Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
ELIZABETH
Nature Just Shit on My Face
Kneeling on the foam pad and pulling weeds that had sprouted around the tomato plants, sweat drips down my neck, but I don’t bother wiping it away.
“When you asked me to come over, I didn’t expect to be put to hard labor,” Meredith says. She swipes the back of her gloved hand over her cheek, leaving behind a streak of dirt. “Great. Nature just shit on my face.”
“It’s dirt, drama queen.”
She pulls off her gardening gloves and scrubs her face clean using her tank top. “Insects and worms live in the dirt. Where do you think they defecate? A bunny could have taken a dump right there and now its crap is on my face.”
Meredith isn’t a fan of the outdoors, unless it’s to lie out on her lounge chair and work on her tan.
“Compared to last week, a little earthworm poo is nothing.”
Her expression morphs into disgust. “I never knew a child could vomit that much. I thought I was going to have to call in a priest to do an exorcism. I’ve Lysoled every surface of the house, but I can still smell it,” she says while fake gagging.
“Try having three kids and a husband down with the norovirus at the same time.” That was a week from hell I’ll never forget.
“So, how excited was Christopher to start his senior year?”
Today was the first day of school. Senior year for Christopher and tenth grade for Charlotte. It seems like only yesterday I was walking them into kindergarten class.
“Very. Grant is a senior this year as well. Charlotte’s already worrying about what will happen when he graduates and goes off to college.”
“Oh, the pains of young love.”
“Tell me about it.” My knees are starting to get sore, so I lower down and sit cross-legged on the pad. Pulling a ripe tomato from its vine, I place it in the wicker basket beside me. “Take some of these home with you.”
“You know I’ll never pass up free food.” Mimicking my sitting position, she rests her elbows on her knees and stares at me. I know that look. “Are you going to tell me what’s bugging you?”
I both love and hate how easily she can read me. But that’s what a good friend does. They know you inside and out.
“I learned something this weekend at the cookout that I’ve been struggling with understanding,” I reply.
I’m still upset, but I don’t know what to do about it. It feels like wasted energy to yell about something that happened so long ago. Even if I knew, even if Ryder or Fallon had told me, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I still would have married Ryder, and Fallon still would have left.
“Lay it on me,” Meredith says.
I watch a swallowtail butterfly. It flutters wildly while sipping nectar from the milkweed blossoms that have started to bloom, and I notice one of its wings is damaged. Beautiful broken butterfly . Peter’s voice rises from the dead, but I block it out.
“It’s honestly not important,” I tell her because I’m tired of thinking about it.
“Is it about Jayson?” she hedges. “Or about your trip to Seattle with him next weekend?”
Jayson is another thing I’m grappling with.
Because Charlotte, Christopher, and Marcus came with me, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him last Sunday when we went over to the Jamesons’ for Sunday supper, and the days that followed were filled with start-of-the-school-year chaos.
I’m hoping he and I can talk more while in Seattle when we go see our daughter.
Fallon hasn’t said anything about the trip, and that’s what worries me.
He’s nothing if not blunt, so when he gets quiet, I know something is wrong.
I pick at the dirt beneath my nails. “Jayson has changed, Mer. He’s…
I don’t quite know how to describe it. More like the Jayson he used to be before everything went wrong, I guess.
He’s not the angry, resentful version of himself he turned into after I was attacked and lost my memories.
He’s the boy I used to know. The boy I—” I cut myself off and mash my lips together.
“The boy you used to love,” Meredith answers softly.
A bee gets too close, and I shoo it away. “That was a long time ago.”
“Maybe,” she says, juggling a tomato between her hands. “But him being back is clearly affecting you.”
“It shouldn’t. I’m in love with Fallon.”
Meredith tosses me the tomato, and I add it to the ones in the basket. “Have you talked to him?”
When I tried to last weekend, Fallon basically dared me to walk away.
That he would still love me no matter what I did, then he fucked me into oblivion in the shower.
I got the same result when I tried to bring it up again the other night, except I was bent over his desk in his study, not in the shower.
Twirling my wedding rings around my finger, I sigh. “My attempts have been met with…” I wave a hand around, not knowing how to finish that sentence. “That man scrambles my brain cells.”
A full grin lights up her face. “Do tell.”
“I will not.” I can only imagine her reaction if I told her he had a piercing. She’d lose her damn mind.
Meredith pouts. “One day I’m going to get you to crack.”
“I’m a rock of secrecy, not a hard-boiled egg.”
“Now I’m hungry. Let’s put these tomatoes to good use. I’m craving a BLT.” She brushes dirt off her knees and gets to her feet, stretching her arms above her head to loosen the kinks from sitting on the ground for an hour. “Trust your heart, Elizabeth. It’s never guided you wrong before.”
What if I don’t know what it’s saying? Or worse.
What if I’m too scared to listen?
I peer up at her. The sun is directly overhead, and I have to shield my eyes. “Thanks for listening and for the sage words of advice.”
She laughs. “Sage? Me? You must be having a heatstroke.”
“I love you, Firecracker.”
Her laughter falls away, and she grabs my hands to help me up. Her arms come around me, mine around her, our hug that of two friends who became sisters along the way.
“I love you, too, Wildcat.”