He dropped his head onto my chest and rolled onto his back until he was stretched out in my lap. Reaching up, he wiped a stray tear from his cheek.
“Who knew a tortured artist like you could be funny, Bodhi?”
I scoffed. “I’m hilarious.”
“You’re grumpy,” he countered, picking at the small white daisies scattered through the grass.
“I am not.”
“I bet at Christmas you’re all ‘bah, humbug,’ and plotting to steal people’s presents.”
I tugged gently at a strand of his pink hair. “I love Christmas. My favourite festive movie isDie Hard.”
“That’s not a Christmas film.”
“Yes it is.”
“No. It’s an action movie that happens to take place at Christmas.”
I held up my fist, ticking off points with my fingers. “Christmas music. Office Christmas party. John McClane writes ‘ho-ho-ho’ on a dead terrorist. And it’s about a man trying to reunite with his family.” I shook my head. “That’s basically every Christmas movie ever.”
He smirked up at me. “You’re very passionate about this.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, solemn. “It’s a hill I’m willing to die on.”
That was when I noticed the string of flowers looped around his fingers. “What’s that?”
He followed my gaze, his face lighting up. He lifted the knotted chain and placed it on his head like a crown.
“It’s a daisy chain.”
I raised a brow. “A what?”
He gasped, genuinely horrified. “You’ve never made a daisy chain?”
“I grew up in Brooklyn,” I said. “There wasn’t exactly an abundance of flora.”
Iggy sat up fast and turned to face me, suddenly deadly serious. “Bodhi,” he said, voice low. “I’m going to teach you how to make a daisy chain.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“Yes,” he cut in. “I do. It’s a rite of passage. You can’t go through life never having made one. It’s sacrilege.”
I sighed dramatically. “Fine.”
But something fluttered in my stomach as he reached for my hand. For the first time in a while, I felt excited. Not anxious. Not afraid. Just happy to learn something new. Something small and innocent and bright.
Iggy gathered all the daisies he could reach and set them in a small pile on the grass. Then he picked one up by the stem and held it out between his thumb and forefinger like he was presenting it on the shopping channel.
“This is a daisy,” he explained, like I might never have seen one before. He giggled when I rolled my eyes.
“You use your nail to make a small hole in the stem.”
He demonstrated, digging his thumbnail into the green untilit split, and pulled it apart so I could see it clearly. I picked one up and copied him. Iggy watched me with intense focus, like I was Van Gogh halfway through The Starry Night. When I managed a decent hole, he nodded approvingly and picked up a second flower.
“Then you thread this stem through the hole,” he said, doing exactly that. “And you make another hole in the next daisy.”
He repeated the steps over and over until a short chain dangled from his fingers. Then he held it up with an encouraging smile.
