Page 51 of Drop Dead Gorgeous
He gives me the look that always seems to find the cracks beneath whatever performance I am putting on. “Seriously, are you okay? You’re pale, and you’re never pale. Your hair looks like you forgot to finish having hair.”
“I’m fine.”
I snatch the cupcake from his hand and take an unnecessarily large bite to prove the point. Whatever flavor it once aspired to has been buried beneath layers of red dye and industrial sugar.
“It’s been busy,” I continue around the frosting. “People keep dying. You’d swear there was a pandemic.”
Jasper takes the cupcake back and examines me with the grim concentration of someone who has spent too much time searching medical symptoms online.
“You need to see a doctor.”
I roll my eyes, but the movement lands strangely inside my head. The room shifts half an inch to the left before slowly righting itself, and the dizziness lingers like the aftermath of spinning too quickly at a child’s birthday party.
“Everyone has something this time of year,” I tell him. “I’m just tired.”
“You’re never tired. You’re the last person on earth who gets tired first thing in the morning, and no one who consumes that much caffeine should be capable of fatigue.”
I try to laugh, but the sound catches somewhere behind my ribs and refuses to come out properly.
“Is this an intervention? Because you’re supposed to bring more than one dessert.”
“I brought two cupcakes, but I ate the other one.” He shrugs, though his expression remains serious. “Stress carbohydrates.”
Then his voice softens.
“I’m worried about you, Lav.”
The persistence should irritate me. Instead, I feel the warmth behind it, a small light offered freely in the chilly shop. I let out a slow breath and allow some of the performance to leave with it.
“I’ll make a doctor’s appointment,” I promise. “Just to appease you and the concerned citizens of the Blackthorn Bay grapevine.”
He brightens immediately, and for a moment it is easy to pretend that is all there is to it. The ache beneath my ribs is surely the result of too much standing. The bruises scattered across my legs are ordinary evidence of floral buckets, sharp counter corners, and my lifelong inability to navigate furniture. The headaches and occasional fevers must be the consequences of too little sleep, too much coffee, and the emotional burden of making room for other people’s grief.
They are not signs of something hollow working its way through me, one quiet cell at a time.
I do not tell Grim. It is not exactly a secret, because I cannot imagine the symptoms are important enough to qualify as one. More than that, I want to protect the fragile peace we have found, that improbable little pocket of happiness that now contains pancakes, terrible dish drying, and obituaries read over coffee.
I do not want to contaminate it with worry before I have to.
For once, I want to be ordinary.
That afternoon, while the shop is flooded with the honeyed light of four o’clock, the dizziness returns. I catch myself against a stack of vases before they can topple, and for several seconds the room flickers around me like a faulty film reel. Loose petals drift across the floor, reminding me of the way my father used to shake seeds from dried pods and call the mess renewal.
My vision clears.
I finish Mrs. Finch’s bouquet.
I tape a card to the handle that readsGet Well Soon, and for one foolish moment, I almost believe it was written for me.
Outside, the wind presses against the windows, threatening to drive winter back into a spring that has barely begun. I steady myself against the counter and watch scraps of paper and fallen blossoms gather along the curb before forcing myself to stand upright.
Slowly, petal by petal, I gather myself for the walk home.
I lock the shop and leave the keys inside the ceramic frog beside the stoop. The sky overhead is bruise-blue and aching, but I step beneath it as though I still belong to the living world.
Tomorrow, I will call the doctor. Tomorrow, I will let someone else carry part of the weight.
For tonight, I am still here.
