Chapter Nine
“JESUS CHRIST.”Liam stared at the wild jumble of thorny vines in Seth’s backyard. “It’s apocalyptic. Instead of pruning, should we try napalm?”
“Not unless you want your first meeting with Dinah to go pretty damn poorly,” Seth advised from his safe spot on the porch. He had Tamara in his arms, since Dinah was off running errands, and he had already declared that as muchas he’d like to help with the raspberries, his childcare duties had to come first. “That’s just a year’s growth. Well, two years, I guess. The bastards are clever—they grow the cane one year, the berries the next, so you can’t kill ’em until after their second year. Not if you want the berries.”
“They sell raspberries at the grocery store, don’t they?”
“Sacrilege. Those berries aren’t as tasty,plus they cost a lot. This is nature’s bounty here, buddy. These plants were put on the planet to provide juicy nourishment to my friends and family. They can’t be disrespected.”
Ben returned from the shed, carrying a set of loppers, a bow rake, and two pairs of heavy leather gloves. “It’s a ritual,” he told Liam. “Me doing the work, Seth preaching about the sanctity of my labors. Tradition.”
“You could think of it as penance,” Seth suggested. “If you bring me a few promising canes, I’ll whip up a couple crowns of thorns.” Then he frowned at Liam. “Or maybe just one.”
Liam didn’t respond to that dig. Seth had been reasonably courteous and welcoming when Liam had shown up at his front door, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten his totally valid grudge. Liam was on probation, and he’dbe stupid to push for more.
“I think we can skip the accessories,” Ben said. He handed a pair of gloves to Liam, then said, “I’ll start with the loppers and you can be my faithful assistant?”
“Maybe not ‘faithful,’” Seth interjected from the porch.
Ben ignored the interruption. “You can use the rake to pull the canes up and away from my face. I’ll duck under and cut the old canes close to theground, and you’ll use the rake to pull them free? We can switch after a while.”
“Maybe we should pull them all out and plant something else instead,” Liam suggested, but he reached out with the rake as directed. “Strawberries don’t have thorns, do they? Blueberries? Those are delicious. Goji berries? Really, there are hardly any berries thatdohave thorns. Seems like it’d be easy to avoid thisnonsense.”
“There are even thornless raspberries,” Ben said. He looked up from his crouched position and smiled. “But they don’t taste as good.”
“The blood of the gardener is good fertilizer?”
“Must be.”
They worked quietly for a while, falling into easy, companionable teamwork. After twenty minutes, with only a few fairly shallow scratches to Ben’s face, they switched jobs and kept going,then switched back when it seemed fair.
It felt good. Well, no. The job itself felt backbreaking, scratchy, frustrating, and pointless. But working with Ben?Beingwith Ben? It was frighteningly perfect.
Little huffs of frustration followed by rueful laughter when the berry bushes didn’t cooperate. Shared triumph when a stubborn cane surrendered. Almost telepathic awareness of each other’s plansand actions, anticipation and communication and synergistic intent….
Was it like sex? Well, no, not unless sex with Ben was a lot thornier than Liam remembered it. Maybe it was just like friendship.
“You guys remember you’ll have to burn the old stuff, right?” Seth called down from the porch. “You might want to get started on that soonish so you don’t have too big of a pile built up.”
Yeah,friendship, with all the thorns. “It’s a good thing you’re holding a child,” Liam said, “or you’d be getting some pretty clear suggestions for where you could shove any brambles that need to be stored before burning.”
“But Iamholding a child.” Seth lifted Tamara up,Lion Kingstyle, and displayed her to the backyard. “She is my sword and my shield, my heart and my helm—”
“Your daddy’s a bitloopy, Tam,” Ben called.
Tamara giggled and stretched her arms out in a better approximation of flying.
Liam stood a little too quickly and felt a raspberry thorn snag at his face. An itchy sting, not even real pain. Only that, in exchange for the privilege of being part of this moment, part of this silly, meaningless,nothingpiece of time.
But Ben stepped closer and pulled off a glove, thenreached up and ran his thumb over Liam’s cheek, and the nothingness turned into eternity. The two of them standing together, facing each other, Ben touching Liam, Liam staring back, afraid to move or even breathe in case it broke the spell.
Ben held his thumb up. “You’re bleeding,” he said gently.
“Fertilizer,” Liam managed.
“I don’t want to send you back to the city all scratched up. You arrivedin pristine condition. You should leave here the same way.”
The words were right there.I don’t have to leave.Or evenI don’twantto leave. I could stay here and the scratch would heal and all of this, all of everything, could just fade away as a lesson learned.
