Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Get the Squash

Summer

That chip in the blinds is now always the first thing I open my eyes to every morning. Which is closer to the afternoon.

Still greeting the sun and facing this new, but familiar world, now like a twisted nostalgia trip.

And still on my right side, but in a bed again, my back to the opposite, empty side.

I shift to my back and stop there, gusting out a breath before pushing myself up.

It’s been easier to dare myself to move.

My periphery catches on an out of place dark spot on Adam’s pillow, then it’s even easier, as I spring to standing and spin around to face—

A lizard.

I gust out another breath as I watch the small, long-tailed thing give me a side stare, then I finger my hair out of my face, getting a grip with mine holding to the strands near my neck as I breathe until my lungs are steady.

This is another new, but familiar, twisted nostalgia trip. All kinds of bugs and creatures creeping into the house.

It has to be only a Rosalee Bay thing, or only a North Carolina thing, because this invasion never happened at any of my other places.

This is real country living.

I squint at the stilled lizard, like a challenge, and bend down, closer to its wide little eyes, but not too close. “Adam?” I whisper, with my best is that you tone.

One of its legs jerks and I laugh at myself, straightening up.

Then I groan. “Well. Go on. Get off the bed.” I wave my hand out toward the floor, but the lizard stays on the pillow. “Please?”

The damn thing eyes me like nope .

I don’t want to kill it and there’s no one else in the house to get it out for me. So I scowl at it, but leave it alone. I have a morning routine to get through before I’ll need the bed again.

I follow the obstacle course of our still unpacked bags—the better b-word—out of the room and put a quick breakfast in my body. Then I collect a pair of my ripped denim shorts and my green shirt with the knotted front hem.

Once I’m showered and dressed, my hair straightened, my teeth brushed, and my face presentable, I carry my tired body back to the bed with my laptop and a cup of the leftover coffee Griffin makes every morning.

The lizard is gone, but I check under every pillow and feel around under the covers to make sure it’s not still in the bed.

I shift my laptop over my lap and stare at the screen, my eyes blurring over all the opened windows, both exhaustingly and thankfully overwhelmed.

Blinking back into existence, I get to work, having taken on more clients to keep my mind busy.

I convinced my boss to let me go entirely online with the move, but it didn’t require much from me. I’ve already been giving my all since she hired me. I’ve earned her trust.

A little thought tells me to find trust in myself again, outside of responsibilities.

I’m an hour in before I start nodding off and have to make a fresh pot of coffee.

All the coffee pressing on my bladder brings my attention to the hours that have now gone by, and I stretch my arms above my head, then I stretch out my legs, stuck in the feeling for a long moment. It can be so hard to come out of a good stretch. It’s like an orgasm for the limbs. A mini revival.

I release a sigh and set aside my laptop to take a break, realizing I’ve stilled and lost focus when I’m blinking back into existence again at a ping sound.

I glance and then pat around for my phone, finding it wedged under my pillow with a message from Clarissa, checking in.

Are you still spitting on people? she asks, a single flame of fire attached.

My first check in with her after Adam and I arrived was me telling her I was the dragon. She asked me then who I spat on. And a corner of my mouth tugged up in my second real feeling smile since I’ve been back, for taking back some control over my life. Over my heart.

Now, as I give her another update of the past few days while I pee, I’m feeling flat, slow-moving. Just existing, once again, in a small town.

I’m working . I have responsibilities . I’m doing what I have to do.

But am I doing everything I have to do?

My throat squeezes against my breath on my way back to the room as Clarissa claims, in her humble opinion, I need my best friend here. She’d have nowhere to stay, and I’m not letting her waste her vacation time on me, on this.

Get the squash, she tells me.

Get the squash and be the dragon are now our alternating phrases.

Be the dragon, spit my fire. Get the squash, move my ass.

I do get out of this house when I need to. I walk. I swim. I visit with Isolde. I wish.

I wish life was better for us all.

Adam’s at least getting out of bed now, in his pursuit of a little more happiness. My heart swells imagining him finding that happiness again, then skips a few beats, the smallest wave of nausea in my stomach, when I acknowledge I don’t imagine myself being part of that happiness.

But I don’t think I am in our reality. He might be pursuing happiness, but he’s not pursuing me. He’s keeping busy too. Sure. But there’s still distance between us, even as I feel him physically, when he’s beside me in bed, our arms and legs brushing under the covers.

There’s no pursuit for me.

An ache spreads through my fingers and I loosen my hold on my phone, blinking away the sting on my lids, and toss it onto Adam’s empty side of the bed with a noise sounding like a growl. I run my hands through my hair, pulling, as I face the window behind me, then finger open a section in the blinds.

We’re staying in the guest room—Adam wanting as far away from his childhood room as possible—and I can see the garden from this window. Griffin has added stepping stones and a tree stump stool to the birdbath and dog statue. When he’s home, he tends more to his garden than to his son. A green thumb wasted on a red hand.

Griffin still doesn’t keep tabs on Adam like my father did with me. He for sure makes Adam get to work, though, popping into the room when he’s overslept just a couple minutes, waking me up too. Once, when the covers were kicked off me in sleep, my sleep shirt ridden up to my stomach, exposing my panties, and I had to yank down the hem. He wasn’t looking at me, but that didn’t matter. Have some respect.

Get the squash.

I should plant some in Griffin’s garden.

The blinds snap back together as I release them and rush from the room on the thought, using the rest of the daylight to have a piece of my mom with me at this place too.

And to get my hands dirty without dirtying my hands.