“Plain, unlike him. He’s so layered and complicated. But that place needed Rosemary, Cami, Minty, Little Basil, and the others to add color and warmth.” The wordstumble out in a rush now that I’ve opened the floodgate. “He has these impressive knives on magnetic strips in the kitchen. He likes to cook. But all his spices were fake.”
‘So you sacrificed my brother and his friends from the garden?’Basil grouses.
‘How do you think you ended up in here, you smelly grump?’Fern sticks up for me.
‘She’s clinically obsessed with the man, and she’s going to get hurt,’Basil sounds like my father.
I’m considering putting him in the refrigerator to shut him up.
“I’m justcurious,” I insist, though my voice cracks.
My cheeks are still hot. I feel unzipped, skin-thin, and I think all my nerve endings are on fire. All I want to do is press my head against the wall between our apartments.
“New rule: no more Rhys talk tonight. It’s getting weird.”
‘It was weird thirty minutes ago when you almost died,’Basil mutters.
“Mute mode,” I command, striking my finger in the air like pressing a remote.
They hiss and grumble but eventually comply, settling into leafy sulks. But even as they fall silent, the weight of their collective judgment feels like a scratchy blanket.
So I sneak another breath into the T-shirt for the briefest second. Just one controlled, scientific inhale. Then I pull it over my head. It swallows me, soft and warm and vaguely threatening my equilibrium.
It’s a test.
I don’t need the meds. I don’t need the meds.
I’ll claw through all this angst and anxiety.
My heartbeat slows. The voices recede. Then sleep claims me, smooth as silk.
Chapter 8
Fallon
Ipass Jack on my kitchen counter for the third day in a row.
‘Coward,’Basil taunts me from the plant stand, getting his morning sunshine fix.
“It will hurt him.” I stare at the perfect pumpkin with the most beautiful stem.
But I have to carve him up.
‘He’s already dead,’Basil says.“Chop, chop. Literally.’
I turn to face the little fragrant nuisance. “Do you miss your brother? I can send you next door, where there’s a good chance you won’t have water for days.”
Not really, but he doesn’t know that.
‘And you’re sending me in there?’Cory, the small potted coriander plant, bloomed all beautiful green and thriving, cackles like a new recruit who’s being sent to the front line of a war zone.
“You’ll be fine.” I look at Rhys’s kitchen from my window. “My boyfriend and I are getting closer, he’ll start inviting me over more. We’ll be one big happy family.”
‘I’m good,’Fern says, swinging from the ceiling.
‘I’m still waiting on details of a first kiss,’Ivy swoons from the bookshelf.
“You and me both,” I mutter. “In fact, I’m going to check on Little Basil right now. Rhys is home. Let me see if he’s busy.”
