Page 44 of Picking Daisies on Sundays

My mouth went dry. There was no way I was going to explain the conversation Ethan and I had, especially not after Levi and I just got through an argument over this. I didn’t need him to have another excuse to treat me like a younger sister and—

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I shouted, my mouth cutting off my train of thought. I ran back into the building and came out with Levi’s freshly altered suit for the wedding. Handing him the garment bag like I was carrying a sleeping Snow White. “I wanted to steam it first with the fancy steamers in the building.”

“Fancy steamers?” he raised an eyebrow, mimicking my humor and taking the garment bag.

“Veryfancy.” I smiled at his ability to match my energy. But as I looked up at him from the dark sidewalk, I realized that we never had plans to hang out tonight. “Why are you here?”

His posture straightened. “I told you, I didn’t want you walking back to the train by yourself anymore.” I opened my mouth to speak, but those weren’t the words I was expecting to respond to. I didn’t think he was serious, let alone that he would remember my meeting with Ethan tonight.

My thoughts came to an abrupt halt when he opened his mouth to speak again.

“Someone needs to make sure that your shoes are tied before getting on the train. Wouldn’t want you to experience death by shoelace-stuck-in-moving-train.” He finished with a closed smile and bright eyes, trying to suppress a giggle at his ridiculous joke.

We stood under the lamp light in the dark, crouched over in laughter and in silent agreement to not discuss why he was really here and how I wanted him here.

He just wants to make sure you’re okay; friends do that, I told myself. Because that’s what Levi and I were truly becoming again—friends. We were slowly falling back into our old rhythm.

Phone calls in between sewing binges; jokes about each other’s appearances that became equivalent to hugs; visits from him at the flower shop that were no longer surprises but rather expected. It was like the four years of distance between us were lessening by the day. All except this unspoken list of conversation topics that we’ve been avoiding.

As we walked towards the train station, he turned to me.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked, referring to the altered suit in his arms.

“Nothing,” I shook my head briefly.

“Then I’ll drop off an exuberant amount of money in your mailbox.”

“Then I’ll sing to the birds from my window like Cinderella and tell them to peck you when you arrive.”

He returned the favor with a similar, unphased look. “Then I’ll mail it to you,” narrowing his eyes in a competitive manner.

“I—”

“Say another word and it will all be sent in quarters.”

Quarters?That made me giggle. He briefly glanced at me in surprise at my laughter, and I responded with a small smile. “You’re funny.”

“You’refunny.”

“But I don’t want your money.”

He rolled his eyes. “Now tell me what happened with Edgar.”

“Ethan,” I corrected him. Levi didn’t give up, ugh. Instead of telling him everything that happened, I only shared how it started.

“He managed to tell me that the paper was horrible without explicitly saying the word horrible. So I’m back to square one with only three days left until the Lazaro application is due.”

We stepped down the stairs of the subway in unison and walked onto the train. He guided me in front of him, a hand on my arm as we got through the closing doors. I instinctively grabbed one of the subway poles with my inside elbow, but he ushered me to an empty seat, and stood in front of me, grabbing onto a handle above.

“Hmm,” he hummed in thought. “This is going to sound

cliché, but what you write should come from the heart. It should come easily so that the administrators can feel who you are through your words. You shouldn’t write what you think they’ll want, but what you know and feel.”

“You should really think about teaching,” I said inquisitively to the education major.

He laughed. “I’m flattered.”

“Thank you for the advice, really. I’ll try that this weekend.”