Chapter 29
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Don’t mind me. Just vibing.
“You’re supposed to fix this,” Ines says to Samson, once I’ve been given medicine, the most adorable period underwear I have ever seen, a blanket, a warm pack, and a cup of tea.
I’m snuggled up on the couch, tired, worn, embarrassed, ashamed, but otherwise quite pampered. The medicine worked so fast. So very fast. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s infused with magic, like the health potions.
“How am I supposed to fix this?” Samson arches a brow at the woman, who is standing before me, in black and gold constellation pajamas, with her arms crossed. “It’s a way of nature. Women bleed once about every other season. I can’t fix that.”
“When you’re married, you can.”
Crimson takes hold of Samson’s face while I choke on my tea. He stumbles through his response, “Nes…that…we were messing with Austin. We aren’t actually married.”
Ines cocks her head. “Oh, I know. Lia could hardly hold back her giggles when she told me.”
“She knew we were joking?” I blurt.
Ines swings around to face me. “Duh. She’s a little sister. Of course she can pick up on an opportunity to mess with her brother. That’s, like, her whole career. The blessing thing is a hobby.” Ines fiddles with her nails, mumbling, “Especially since she doesn’t charge for it.”
So there’s no problem, and no one actually thinks we’re married.
That’s…great.
I sink more into my blankets and let the steam from my tea fog my glasses.
“When are you going to wife Citrus up, though?” Ines asks.
My already strained bodily functions lurch, turning into an emotional soup inside me.
Ines swings my way again. “Or, you. When are you going to husband him?”
“Wh-what?” I provide my best I have no idea what you’re talking about expression as I dutifully finish the dregs of my tea and invest the rest of my energy into setting the cup aside.
“Well, one of you has to do it. Who’s gonna break first?”
Face still red, Samson echoes, “Break?”
“Sure. How long can a man and a woman share a home before—holy granite, what is that?” Ines’s back goes rod straight as Yami ambles out of the guest room where she and Tsuki had already put themselves to bed for the night before Ines showed up.
Finding me, my big black baby plops on the floor beside the couch and lays her head in my lap.
Samson says, “Aurelia didn’t tell you about our puppies?”
“Um. No. She was too busy laughing and saying how cute you both were.” Ines jabs her finger at my sweet puppy-wuppy. “That is not a puppy. Why was ‘puppy’ plural?”
Freeing a quick whistle, Samson calls Tsuki to him and scratches behind the big wolf’s ears. “Puppies. We brought them home. From a dungeon. In the sky.”
Ines stares for a long, long time, then says, “Oh-kay, so what I’m hearing is that proposing will be easy peasy for you thrill-seekers.
I’ve already started designing the wedding outfits.
Tiny lace lemons. Everywhere. Actual lemons in the bouquet.
Yellow accents in all the decorations. Chrysa’s on board.
I’ve been sketching wedding cake designs for her, and she’s been experimenting with lemon curd recipes and perfecting her frosting lemons. Isn’t that nice?”
“Nes.” Samson stops her before I can figure out how to. “Why is the town planning a wedding that isn’t happening? Don’t you people have better things to do?”
Ines snorts. “Isn’t happening. Okay. Suuure.
You’ve spent a decade barely tolerating us, Sammy.
Suddenly, Citrus appears, and you’re hiking mountains, taking her to Amecrest, buying her everything she needs, making her meals, and inviting people over for dinner?
Ten. Years. Sammy. Today was the first time anyone in town has been invited to share a meal with you in your own home.
You blew a lot of smoke messing with Austin, but I’m dead sure you didn’t lie when you told Lia your precious Lemonade makes you feel safe.
If you aren’t planning to wife her up, what are you doing? ”
Samson’s eyes meet mine for a fragile instant, and I do desperately wish this conversation weren’t happening while my uterus was throwing a fit. The medicine has quelled the pain, but my emotions remain as stable as glass spaghetti.
“There are plenty of other reasons that explain my behavior,” Samson murmurs.
“Oh? Are there? Okay. Name one.”
“We’re friends.”
Ines rolls her whole head when she rolls her eyes. “We’re friends, too, Sammy. I’ve never gotten such special treatment.”
“You’ve not needed it. If you did, I’d give it. No questions asked.” Something cracks in Samson’s eyes as he searches Ines. “Did you not know that?”
“I…” Ines pauses, crosses her arms again. “No. I guess I didn’t. You’re saying, if I needed it, you’d let me stay in your guest room?”
Samson tenses, but he nods.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Why is this such a big deal to you?”
Ines glances over her shoulder, at me, and I wish I could sink deeper into my fluffy blanket and disappear. Nonchalant, she tosses her attention back to Samson. “No reason.”
“What was that?” he asks.
“What was what?”
“Why did you just look at her like that?”
Ines’s lip juts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway.” She forces a yawn. “It’s late. I’ve been working on a wedding dress all day, so I’m tired.”
“Nes.”
She heads for the door. “Night!”
Samson grabs her shoulder, halting her in place. “Why are you like this?” he grumbles.
Her lashes bat. “It’s part of my charm?”
“It is not very charming.”
Ines’s eyes dart to me once more; a quick, almost imperceptible flick. “Is Citrus charming?”
Samson flinches. “Why?”
“Just curious.”
Slower, Samson glances at me—the burrito—and scans me from head to blanket tortilla toes. In no uncertain terms, he then looks back at Ines and says, “Yes.”
She hums. “Interesting.”
Samson sags. “Why is that interesting?”
“No reason. Anyway, it is late. I am tired. Goodnight.” Somehow, she slithers away, purple hair swaying out the door. Samson stares at the solid wood for too many agonizingly long moments, then, deliberately, he angles his entire body toward me.
My breath holds.
His stare continues, severe. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” I squeak.
“I’m sorry,” he says, moving to sit by me on the couch.
Something about the two feet of space he puts between us feels wrong.
I hate it. I don’t know how to express how much I hate it, so I stay quiet, watching when Tsuki lays his head against Samson’s thigh.
Samson runs his fingers through the puppy’s long white fur. “I should have warned you,” he says.
Beneath my blanket, I hug myself. “It’s okay… This isn’t new. I just…the timing is a little longer here, I guess? And it’s more stigmatized in my old world.”
He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, looks back down at Tsuki. “Stigmatized?”
“Yeah. You never talk about it with guys. It wasn’t talked about at all in my house.”
A simmering anger settles in his expression. “No one told you about this?”
“My…mom thought it would be funny if she didn’t.”
His free hand closes into a fist against his thigh.
“I don’t know what she was thinking. I just remember being very scared and very uncomfortable when she tossed me a tampon box and told me to figure it out.”
“Tampon?”
Right.
Crud.
I was not given a tampon here. I was given fancy underwear that works like a pad without the discomfort of a pad.
A tampon probably started as a brand name that became popular enough to be considered the product.
Therefore, I now get the immense pleasure of explaining what one is to Samson.
“Uh.” I tuck my nose into my blanket. “It’s a menstrual product.
Designed to catch the blood. It… You… Well, not you. Women. Women in-insert it…in the…yeah.”
For the first time since showing up here, I am asking to be smote. Would whatever powers put me in this world be kind enough to take me out?
Unfazed, Samson removes his other hand from Tsuki’s fur and closes them together.
Audibly, his knuckles crack. “I’m sorry.
I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable if talking about this doesn’t coincide with the way you were raised.
It’s explained to everyone I know here, plainly, so it’s as regular as any other bodily function.
The idea that you didn’t have that privilege…
the idea that you had to figure it out…bothers me.
” His nostrils flare as his chest fills with air. “A lot.”
I force a shaky smile. “I-it’s okay. I did figure it out.” After a lot of trial. Error. Some crying.
And my father banging on the bathroom door while holding back laughter and telling me to hurry up…
Tears bead in my eyes again at the memory.
A joke.
I was often a joke to my parents, to people I wished would be my friends, to strangers I didn’t even know.
It’s no wonder at all why I grew up with trust issues and anxiety.
“S-Samson?”
Lifting his head, he looks at me, and his grip loosens. “Yes, Lemonade?”
My throat closes. Guilt gnaws. Fear erodes. Softly, I say, “Should I go back to my farmhouse?”
“What?”
A tear falls. “I don’t want to cause problems for you or make people assume things you don’t want them to. I can almost start a fire on my own, and I’m pretty sure I have enough saved up to get a better bed. That’s all that really matters right now.”
“Not to mention that there’s plenty of storage,” he mumbles.
I sniff. “Yeah. Plenty.”
He closes a foot of the space between us, reaches for my face, and swipes away my tear.
“Absolutely not. I’d rather be the one to live in that old farmhouse if all the nonsense Ines spouted has made you uncomfortable with the way we’ve been living.
” His gaze jolts to his hand, then he drags his fingers off me, planting them in the foot of space between us.
“I don’t care if everyone thinks we’re together or I’m in love with you, Citrus.
I care about the possibility I’ve been selfish. ”
“Selfish?” I whisper.