Page 212 of What We Brave
I said that. Out loud. To Reid. In the workshop, with sawdust on my hands and nowhere left to hide, I said the quiet thing. The thing I've been carrying since the flower stall.
And he didn't flinch. Didn't tell me I was wrong. Didn't tell me I was right. Just sat there on my workbench and said we're a fucking tricycle.
I want to believe that, as stupid as the analogy is.
I'm not sure I do.
Another handful of rot. Another wet slap in the bucket. Below me, Reid's going at the boxwoods with the confidence of a man who has never trimmed anything inhis life.
"Reid."
"What."
"You've made that one look like a mushroom."
"It'savant-garde."
"It's ugly as fuck."
Laine's laugh carries across the yard—the real one, bright and loose—and something cracks in my chest. Not the bad kind. Worse. The kind that reminds me what I have and how easily I could lose it.
She's right there. She's laughing. She's wearing your shirt. Stop catastrophizing.
I climb down the ladder.
She's cleared the first bed and started on the second, sitting back on her heels to survey the damage. Dirt on her cheek. Dirt ground into the knees of her jeans. She looks up when my shadow falls across her.
"These beds haven't been touched in years," she says.
"I know."
"There's good soil underneath, though. Once you get past the dead stuff." She pulls a clump of dried root, shakes the dirt loose. "I want to plant things here. Real things. Not just clearing out the old stuff—I want to put something new in."
"Like what?"
"I don't know yet. Something that comes back every year." She glances up at me. "Would that be okay?"
She's asking my permission. To plant perennials. At a house she sleeps at six nights a week.
"You don't need to ask me that."
"It's your house, Blake."
Three words. Quiet. Matter-of-fact. And they land exactly where she doesn't mean them to—right on the bruise.
Your house. Not hers. She's still a guest. Still visiting. Still keeping that apartment like a parachute she might need to pull.
I crouch beside her. Close enough to touch. Don't.
"Plant whatever you want," I say.
Something crosses her face—not quite a smile, more like the start of a thought she can't finish yet—and then Reid wanders over, clippers dangling.
"What are we planting? I vote sunflowers. Giant ones. The kind that judge you."
"We're not planting judgmental sunflowers."
"Why not? They'd match Blake's personality."
