“Oh, yeah? How would that even work?”
“I’d hold court in space. Tea parties and galas while orbiting Venus. I’d wear jewels from meteors in my crown and rule the cosmos with an iron fist encased in a very fashionable silk glove.”
“Of course,” he says. “How short-sighted of me. You would have excelled at it, I’m sure.”
“Indubitably,” I agree with a haughty sniffle and a hint of my mom’spromenadeaccent. After a moment’s hesitation, I ask something that’s been on my mind for the last few days. “What about Sage? Does he ever talk about what he wants to be?”
Bastian is quiet for a moment as we walk. “Before the accident, he wanted to be a pro skateboarder. He had all these posters on his wall—Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, the guys fromJackass. He’d spend hours watching videos and trying to learn tricks.”
The only follow-up question I could possibly ask feels gross on my tongue, but I ask it anyway. “And after the accident?”
“After, he stopped talking about the future for a while. It took him almost two years before he started making plans again.” He purses his lips. “Last I heard, he wants to be a software engineer. He said he’s going to design accessible video games for people with disabilities.”
“That’s actually really cool.”
“He’s a good kid,” Bastian says, and there’s so much pride packed into those four words that it makes my throat clench up. “Better than I ever was at his age. Better than I am now, too.”
“You’re not such a lost cause,” I mutter, then feel my face grow hot. I can’t let myself do that. Complimenting him is a dangerous road for both of us, even if I really do mean what I’m saying.
Because the problem has never been that Bastian is a bad man. It’s that he’s a good man who’s done bad things.
In so many ways, that’s worse.
Without warning, Bastian’s hand closes around my wrist.
“What did we just—” I start, ready to unleash the fury of a thousand suns on him for breaking the one rule I established.
But he cuts me off. “There’s a rose bush,” he says simply. “On your right. You’re about to walk straight into the thorny part.”
Oh. Right. My bad.
He’s not done, though. Before I can formulate a response that isn’t just embarrassed sputtering, he’s guiding my hand, gently, carefully, toward something soft and cool. My fingers brush against velvet petals, and the scent hits me a second later: sweet, rich, wild.
“There’s a beautiful one here,” he murmurs. He positions my palm so I’m cupping the bloom without touching the stem. “And a big red one just below it. The thorns are—yeah, right there. Don’t move your hand down.”
I lean in and inhale deeply. The smell of a rose on a summer day—is there anything alive more cliché than that? I can’t think of one. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, though. On the contrary, it’s so achingly beautiful, and normal, andboring,that my heart wants to crack into a bajillion little pieces right here on the sidewalk.
That life we can’t have opens up wide in my mind’s eye again: a man and his woman, a woman and her man, hand in hand, stopping to smell the actual damn roses.
If only we could.
If only we ever could.
Bastian holds the door open for me when we get back to the house. I’m halfway through when he stops me with the softest of touches on my waist.
“Thanks for letting me join you on your walk,” he says.
“It was a promenade,” I correct with teasing sternness. “And you’re welcome. I’ll be back at it tomorrow, if you should care to join again.”
His touch flutters on my hip for a second, that exposed strip of skin where my sweater has ridden up again, before vanishing as he withdraws. “Sure thing,” he tells me with a winking, devil-may-care freeness that reminds me of the old Bastian. “It’s a date.”
27
BASTIAN
back of house /bak ?v hous/: noun
1: kitchen area hidden from diners.
