Page 92 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
Maddie opens one eye to glare at me. “Tell that to my graveyard of dead aloe vera plants, Bram. I killed an air plant last year. They said I was supposed to mist it. But how much mist? And how often? Oh, one mist too many? Dead. You know what? It’s gaslighting, that’s what those plants are. Succulents too, they can fuck right off.”
I laugh, shaking her where she’s lying on top of me, which makes her laugh in return.
“I’ll make a plant mommy out of you yet,” I say, and lift my head to kiss her. She kisses me back, that soft hope staying in her face and making a summer inside my chest.
“You make everything out of me,” she says. “And you make me want things I shouldn’t want.”
“Who says you shouldn’t want them?”
She moves to kiss me, her dark hair falling around my face, her eyes going from green to black as her hair screens our faces from the sunlight. “I don’t think I know anymore,” she whispers, and presses her mouth to mine.
Chapter Thirty-One
Maddie
Bram was made for playing house. We stay in bed for a while, and I show him funny memes and videos on my phone. A few of them he doesn’t fully understand, and I have a good time laying into him being such an old man.
Then we take a shower, and I reward him for being such a good boy earlier with his cock in my mouth as the warm spray of the shower cascades down my back.
And then Bram decides that I am going to own a plant and that this time is going to somehow be different because I’ve never gone plant shopping with Dr. Plant Daddy Bram Loe. With the girls still at their grandmother’s, it’s just the two of us as he leads me out to the oversized shed at the end of the driveway.
He unlocks the old rolling door to reveal an old but organized collection of every lawn and gardening tool a person could ever want, including bags of soil and a rusty old baby-blue truck that is definitely older than me.
“My first car,” Bram explains. “It was my grandfather’s, and he and my grandmother saw no point in me driving a vehicle that couldn’t potentially haul dirt or ferry around larger plants and small trees. So I held on to it, because by the time Sara and I could afford a new car, it wasn’t really worth anything. This thing guzzles gas like a freshman pre-gaming for their visit to the Snake Pit, but I only use it to go back and forth to the nursery or to pick up supplies for the greenhouse. And okay, I have also moved many couches in my day.”
“Bram Loe, environmental crusader, owns a shitty-ass old truck that basically leaks fuel.”
“It doesnotleak fuel,” he informs me as he walks me around the truck and helps me up into the cab.
The truck bounces along down the road as we drive to Taking Stalk, the nursery formerly owned by Bram’s family. It’s different to see Bram in a vehicle that he actually fits inside as opposed to his very eco-friendly compact SUV.
“You know, I’m not sure this plant field trip warranted a ride in your dilapidated truck.”
“First off,” Bram says, “this beaut is not dilapidated. And second, if you’re going to keep this plant alive, you need the full plant-buying experience, and for me, that includes a ride in the truck.”
“Okay, well, thank you for this immersive experience.”
“Nothing but the best for Madelyn Kowalczk.”
Bram rolls the windows down as we drive across town. The last few days were pretty windy, so only the most stubborn of leaves are still hanging on to their branches. As he turns the wheel with one hand, Bram reaches over the middle seat where my hand is resting and laces our fingers together.
We’re out in broad daylight, driving around, and now Bram is holding my hand and I think at this moment that Bram and I feel more like a couple than Gentry and I ever did.
I know that in the moment when bodies are molded together, panting in unison, it’s easy to say things. Things you don’t mean. Things you wish you could.
But earlier today with Bram, something was different. It wasn’t just that I was in charge or that we had the house to ourselves. Those things heightened the experience, of course. But it felt so... domestic. Him making breakfast. Having the luxury of that spiraling out into raw, unfiltered desire. Then at the end, in those final moments with me on top as he let me use his body like it was my own, we were two hearts in one rib cage.
Somewhere inside me, a wall fell down, and I started to imagine not just tomorrow morning with Bram but every morning with Bram. Picking up the girls when he and Sara were busy. Coming home to find his friends loitering. Falling asleep on his chest while he watched the same documentary for the eighth time. Listening to him talk about campus politics. Him listening to me talk about actual politics.
It all felt suddenly possible to love Bram Loe.
“This is the original location,” Bram explains as he parks the truck, pulling me from the rose-colored fantasy occupying my thoughts. “By the time I was born, my grandparents already had three other locations, but this was the one where they had the company office. It’s the one where Sara and I worked together in high school.”
Bram comes around to open my door, and as I begin to slither out because there’s no foothold, he grips my waist and guides me to my feet. “Thank you,” I murmur.
He places a kiss on the crown of my head and takes my hand.
His hand envelops mine, and I love the feeling of it too much to pull away. This is more than daytime sex in multiple locations in his house or holding hands in the truck. This is us in public. In a too-small college town where there are no unfamiliar faces.
