Maggie’s question caught me off guard. But I knew my answer. “Yep,” I confirmed. “I hated it with my father, but when my mother was around… it was different.” After she’d passed, my father turned into someone I didn’t recognize. I hated being there, I hated being around. But once, it eruptedwith life and laughter. “I don’t want to lose that,” I explained. “I don’t want to lose what it once was and what it could be again…”
I don’t want to lose who I could be and what I could be, perhaps.I hadn’t found that missing something in Old Ashton. Maybe I would there.
“Are you nervous?” Maggie asked, glancing at my hands.
Noticing the redness from me picking at my fingers, I dropped them. I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it in the first place. Me? Nervous? About what? Coming home to the creatures, a whole town of gossiping grannies, and an ocean of locked-up memories? “I don’t know if nervous is the right word,” I admitted. “It’s going to be hard, and I don’t have a best friend there to help me.”
“Mm. True.” She looped an arm through mine and squeezed. “You could always make friends.”
Gag me. “That sounds even worse.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing you can drink wine instead.” She laughed, pulling us into the little convenience store on the corner with built-in shelves stocked full of random products ranging from wine to soap.
The clerk behind the counter sat, her hands occupied with knitting, except her hands weren’t the ones knitting—they waved the needles in magical swooshes.Cheater, I thought. Despite us coming in once a week, she didn’t know who we were. This wasn’t one of those places where everybody knew everybody. We grabbed our usual, a rosé for me and white for Maggie. Anyone who enjoys the taste of alcohol must be lying.The taste of wine reminded me of feet, and I’d probably take two sips before tapping out, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.
We got our wine. And we left.
Which meant one step closer to tomorrow. To going home.
Maggie clinked our bottles together. “Here’s to the past us—and the future us.” She cheered, always knowing what to say.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the same cheerfulness, but the wine helped.
A hard conversation, too many tears, and one last sleepover later, I stood at the edge of my full-size bed. Shoved into the corner of a tiny upstairs room, I laid all of my body weight across a suitcase too small to enclose my belongings. Hiking a leg and grunting, my fingers wiggled around with the nearly rusted silver latch until finally, a small give. Falling limp, my arms and legs collapsed as if they’d gone through a twelve-hour training day. Slightly damp hair clung to my cheeks and lips until I blew out an irritated huff to move it.
The cracking sound from the left latch breaking sent a heavy weight into my gut.Mother of suitcase Gods.The first sign I should not return home.
The door behind me creaked open, followed by a smothered sniffle. “He really just left?” Maggie’s voice crept over my shoulder. “Vanished? Poof?”
I didn’t need to turn around to see her dainty hands,covered in her typical gold rings, motioning herpoof. But because it’s human decency to face one another during conversation, I dragged my tired, soggy limbs off my suitcase and forced my legs to stand with sagging shoulders.
Maggie’s skin glowed in the way only she did, despite the gut-punched, solemn amber eyes staring into mine. It made this all the harder, knowing I’d caused her pain. She’d recently woken up and dressed, her curls tucked into a loose bun with strands framing her heart-shaped face. Even several feet away, I smelled the daisies and roses on her. Her pale-yellow dress suited her well, personality and all.
I’d met Maggie in trade school after I moved. Because that had been the plan—go to magical trade school, further my education and training, get a good job. However, when your magic is quite temperamental, and your temperament teeters between heartbroken and raging every day, it doesn’t bode well. It definitely wasn’t earning me any passing grades.
What had once manifested as tame swirls of wind became bursts of dangerous blows. And if I lost control, if I got real heated, it would start to steam. My limbs and all.
Maggie’s fiery magic never obeyed. Blazes of flames, spritzes of sparks, anything but what she’d called for. We’d bonded over our struggle with magic. When you put us into the same room, it got hazardous. Things always exploded, and to our teacher’s disapproval, we always laughed. Staring at her now, I remembered when she accidentally caught my hair on fire and I attempted to blow it out with a conjured gust of wind—butinstead blew my shirt over my head and left my tits out for viewing. My hair recovered. Our status in school did not.
Then Maggie opened Dirty Hoes Flower Co. with me at her side, putting our magic behind us.
And here we were.
“It’s always been his plan.” My father’s plan. “He always said he’d go in search of the dragons. That he wouldn’t sit and wait for life to chip away at him.”
She frowned unsympathetically. “A heads-up would have been nice.”
Reluctantly, my cheeks burned with a grin. “Damned right, the old bastard.”
“At least he waited until after Mother’s Day,” she said. “So I take it I’m going to need to put out a job posting.” I frowned, to which she rolled her eyes. “You know I hate interviews.”
“You could come with me,” I teasingly suggested, dropping onto my bed. “You could also be scraping chicken shit off your shoes.”
“On second thought, interviewing isn’t so bad.”
A hurried laugh rushed out of me as she joined me, sitting at my side in silence. Guilt bit at me. It wasn’t as if I wanted to leave Dirty Hoes; I hadn’t predicted this. Two years I’d lived with Maggie. And for two years, I’d come to know she wouldn’t be the one to say goodbye. “You promise to come visit?”
Maggie moved across the room, folding the top of my comforter. “I’ll be there in two weeks.”
