. "You need to steady your horses, Theodora. Perhaps you've had enough sun for the morning. Watching you and Luca every summer it was very clear to everyone that you had a little crush on him. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that would have made him feel at sixteen, seventeen years old? Not to mention the ribbing his two older brothers would have given him for it."

"Crush?!" Theo shrieked, almost choking on her tongue. "Me?! I certainly did not have a crush on Luca Antonelli."

Had her grandmother gone loopy? Appreciating that someone was blessed with a symmetrical face and a 1950s movie star bone structure didn't equate to having a crush on them for god's sake.

"Ok, sure. Let's say you didn't have a crush. And let's also say that Luca was the instigator of all your teenaged disagreements," Edna lifted Derek off the mower's seat and sat herself down on it before continuing, "as your grandmother, and as you yourself pointed out, the matriarch of this family, I am telling you that you that you need to go easy on that boy. Quit your bickering and make nice."

Something about the way she spoke was mildly unsettling.

If Theo had to admit it, then yes, she did feel the teeniest bit embarrassed. But only for the dobbing though, not because of the way she'd spoken to him. That, he had fully deserved.

"Ugh, fine. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry to me, Sweetheart. It's not me you are holding a fifteen-plus year, childish grudge against." Edna started the mower's engine. "Now hurry up and empty the rest of the trailer and you can set this up on your own. I need to make some phone calls and get another load of washing out on the line."

Left alone with just her thoughts and one dog, Theo took her time to juggle the fruit around until she decided it looked its most enticing, then began writing up the chalkboards in eye-catching fonts and colours. Although it was skin-peelingly hot and humid, the little stall's canopy above her head overhung far enough to afford her plenty of shade so that at least she wasn't frying herself any more than she already had.