Chapter 11
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Lemonade.
“Hey.”
I look up off the pears Samson is allowing me to core.
After he showed me how to peel them—and I immediately presented myself as a hazard with a knife, blamed my astigmatism, and received a dire look that will haunt my nightmares—he gave me a very safe spoon with which to scoop out the guts of the pears he has peeled.
His intellect knows no bounds.
“Yes?” I ask.
He lifts a lemon. “You.”
I blink at the fruit. Drag my gaze to his face. Narrow my eyes on the slight tilt of exactly one corner of his mouth. And blink again.
Before I can decide whether or not he’s smiling, he clears his throat, pulls out his knife and cuts me in half.
I watch in horror as he juices the lemon into the water bath he’s been having me put the cored pears in. My heart, it shatters.
A pity I no longer have access to Google. I’d love to search and see if heart conditions are related to astigmatisms. I bet they are. Misshapen eyes are the root of all evil.
Blushing furiously, I go back to my very important task. Scoop the feelings out. Plop them in the compost bucket. Scoop the feeling out…plop them in the compost bucket.
Scoop the feelings out…
Plop…
My wicked eyes glance past an arm of my glasses, toward the blurry—beautiful—profile of the man beside me. He’s squeezing another lemon into the bowl of cold water while a simple syrup of sugar water heats on the wood stove past his flexing, tattooed arm.
This whole scenario is so…
Husband and wife.
My heart rate trips over itself, stumbles on my astigmatism, and goes tumbling down a flight of stairs in my chest. Face blistering, I focus on my coring, wondering with some amount of anxiety how hard it is to lose a finger to a spoon.
If anyone could do it, I could.
I’m skilled in particularly niche ways.
Doing mundane household tasks together, in Samson’s homey kitchen, while animals mill about outside the window and create a peaceful symphony of gentle country noises…is making it really hard to not be in love with him. Even though I still barely know the real him.
I wish I’d kept my stupid journal shut the other day.
Being insecure about yet another thing I’m doing wrong is the last thing I needed.
As it stands, I left the womb as a wadded up ball of insecurities.
And, right now, the only thing bringing me confidence is something that has nothing to do with me.
Ahem. I’m talking about my cuteness. I look completely different now than I did…
before, and I have found security in that disconnect, because—for as long as I can remember—everything I associate with myself is bad.
Thinking of the before times is surreal, like an age past that continues to haunt me. Those were lonely, empty days where most of my social connections occurred virtually, with people who didn’t really exist.
Or who I thought didn’t really exist.
Thinking about it makes my head hurt a little bit, and the pain swiftly travels down into my chest, aching with renewed intensity.
I’m so glad I’m here.
With a neighbor who checks in on me and sighs when I almost cut myself with a paring knife.
In a town full of people who care about each other.
So much of what I’ve experienced so far never happened in the game.
So, at the very least, the warmth and kindness I’m feeling right now isn’t manufactured around residual infatuation.
I never so much as knew the neighbors in my apartment building. Even though I lived there since I graduated high school. Six years of neighbors and I never knew their names. Six years and the most thought I gave them was to hope they weren’t secretly murderers.
People are hard.
I’ve never once learned how to reach out to them.
I would never have expected game Samson to reach out to me.
To the very end of his character arc, the player prompts every last one of his cutscenes by going to him. He never shows up on the farmhouse doorstep. He never sends letters, not even the ultra generic ones with recipes. Every interaction must be petitioned through the player’s efforts.
It’s all part of his character maintaining consistency in the label “recluse.”
Even when you stumble upon the lore of his past and the reasons behind his sequestered choices, it doesn’t change.
He prefers to be alone.
Tolerating the player after a while doesn’t mean he prefers the company.
Maybe…maybe that’s why I clung to him.
I recognized something inside him that called to something inside me.
Our…sameness.
Even though Samson is surrounded by caring, wonderful people, he still chooses to be alone. Because safety matters more. And loneliness matters less.
We both cater to our fears.
A long time ago, we both gave up.
But, now, even though he’s lived here alone for a decade… Now, even though he has completely given up on people…he came to me. It leaves me wondering if he can feel our sameness, too.
“You okay, Lemonade?” he murmurs.
I swallow, hard, and hate the way my voice sounds when I say, “Yeah. Why?”
His eyes burn a hole into the side of my body for a long moment, but he doesn’t press. He just says, “No reason,” and pulls the large syrup pot off the stove to cool, while a quiet tear makes its way down my cheek.