So I made a list.
Pros of waiting for Laken to return: Get time alone. Get to love him when he returns and forever after that.
Cons of waiting for Laken to return: Get time alone. Time to sulk. Time to cry. Time to wallow in self-pity. Worrying about his well-being. Worrying if he’d return at all. Worrying if he’d fall in love with someone else. Worrying if he’d become the type of person to drink light coffee. Adapting to changes (mine and his) when he returned because, let’s face it, people change. What if I did wait and he did return and he’d changedhismind?
What if Laken finally realized I wasn’t worth his love in the first place? I blinked away the thought as a knock came at the door.
I rose, engulfed in soft fabrics, and skated across the floor. I opened the door, revealing a very well-put-together version of Maggie—dressed, smelled like florals, and probably recently bathed. Unlike me. Her glinting eyes took one look at me and dimmed.
“You look like hell,” my friend so kindly noted.
Frowning, I shrugged. I’d been waiting for her. “You havea lot to catch up on.” I leaned past her, eyeing the extremely full carriage behind her. Four suitcases, three bags, two vases, and one man unloading it all.
“You bring the entire shop with you?”
Maggie grinned unapologetically. “You know I did,” she replied.
Three trips. It took three trips for us to get everything inside. Filling my living room to the brim with flowers and jars and glue and… everything else Maggie brought, it became a game to walk through without tripping over bundles of eucalyptus.
Because I felt like doing absolutely nothing, I nearly convinced my mind of the same. Which was why I made a to-do list, so things got done instead of becoming lost in the maze of my brain. One: make flower jars with Maggie. No, scratch that. One: feed animals. Two: flower jars with Maggie. Three: spill about Laken.
Moaning all the way, I set Blaze on my shoulder and grabbed my boots. Best to get to it, right?
“Reece?” Maggie called from where she sat on the couch.
I turned with a “Hmm?”
Round brown eyes poured into me, seeing straight through me. “You’re upset, what’s wrong? What happened?”
My brows knitted. “Is it the pajamas? Or do I have bags under my eyes? I couldn’t sleep last night—”
“Socks.” She nodded to my frilly socks peeking up from my boots. “Dead-flower socks. You wear dead-flower socks when you’re upset.”
I tilted my chin down and angled my foot; little black flowers sat above the trims of my boots. “They aren’t dead flowers, they’re just black. And that’s not entirely true—” I defended.
“They’re your comfort socks,” she argued.
My jaw clenched. I shifted uncomfortably on my feet, hiding one foot behind the other. Flustered and busted, I grew angry at the thought of being seen and understood. How dare Maggie actually pay attention to me and my wallowing habits these past years? How many times had I worn them? “Yeah? Well… well, I have chickens to feed.” I turned and closed the door behind me.
It wasn’t as though I didn’t plan on telling Maggie everything anyway, but…I don’t have comfort socks.
Of course, the hellblazers were already blazing. Kicking up the trash can lid, I shielded myself quick and easy, sneaking in and out before flames could touch me—or my pajamas. Once they realized I’d come to feed them, they chilled out. Like with Laken, they’d grown used to me. Even Chicken Noodle. After a head count and filling their water, Blaze and I slipped out, though they were plenty distracted with eating. “Bye, you bastards.”
Finneas and Finnigan were more than excited to see me back, one running behind the other for some good head scratchies. Their little horn nudges and soft grins made me smile. Phoebe, as the princess she was, lay curled up in her pink cushioned bed. From where I squatted inside her enclosure with food, the raw patches on her back seemed to havehealed up nicely (thanks to Finneas’s and Finnigan’s milk). Watching her sleep, safe and healthy, I’d be lying if I said my eyes didn’t water. Phoebe’d made a full recovery and because of our work here, she’d have a happy, peaceful life. I could promise her that.
Blaze and I scrambled on over to the man, the myth, the legend himself—Benedict. An old nemesis who I’d learned to consider as something more. With Blaze on my shoulder, I trucked the wheelbarrow to the food storage and gathered his breakfast. We marched to his enclosure through the grass wet with leftover dew and rain, not yet dried by the sun. Thankful for my boots because I hated the feeling of dew on my feet, especially if I wore socks, we made it to the gate.
If a bystander watched how we fed Benedict, they might’ve thought I’d lost my mind as I skipped and danced across the yard, fake throwing him snacks left and right. I called it the Benedict Boogie. Archie didn’t even disappear on me when I fed him but instead landed on my arm to say hello. Butters understood my signals and I understood his.
Last of the outside creatures, beloved old Indomitus.
As his aged soul called him to do so, he waited on the edge of the riverbank, his massive body shielded in ash-white scales of armor. Indo wasn’t a being of social gestures and neither was I. We had a mutual understanding that resided between us about that. He didn’t trust humans, but he’d come to trust me. And I’d honor that.
I slipped back inside. Gordon, on the other hand? I hated that fish, but I’d be there when he jumped ship and I’d puthim back in his bowl every time. No matter how much I gagged doing it.
Collapsing on the couch, I slumped back into my crater.
Maggie snapped up from the jar she stuck flowers into. Petals, glass, twine, and glue completely engulfed her. With no idea what she’d started, we clearly had our work cut out for us. “You’re done already?”
