My phone buzzed on my desk.
Wade
You’re expected at Sunday dinner. Maggie says so.
What if I don’t want to?
Wade
You owe me.
This the chip you want to call?
Wade
Every Sunday dinner for a year. Then we’ll be even.
Jesus.
Wade
Are you commitment-phobic? I did take a bullet for you …
I could have managed, and it was in the ass. The fleshy part. Not even the pucker part. Your butt is fine.
Wade
Hardly. There’s a scar. You know what? You’re a pucker.
You’re a dick face.
You don’t even get any action anymore. So it isn’t like chicks are even seeing it.
Wade
True. It’s kind of sad.
I tossed the phone onto my desk. A year. A smile broke out on my face—a year of family dinners. That feeling… it was happiness.
Unknown Sub
Today was a happy day. I could tell. She talked to the plants and whispered to them like she was telling them her secrets. When she is mine, I will make her whisper them only to me, like it should have always been.
Sage
There were so many things I loved about plants, but one of my favorites was that they never talked back, so they were the ideal confidant. There was no judgment going on. My family was amazing, and I was beyond thankful for them, but my plants would never tease me or tell me to be more careful.
I was aware, on some level, that this was a low bar. Still, Vera had never once repeated anything I told her or raised an eyebrow, so I gave her a lot of information. At the same time, I worked and talked, my voice low and companionable in the quiet of my shop before customers came in.
"I don't have feelings for him," I told her, "I'm just aware of him. There's a difference." Vera's enormous leaf dipped slightly in the draft from the heater, which I chose to interpret as skepticism. “It's not like that." I gave her a drink from the watering pot and continued, "He asked for help. It’s going to be a job. Strictly professional. I mean a job without pay because I wouldn’t take money for it,” I explained. “I still don’t know anything about him.”
I moved on to a row of hanging ferns near the front windows, and misted them with a few slow, even passes that I tried to find soothing, even though that weird sensation of wrongness in the shop was still bothering me, even though I’d been through it twice. Nothing was out of place, but I was still out of sorts.
I put it down to the nightmare I’d woken up from. That weird sensation I sometimes had of slamming doors and shadowy places. Shivering, I looked out to Main Street. It had that early-morning quality I loved. This town was unhurried and unbothered. Maybe all small towns were like this, where the streets were sleepy with the wash of pedestrians and the trickle of cars, as if a blanket were being removed and it woke slowly. By noon, everything would be at a faster pace, and by five, our two-stop town street in downtown would be bumper-to-bumper for all of fifteen minutes.
Lila’s chalkboard was already out on the sidewalk because she had to be up at the crack ass of dawn for the bakery. Thank God that my shop hours weren’t so early because I wasn’t sure I would survive. I was settling into the rhythm of the day, going through my orders, phone calls, and Mrs. Dennison's unannounced consultations, when I noticed him.
Alan was walking on the opposite side of the street. Yesterday, I hadn’t wanted to mention to Rhodes the way the guy freaked me out. There was no reason to make a stink about it. Some people just walked to the beat of their own drummer, but he did make me nervous. The first time he’d come to the store, it hadn’t been so pronounced, but at Donatello’s, even his coming up to our table had been weird.
