“Thanks.” I down everything in less than a minute.
“How are you feeling?” He’s returned to the edge of the bed.
“Not horrible. My head feels like it’s being pressed between two bricks that are being wielded by giant yetis. But—” I pause as he laughs. It looks good on him—the laughing, I mean. The way his smile somehow makes this way-too-bright room even brighter, but in the best way. I glance down before he notices I’m staring. “But, yeah. Sorry, I don’t know what else I was going to say.”
“Well, the Tylenol should help with the yeti-brick thing.” He pauses. “Listen. I’m not telling you what to do or anything, but…”
“Carter, trust me. I’m not drinking like that again anytime soon.”
“Right, I mean, that’s good, because remember, that amount of alcohol doesn’t mix with your meds.”
He’s right. It does something to my heart that he’s even thought about this. That he cares about my health like that. I want to somehow say what I’m feeling, but instead what comes out is, “I hear you.”
He nods and clears his throat. “By the way, your phone alarm has been going off for a while. I think you might’ve missed something? An event labeled DSATS?”
“What? I missed the DSATS?” I jump up and immediately regret it when my legs buckle beneath me. My right knee in particular is just not up for standing today, I guess. The rug comes at me in hyperspeed before Carter’s arms intervene in a big blur of muscles.
“Hey,” he says, sitting on the floor and putting me in his lap all casual, like we do this sort of thing all the time. “You okay?”
“It’s my knee,” I say, flexing the leg out.
“The one you messed up back in high school?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
He reaches down and begins to press his fingers lightly around the bone of my knee. I let out a sigh and lean back on him, because it feels nice. But then he hits the sore spot and I wince, hissing as I smack his hand away.
“You should get that checked out.”
“I did. It’s a bone spur or two.” I move away from his lap so now we’re both sitting on the floor, facing one another.
“Um. Okay. So which is it, one bone spur, or two?”
I look directly at the carpet, at my heels squished in the tiny curls of beige. “It’s more like three or four.”
He’s frowning at my knee when he lets out a long huff of asigh. “You’re running way, way too much, Teal, for having so many bone spurs.”
“It’s nothing,” I respond, and then I remember why I’m on the floor in the first place. “Shit.” Glancing at the light, I see that the Dahlia Society Annual Tuber Sale was a good two hours ago. For some reason those idiots thought meeting at seven in the morning was a grand idea, and for some reason, this idiot—as in me—thought drinking her weight in whiskey the night before was also a stroke of brilliance.
“Does the DSATS have anything to do with dahlia roots or whatever?”
I look at him sharply, and then wince when my head feels like one of the yeti bricks smashes extra hard on the left temple. “What do you know about the dahlia tubers? I didn’t tell you the plans yesterday,” I manage to grunt out. “No one knows about my dahlia tuber plans. Not even my sisters.”
He responds by lifting his phone and showing me a text. It’s from Tía Nadia, as in the great-aunt who sort of raised me, when Sage wasn’t doing the heavy lifting, that is.Tell Teal to not bother with the Dahlia Society tubers. Most of them have gall. Just start with the seeds, otherwise she’s wasting her time.
I groan. All-knowing Latine elders and their meddlesome ways. “What’s gall?”
Carter slides his thumb over the screen of his phone, lifting it to show me some nasty pictures of plants. I guess gall is some kind of dahlia bacteria. Like, it literally looks like gross alien parasites are growing on them and shit. “I’m going to vomit. Get that away from me.”
Carter leans back after he tucks his phone back in his pocket. I hadn’t noticed before, but he looks damn good right now, in jeans, a soccer jersey, and scruff growing thick around his softpink lips. He levels those golden eyes right on me and then I remember that I probably look exactly how I feel—the veins in my eyes too red, my skin and mouth dehydrated, my hair resembling the gnarled roots of some frizzy tree. I turn my face away from him as he keeps talking.
“I have the day off today.”
“Okay?”
“You need help planting your seeds.”
“My what now?” I touch the tips of my fingers to my forehead. “Right. The seeds.” Then I make a face. “Wait, that basket of ugly-looking herbs Nadia gave me areseeds?Dahliaseeds?” How can something so gorgeous grow from little things that look like something you’d toss in the compost? My next inhale is a little sharp. “I don’t even remember where I put those!”
