[ WP ] A love story about a girl/boy who does n't want to be in love .

Armed with his mother's garden spade in his back yard, surrounded by his trucks and an intricate system of dirt ramps and roadways, Thomas believed he had everything that he wanted; everything that was important in the world. As a dump truck backed up to one pile of soil and retrieved its load, Thomas provided the sounds of the truck's beeping as it reversed and the foreman coming over the radio and directing the driver to his next destination. 
 
 `` Thomas! Come on in the house for a minute, dear!'' Thomas's mother bellowed through the screen door. 
 
 The trucks all rumbled one by one back to the main construction site and parked in a line. Thomas stood up and darted through the yard toward the back porch, never bothering to give his dirt-covered jeans the slightest shake or pat. 
 
 He was still at half-speed as he flew into the kitchen at the rear of the house, letting the screen door slam behind him. His mother was chatting at the table with a woman wearing enormous sunglasses on the top of her head with a big purse sitting on the floor beside her chair. `` Thomas, you remember Tina, my friend from work?'' 
 
 He did n't. 
 
 `` She brought her daughter, Jess, along for a visit. She's in the living room playing with your LEGOs. Why do n't you go join her?'' 
 
 The thought that this unknown stranger -- -a girl, nonetheless -- -was touching *his* LEGO sets, and possibly messing up *his* recently built police station made Thomas instantly nervous and uncomfortable. He slowly and tensely walked across the linoleum, ready for an altercation. When he reached carpet and turned the corner, he found a girl in a flowery dress and a red bow in her hair, sitting on the floor quietly and building a multicolored tower from the pile of assorted, unused blocks beside Thomas's fully intact town. 
 
 She looked up at Thomas with big, dark green eyes, gave him a half smile and returned them to her tower. Thomas's heart, already pounding hard from the fight he had anticipated, did not slow. He would n't have known what this new feeling was, had he even noticed it. All of his attention was on the girl. 
 
 `` Hi,'' Thomas mustered out before slowly easing down onto the carpet on the edge of town. Jess did n't respond. Thomas picked up a few assorted blocks and started mindlessly connecting them, in vast contrast to the masterfully-planned homes and civic structures them separated him from Jess. 
 
 `` Jess!'' Time to hit the road!'' Tina warned from around the corner.'' Jess placed her tower behind City Hall and stood up. `` Bye,'' she quietly said to Thomas before joining her mother as they walked out the front door. 
 
 Thomas located a LEGO person topped with a head of long plastic hair and a flowery dress printed onto her yellow body and carried it outside to his construction site. He placed her in the passenger seat of the largest dump truck. 
 
 `` OK, boys, we've got a new project. We're clearing a space for a tower,'' the foreman reported over the radio.
