Page 36 of For You I'd Mend
Rowan ran after me with the basket of chicken. “Do we need to drive? It’s just around the corner.”
I nodded toward the living room and the small jungle of plants Mom had gathered from her shop this morning. “You plan on carrying all the food and those?”
“Oh,” Rowan said, frowning. “Maybe we went a little overboard?”
“You think?”
“You know Mom,” Rowan said, opening the front door with her free hand. “She always goes above and beyond to welcome people to the neighborhood, but this is Theo.”
Like I didn’t know. Theo who had become so tangled in my life I couldn’t avoid him even when I tried. It’d been two weeks since the ice storm, and even with using a freaking puncture wound to bail on some stuff, I’d already had to suffer through game night, three dinners, and two classes. I couldn’t blame my family for the classes, but with my studio destroyed, they were the last linkI had to any type of art that didn’t involve fondant or modeling chocolate.
And not once in all those meetings had Theo and I discussed what happened. At least I’d managed to eliminate all alone time with him. I swung by the pharmacy to chat with Wilson while he closed so we’d arrive at class together. Then I booked it out the door the second the lesson ended.
Theo, of course, pretended everything was perfectly normal. Scrolling through our text exchanges, you’d think nothing had happened. He still sent me links to interesting art articles and shared stories of his more memorable clients. He’d even found an art show coming to Staunton in May and suggested we go together. I tried to respond with my usual sass, but every time I had to force myself to pretend nothing had changed when everything had.
I’d lost my studio and practically any hope of being with Theo in the same night. To add a cherry to the shit sundae of January, Theo now lived within a frisbee toss of my house. OK, maybe not a frisbee I’d throw, but I bet Chris could fling one as far as Twill’s yard, and Theo’s house was clearly visible from there.
“Poppy,” Rowan said, and I realized I was still standing on the front porch with a tower of sides while she’d loaded the chicken and was coming back for plants. “Does your foot hurt? Let me take some of those.”
I nodded, even though my foot felt pretty good, considering. She lifted the top container and the biscuits and probably would have grabbed more if I hadn’t nudged her with my elbow to move on. I followed her to Mom’s station wagon, where she’d already placed the basket on the floorboard of the backseat.
“I’ve been patient,” Rowan said as she crawled in and tucked the container beside the chicken. “But something is clearly off between you and Theo, and I’m worried it’s my fault.”
I handed her the rest of the containers. “How? Nothing was ever on between us.”
“Please,” she said, checking the lid on the coleslaw. “It’s clear to anyone with a pulse that you two like each other. And not ‘just as friends,’” she added, air quotes and all.
If I’d done that, the coleslaw would have slid off my lap and splattered all over the backseat because that’s the kind of month I was having.
“Not enough,” I said.
“Nope,” Rowan said, shaking her head. “I’ve never seen you so into someone.”
“Fine. You’re right, but he doesn’t want to be with me. Happy? Want me to list all the reasons I’ve considered why he finds me undatable? We can start with personality traits and work back to physical.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom said, suddenly behind me. “You’re perfect.”
Crap on a cracker. Today just kept getting better. I turned to face Mom, who was staring at me between two potted plants. “Can you just pretend you didn’t hear that? I’ll grab the rest.”
When I got back to the station wagon, Mom and Rowan were eerily quiet.
“Let’s go,” I said, shoving the last plant in the back. “The chicken’s getting cold.”
“He has a lot of baggage,” Rowan said from the back seat as Mom reversed out of the driveway. I shot her a death glare via the rearview mirror, but she continued undeterred. “Way more than Caleb, and you remember how hard it was for him to work through his before we could be in a relationship.”
Kind of hard to forget your sister sobbing her eyes out for two days straight because the man she’d fallen for was too broken to fall in love, or at least admit he had.
“Not to mention Theo’s parents abandoned him,” Mom added. “They should have supported him the most. That surely messed with his head.”
“I pushed him too far with the whole topless snuggle,” Rowan said softly. “I mean, looking back I realize you weren’t in any real danger of hypothermia. The thought just popped in my head. I figured it couldn’t hurt and might even inspire him to finally make a move.”
“Wow, did you know she was doing that?” I asked Mom. “Or did you think I was freezing to death too.”
Mom shrugged. “He didn’t seem to mind.”
I slapped my thighs. “Unbelievable.”
“Cal says Theo hasn’t dated anyone in years,” Rowan continued. “And that he’s still punishing himself for the accident. For what it’s worth, I think he genuinely likes you, Poppy, but he doesn’t think he deserves to be with you.”
