Chapter 39 #2
Laine's staring at him. "Did you just compare our relationship to a giant hairy mole?"
"I compared other people's reaction to our relationship to—look, the metaphor isn't the point."
"The metaphor is terrible," I say.
"The metaphor is accurate. People stare because we're new. We're unexpected. Three people holding hands doesn't fit their template. But if we keep showing up—at the market, at the coffee shop, around town—eventually we stop being the weird thing and start being just... us. The mole becomes normal."
Laine groans and looks at the sky. "Please stop saying mole."
"The point is, the only way people get used to us is if we give them the chance to. And we can't do that if we—" He catches himself. Softens. "If we hide when it gets hard."
He didn't say if you drop Blake's hand. He didn't have to.
Laine's jaw does the thing. The one I always notice. The one where she's writing an essay in her head about everything she did wrong.
"I know," she says. "I know that."
"I'm not—I'm not trying to make you feel bad."
"I know you're not." She pulls off a glove, wipes her face with the back of her hand. Leaves a streak of dirt across her forehead. "It's just—it's easy to say 'keep showing up' when you're the one people don't look twice at."
Reid goes quiet.
"You and me walking down the street?" She gestures between herself and Reid.
"Nobody blinks. Cute couple. Normal. Add Blake, and suddenly it's—" She waves her hand.
"Suddenly there's math. People are doing math.
And I can feel them doing it. Trying to figure out the configuration. Who's with who. What's happening."
"Let them do math," I say.
She looks at me.
"I'm serious. Let them figure it out. Let them stare. Let them get it wrong." I toss the broken stick pieces into the brush pile. "The soap lady? She looked at us for maybe ten seconds. We survived. The world didn't end."
"The soap lady isn't Joyce."
"Joyce was fine. Joyce was better than fine." I hold her gaze. "Joyce already knew, Laine. And she looked at us and said we look good together."
"I know."
"So the flinch wasn't about Joyce."
"I know that too."
I should stop. I can feel myself pushing toward something, and after last night—after Reid forced us both to be honest and it cost us all something—I should let this breathe.
But the words are already forming.
"It was about you," I say. "What you think you look like. Standing next to both of us."
Laine's eyes go bright. She doesn't look away.
"Yeah," she whispers. "Probably."
Reid reaches over and wipes the dirt off her forehead with his thumb. Gentle. Easy. The kind of touch that costs him nothing because they've always been simple.
I watch that, and I don't feel jealous. That's not the right word. I feel something harder to name—the awareness of a gap. The space between how easy it is for them and how heavy it still is for us.
She'd have to be brave for me in a way she doesn't have to be brave for him. And that's not his fault, or hers. It's just the shape of the fucking thing.
"So we practice," Reid says. "That's all I'm saying. Farmer's market. Coffee shop. Grocery store. We keep showing up until the mole disappears."
"You're never going to let the mole thing go, are you?" Laine says.
"It's a perfect metaphor and I stand by it."
"It's the worst metaphor I've ever heard," I say.
"Name a better one."
"Literally anything."
"You can't. Because mine's perfect." He grins, and it's real—not the performing grin, the actual one. The one that means he's decided things are going to be okay even if the evidence isn't all in yet.
Laine looks at me. Something careful in her face. Testing.
"Are we okay?" she asks. And I know she doesn't mean the three of us. She means me and her.
Am I okay?
It still hurts. Right now, crouching in this flower bed, it still hurts.
But she's here. Wearing my shirt. Planting things that come back.
"We're getting there," I say.
Not we're fine. Not it's okay. Something honest.
She nods. Accepts it. Puts her glove back on and goes back to the dirt.
We work for another hour. I clean the rest of the gutters. Reid massacres two more boxwoods. Laine clears all four flower beds and starts turning the soil, working in the compost I didn't even know we had until she pulled it from behind the shed.
Nobody talks much. But the silence changes. Loosens. Shifts from the brittle kind into something more like the way a house settles—creaks and adjustments, the structure finding its weight.
I'm hauling the gutter debris to the compost pile when I hear them laughing about something. Turn and see Reid holding a worm at arm's length while Laine tries to take it from him, both of them filthy, both of them loud.
This. Right here. This is what I'd fight for.
The thought shows up clean and simple, without the usual tangle of but what if and you don't deserve it and they'd be better off without you.
Just: this.
I don't trust it. Feelings like that don't last. But I stand there for a few extra seconds and let myself have it before it goes.
I'm hauling the last bag of debris to the pile when Reid drops onto the back steps, chugging water. Laine sits beside him, pulling off her gloves.
"I think we need to pay someone to do this," Reid says. "Annually. Like a subscription."
"It's called yard work. People do it themselves."
"People are wrong." He tips the bottle back, finishes it. "You know what this yard needs? More people. Spread the labor."
"You want to invite strangers to do our yard work?"
"Not strangers. Just... more permanent residents." He's not looking at either of us. Picking at the label on his water bottle. "Someone who's already here six nights a week, hypothetically. Who already has opinions about our flower beds."
Laine goes still beside him.
"Someone who owns brand new gardening gloves," Reid adds. "Floral print. Very committed to the aesthetic."
"Reid," Laine says.
"I'm just doing math. One apartment nobody sleeps in, one house everybody sleeps in. Seems like a resource allocation problem."
"Reid."
"I'm not saying anything. I'm observing." He crumples the bottle. "Out loud. In your general direction."
Laine pulls her glove off. Puts it back on. Pulls it off again.
"I didn't sign a new lease," she says quietly. "I'm on month to month now."
Reid's hands stop moving. He doesn't look at her. Doesn't look at me. Just sits there, very carefully not reacting.
"I'm there maybe twice a week," she continues. "To grab mail. Check that it still exists."
"Sounds like a really expensive mailbox," Reid says. Light. Easy. But I can hear the held breath underneath.
"It is." Almost a smile. "It's a very expensive mailbox."
I set the debris bag down. Lean against the fence. Keep my mouth shut because if I open it right now, everything I've been holding will come out and it'll be too much, too fast, too desperate.
Don't push. She's talking. Let her talk.
Laine looks at the house. Our house. The one she sleeps in six nights a week. "Is— I mean, do you want me here. Permanently? Is that where this is heading?"
Reid and I trade glances, then answer "Yes," at the same time. Reid's voice is just shy of a yell.
She deflates, but in a 'thank god' way, not a disappointed way. "Okay. Good. That's good. I—I'm not ready to decide yet," she says. "I just—I'll think about it. That it's not... off the table."
Not off the table. That's not yes. It's not even close to yes.
But it's not no.
And after yesterday, not no is more than I expected.
Reid nods. "No pressure. Just... the offer stands. Whenever. If ever." He pauses. "But also our water bill would go down if we consolidated households. I'm just being fiscally responsible."
Yeah. My eyes might bug out of my head a little bit. The shit that comes out of his mouth. "You bought a sock puppet last week."
"Stop judging me!"
Laine laughs, but pretty quickly she's looking at me. Does she want me to tell her to stay? To move in? I want more Laine, always, but I don't think I get a say in this right now. Shit's too fragile.
"Take your time," I say. "There's no rush."
Something in her face softens and she reaches out and takes my hand.
My breath stops. Just for a second. Because yesterday those fingers let go, and today they're reaching out, and my body still remembers losing her. But I thread my fingers through hers and shove that other shit away.
"Thank you," she says. "For not pushing."
I want to push. You have no idea how much I want to push.
"That's what Reid says. Boundaries. Communication. Apparently I'm learning."
The corner of her mouth twitches. "Apparently."
She squeezes my hand once and lets go. Heads back toward the house.
Reid watches her go, then looks at me.
"That was smooth, right?" he says. "The resource allocation thing? Very casual."
"Your hands were shaking."
"They were not."
"You shredded your water bottle label into confetti."
He looks down at the pile of paper bits around his feet. "That's... unrelated."
"Sure."
His grin is shaky around the edges.
I stand there with dirt on my hands and an ache in my chest that isn't quite pain and isn't quite hope. Somewhere in between.
Like everything else right now.
The sun's warm. The yard's a mess. The boxwoods look like they survived a bombing. And I'm standing in the middle of it, wanting things I can't say out loud yet.
Yet.
That's new. Usually the word is never. Usually the sentence ends with you don't get to have that or she'll figure out you're not worth it.
But today it's yet.
I'll take yet.