Page 215 of What We Brave
"Yeah," she whispers. "Probably."
Reid reaches over and wipes the dirt off her forehead with his thumb. Gentle. Easy. The kind of touch that costs him nothing because they've always been simple.
I watch that, and I don't feel jealous. That's not the right word. I feel something harder to name—the awareness of a gap. The space between how easy it is for them and how heavy it still is for us.
She'd have to be brave for me in a way she doesn't have to be brave for him. And that's not his fault, or hers. It's just the shape of the fucking thing.
"So we practice," Reid says. "That's all I'm saying. Farmer's market. Coffee shop. Grocery store. We keep showing up until the mole disappears."
"You're never going to let the mole thing go, are you?" Laine says.
"It's a perfect metaphor and I stand by it."
"It's the worst metaphor I've ever heard," I say.
"Name a better one."
"Literally anything."
"You can't. Because mine's perfect." He grins, and it's real—not the performing grin, the actual one. The one that means he's decided things are going to be okay even if the evidence isn't all in yet.
Laine looks at me. Something careful in her face. Testing.
"Are we okay?" she asks. And I know she doesn't mean the three of us. She means me and her.
Am I okay?
It still hurts. Right now, crouching in this flower bed, it still hurts.
But she's here. Wearing my shirt. Planting things that come back.
"We're getting there," I say.
Notwe're fine.Notit's okay.Something honest.
She nods. Accepts it. Puts her glove back on and goes back to the dirt.
We work for another hour. I clean the rest of the gutters. Reid massacres two more boxwoods. Laine clears all four flower beds and starts turning the soil, working in the compost I didn't even know we had until she pulled it from behind the shed.
Nobody talks much. But the silence changes. Loosens. Shifts from the brittle kind into something more like the way a house settles—creaks and adjustments, the structure finding its weight.
I'm hauling the gutter debris to the compost pile when I hear them laughing about something. Turn and see Reid holding a worm at arm's length while Laine tries to take it from him, both of them filthy, both of them loud.
This. Right here. This is what I'd fight for.
The thought shows up clean and simple, without the usual tangle ofbut what ifandyou don't deserve itandthey'd be better off without you.
Just:this.
I don't trust it. Feelings like that don't last. But I stand there for a few extra seconds and let myself have it before it goes.
I'm hauling the last bag of debris to the pile when Reid drops onto the back steps, chugging water. Laine sits beside him, pulling off her gloves.
"I think we need to pay someone to do this," Reid says. "Annually. Like a subscription."
"It's called yard work. People do it themselves."
"People are wrong." He tips the bottle back, finishes it. "You know what this yard needs? More people. Spread the labor."
