The winky face emoji stares back at me, and my pulse pounds in my palm. She’s flirting with me, and I’m dangerously close to enjoying it.
I start three different replies, delete them all, then lock the phone and shove it in my pocket.
Practical, I tell myself. Just business. Just Dusty.
Definitely not because I can’t shake the image of her sprawled on my couch, safe in my house with Dusty’s head in her lap.
Chapter seven
Even wildflowers split concrete
Lulu
The world feels different before sunrise. Quieter. Like it hasn’t decided who it wants to be yet.
My sneakers slap against pavement, my lungs burning in the way I secretly love, until I crest the hill at the end of Birch Street. The road curls around a patch of trees most people would jog straight past, but I always stop and zigzag through them into a grassy clearing.
From here, you can see the mountains shoulder up against the sky, pink bleeding into gold. My spot. My reminder that no matter how messy life gets, the sun still shows up.
I slow to a walk, hands braced on my hips as I breathe, air sharp in my chest. In the middle of the clearing, I spot a lone dandelion sprouting from the grass.
I pluck it, spin the stem between my fingers, and close my eyes to blow.
“I wish… my students don’t stage a coup today,” I murmur to the fuzz as it scatters on the wind. The lighter wish drifts away, but another mantra clings quieter, the kind I don’t say out loud.
Wildflowers still split concrete, even if no one’s paying attention.
I brush the empty stem against my palm, let it drop, and start jogging again, sweat cooling in the morning chill as the sky breaks wide with light.
My head’s not really on the run anymore—it drifts back to Saturday. The date that should’ve worked. He was nice, funny enough, told me about his cat, and even asked about my class. Perfect on paper.
But he hesitated for a beat when I joked about star signs, like he was deciding whether to laugh with me or at me. Snorted into his coffee when I said I like to write down my manifestations. Apparently, that’s just “goal setting.”
And when I lit up about my plans for the next few weeks—friends’ birthdays, Charlie’s bachelorette, even the little “just because” things I love to throw together—he cut in with,“I don’t really get spending money on frivolous stuff like that.”
Frivolous.
As if balloons and confetti and themed cakes don’t mean anything. As if celebrating your people, making them feel seen and loved and chosen, is some silly waste of time.
But that’s me. That’s the part of me I’ll never dial down. I’m a celebration girl. Always have been, always will be. Celebrating people isn’t frivolous, it’s memory-making. It’s love made visible.
Maybe that comes from growing up with a dad who ran into fires and a mom who spent nights in scrubs, both of them teaching me, without saying it, that the people we love can be gone in an instant.
If we don’t celebrate now, then when?
So I canceled Sunday. I didn’t have the energy to sit through another polite conversation. Instead, I ended up on Betty’s porch with a cocktail in a jelly jar, listening to her cautionary tale about her third husband. Better company, honestly. At least Betty doesn’t talk over me.
And now, with sweat cooling on my skin and a school day waiting, I can’t decide if I’m more tired of the dates themselves or of how little I care to try again.
Which is annoying, because I’d really,reallylike some decent sex. Not best-I’ve-got-is-a-sparkler, not someone fumbling their way through foreplay. Actual, good sex. But apparently, that’s too much to ask.
As I round the bend and my house comes into view, I see Logan coming down his driveway, duffel slung over his shoulder, keys in hand. He’s heading for his truck and blinks at me groggily, hair sticking up like he fought with his pillow and lost.
“You’ve got too much energy for six a.m., Parnell,” he grumbles, voice gravel-thick.
I grin, slowing to a jog-walk. “Says the guy whose entire career is late-night games and midnight travel. Don’t you live in hotel lobbies?”
“Yeah, and none of them involve me running uphill before breakfast.” He squints at me, the sight of someone choosing cardio this early clearly offending him. “Normal people are still in bed.”
