“Well, you said the three who showed up were from your yoga class, right? That’s just up the street from the library. Who else lives in the area? I don’t mean in Bridgeton, I mean like, right here.”
Ris lifted her hands, wanting to throw a pillow at him but not wanting to frighten the dog. “It’s not like I asked them to pack an overnight bag!”
“No, but you asked them to leave their bubble. Like, I mean, when I lived here in the city the last time, we lived our whole lives in a ten-block radius. Literally. When I lived in Starling Heights, it was even smaller. The Pixie was the furthest thing in my routine.”
“Oh, you aresofull of shit!”
They both looked down quickly, checking Fitz’s reaction to her slightly raised voice. He had disappeared back into his crate. Ris closed her eyes, shaking her head, annoyed with herself, exhaling hard before continuing in a softer voice.
“Youliterallycame to see me in Cambric Creek, like, a week after we met! We did things here in the city! We did things by your apartment, we did things near my condo. Do you mean to tell me—”
“Yeah, because you’re super hot and I was super into you. Also, and I don’t think you can discount this, but we’re weirdos. Welikegoing out and doing things. Most people don’t want to put on pants if they’re not at work. And, not to sound speciest, but you’re asking them to come to a mostly human neighborhood when most of them probably never leave the Creek. Didn't you say that was the whole downtown initiative? So that residentsdon’thave to leave?”
“Yes, but—”
“We’ve already established that folks barely want a real connection with anyone. I just don’t think you can expect that they’re going to be willing totravelfor something they don’tthink they need in the first place. Everyone wants to believe they’ve already won, not that the day-to-day is still something you have to work at. Mirrors are hard, babe. No one wants to look at them too closely. Wanna do a video chat with my therapist?”
She sat back, wrinkling her nose.Un-fucking-believable.He was right. The three attendees she’d actually had were right from the neighborhood.And almost everyone else is from Cambric Creek.
She wanted this to work. She desperately wanted to make it work not just for herself, but for all of them. She knew how much they needed it, how much theywouldneed it, even if they didn’t realize that themselves just yet.We’re going to need it when all our people are gone.
“I’m going to drop into group, I think. Are you good?”
She turned her head up as he rose from his seat, fist wrapped around the guitar’s neck, bending to kiss her when she nodded. “I’m good. We’ll have those brownies when you get home.”
“I love it when you give me a reason to be excited about coming home.”
He squatted before the open crate once he’d emerged from the bedroom, lounge pants swapped for jeans, a hoodie under his arm. “Be a good boy. I won’t be gone long.”
Fitz came to lie with his head hanging out of the crate once more, pressing into Ainsley's palm. He was silent, dark eyes shining up.
Time and patience.
It was good that he was going back to group. Good that he’d been home tonight to talk this through with her, to help open her eyes to what was evidently a gaping hole in her strategy. Patience and time. It was what she needed as well. He was right — she wasn’t just creating a social group, she was creating a revolution. A tiny one, perhaps, insignificant in the larger world, but hugelyimportant to her own. One that would change the future, once it worked.And that can’t be rushed.
Ris slid to the floor, her back against the sofa, tapping open her tablet screen. She had a good amount ofmaybes, andnot this times.And those aren’t nos.At least, they don’t have to be. She needed to rework her initial plan, opening the Cambric Creek Community Center’s website, searching for a day she might be able to reserve an empty room.
Fitz crept from his crate like a shadow, pressing to her hip as he curled up beside her like a grey comma.Time and patience.
This was only a roadblock, and it didn’t need to be permanent.And now you know what you need to do. It’s time to go home.
Silva
The florist shop was at the grungy outskirts of downtown, on the opposite side of Bridgeton, far away from the bridge that led back to Cambric Creek.
It seemed strange that such otherworldly beauty was based here, in the tattered tails of boulevards that were prosperous only at their centers, the ragged edges like this showing signs of an economic promise that was never fulfilled. The only businesses thriving in this part of Bridgeton were the sex shops, she thought ruefully, having passed them on her way in.
This part of the city was quiet this early in the day, giving her the opportunity to make up her mind in private on the empty sidewalk. Silva gazed up at the florist’s sign, wedged between a nail salon and a vape shop, wondering, not for the first time, if she was making a terrible mistake.
Evergreen by Bloomerang. The letters were hand-painted and flaking, the washed-out hue giving only a hint of the vibrant green they must have once been. The windows were dim, not the riot of color she was used to from typical florist shops, and from the top gutter, the branches of a tree overtook the roof line.
Adrenaline was making her nearly vibrate, simultaneously eager to get this unsavory task over with and to succeed in finding out anything that would bring her closer.This is where she said to come. You’ve started down this path already; you can’t turn back now when you’ve come so far.
The smell hit her when she pulled open the door, the smell and the heat. Green and damp, like the inside of a greenhouse in summer after a downpour. There was a loaminess that made her nose twitch, a fractured memory of a glimmering little pond, the resulting rush of anxiety causing her hands to clench.It’s okay. We’re okay.
Flowers crowded every available surface. Buckets lined the floor, filled with cut stems that seemed to almost shimmer. Shelves climbed the walls, crammed with potted plants whose waxy green leaves barely seemed real, trailing vines that seemed to sway in a nonexistent breeze. The colors were too vivid, the bright floral scents too cloying. Everything in the shop, Silva understood, had come from the other side.
“Close the door,” a voice called from the back. “You’re letting the cold in.”
