Chapter 16
Dear me/ journal/ god.
Have you heard of scurvy? Apparently it makes your gums bleed and a bunch of pirates died from it back in the day and when I asked mom she said you get it if you don’t eat your broccoli.
You know who NEVER eats their broccoli? Alice Loch Ness.
She’s going to die from scurvy by all her teeth falling out and blood gushing out of her gums.
What a mess.
Mom would probably make me clean it up.
Dominic knew a guy who knew the guy, so the track was cleared and ready for our use in under an hour.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had this much adrenaline gushing through me. I was buzzing, my heart galloping, my gloved fingers locked over the steering wheel as we finished the first warm-up lap, our cars gliding through the track in perfect unison.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Do me a favor and don’t crash,” Dominic’s deep voice purred in my ear. “I just got her, and the wait for a new one is over a year.”
I spared his Lamborghini the barest glance. “Good thing I had the foresight to grab the keys from you, then.”
His low, I’m-about-to-make-you-eat-your-words chuckle crept through my helmet, sending a small tremor down my stomach. The cars slowed to a stop at the start line. I gave the steward the agreed-upon signal, and he nodded. Once for me, once for Dom.
The flag went up.
“Three,” Dom started quietly.
“Two.”
“One.”
The flag fell. Our engines roared. And we lurched forward.
We’d agreed on one round, with Dominic noting that he wasn’t going to let me get away with messing around on a racetrack all day when there were entire walls waiting to be meticulously scrubbed back at his house.
So we did one round, which he won.
Then he begrudgingly suggested doing a second. He won that one, too, and went on to win the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth.
We bickered back and forth, taunting each other relentlessly the whole time.
And continued to do so when we got back to his place, and he watched me scrub a stark white wall with a bamboo toothbrush until he got bored and dismissed me.
At which point I pretended to leave.
The Family Chatnel
Me
I have a question
Adrien
Me too. Why the fuck haven’t you been picking up your phone or answering any of my texts?
Me
Busy with work
Adrien
Gampy says he talked to you two days ago.
Me
He called me eight times in the span of 3 minutes at like 1 a.m.
I thought he was dying.
Gramp Stamp
Dr. Thomas predicts I will outlive both of you.
I have the resting heart rate of a sleeping monk.
And you didn’t tell me about the time difference.
Me
I have to tell you there’s a time difference between here and BC??
Adrien
Dr. Thomas wants the D, Gamps. I’ve seen the way she ogles when your sweater vests and socks match.
Sister In Law, Esq.
The green checkered set especially
Me
Can we please focus? I need pictures of our old garden in Rosedale.
Gramp Stamp
Dr. Thomas is handsome a handsome woman.
Sister In Law, Esq.
Adrien
She’s retired but still maintains a license to keep you on as a patient. Just saying.
Me
Wait, she’s retired? How old is she?
Gramp Stamp
Dr. Thomas is a handsome woman.* Fart fingers.
Fat*.
Adrien
She’s 71
Dad
Alice. Where the heck have you been?
Sister In Law, Esq.
FYI for Alice - apparently Handsome Woman Dr. Thomas has been making A LOT of house calls recently.
According to your mom, the last time she was there she asked to see his gramp stamp.
Me
Excuse me??
Adrien
He showed her.
Me
EXCUSE ME????
Adrien
They went to his office and closed the door.
Me
Robert, how many times do I have to talk to you about slut behavior.
Sister In Law, Esq.
He’s being sooo slutty with her
Momma
Oh good, you’re alive.
Sister In Law, Esq.
He’s even dressing slutty. Wore shorts the whole time we were there last week
Adrien
Except he rolled them up at the waist and kept showing off his socks while telling everyone he’s in his “brat era”
Me
No.
Adrien
Ria taught him.
Sister In Law, Esq.
Me
You’re all idiots.
Gramp Stamp
We miss you too, Lice.
Maxwell hasn’t had anyone threaten to serve him for dinner in months. It’s starting to show.
Adrien
Have you seen all the pictures of you they put next to his cage?
It looks like you died, and they built an altar in your memory. It’s hilarious.
Me
Why???
Momma
He misses you, honey. He’s been whistling and calling for you a lot recently.
Sister In Law, Esq.
When I was there, he kept telling your grad portrait to shut up
Me
That checks out.
Adrien
Where are you working now? I lost track after Acsonn.
Me
Rude.
Adrien
Genuine question.
Me
You’ve lost the privilege of an answer.
Back to my thing bc my phone’s about to die.
Addy, you know how you’ve got a permanent hard on for plants?
Momma
Alice!
Me
Your son’s a freak. I don’t know what to tell you.
Dad
Wait, Alice, where are you working now? Your mother doesn’t know either.
Me
I stg it would be easier to try and get a bunch of squirrel monkeys to stay on topic
Gramp Stamp
Dr. Thomas gave me a fun fact about squirrel monkeys if you’d like to hear.
Me
I do not.
Gramp Stamp
They partake in something called “urine washing.”
Sister In Law, Esq.
My old neighbor used to do that. But he put it through a homemade filtration system first
Sister In Law, Esq.
He bragged about it to Jamie once when she ran into him in the parking lot. Right before asking her out on a date
Me
Adrien, I know you have a “plant guy” that you brag about constantly because he can source “all the good shit”
And I definitely used to tell everybody “plant guy” = drug dealer, because I didn’t want people to know my older brother was a dork
Gramp Stamp
They rub their urine all over their hands and swing from branch to branch. It’s a way of marking their territory and attracting mates.
Sister In Law, Esq.
Well, it definitely didn’t work for Carl. Jamie turned him down.
Me
But I’m almost positive “plant guy” refers to a literal “plant guy,” and when you were bragging about how he got you another ghost orchid last month, you meant a literal flower and not some ethereal grade of cocaine
Adrien
He recently got me a Shenzhen nongke. He’s incredible at his job.
Me
I have no idea what that is or how to pronounce half of it. Can you send me his contact info?
Sister In Law, Esq.
Ah, yes, baby nongke. Adrien almost cried when he got that call.
Guess how much it cost.
Me
CAN WE PLEASE FOCUS
My battery’s down to 1%
Sister In Law, Esq.
$242,000
Me
For a flower?????
Adrien
To be clear, he nabbed it at a charity auction event. All of the money was donated to biodiversity preservation initiatives.
Sister In Law, Esq.
My philanthropic freak.
Adrien
And last I checked, Lice, you regularly spend that amount on shoes alone in any given year.
Me
I’ll have you know that I didn’t take any of my credit cards with me when I moved.
Dad
I can vouch for that. One of the accountants called to make sure she was okay the week after she left.
Sister In Law, Esq.
That’s oddly sweet.
Momma
Anthony and I were talking about this just the other day. How proud we are of both—
“What are you doing?”
I shoved my phone into my back pocket and turned around. “Nothing. Why?”
Dominic did a pointed scan of the scene. “Is this how you’re planning on getting rid of me?”
He was referring to the shovel.
And the three large sacks of dirt it was lying on.
And, perhaps, the fact that I was standing in the middle of his butchered garden at midnight, under a steady stream of rain that would help distort my tracks, wearing all black with my hood pulled up.
My head tilted to one side as I looked him up and down. He was illuminated by the ornate lanterns dotted around the garden, his white T-shirt molding to the sculpted dips and bulges of his muscles.
Ignoring the sudden rush of heat that made my skin itch against the confines of my sweatshirt, I curled my lips with what I hoped he interpreted as curious distaste. “How tall are you?”
“Six four. But if you’re going to the trouble of burying me horizontally, you’ll want to add a few extra feet—”
“For the dead animal I’ll need to bury on top of you to throw off the police in case their dogs pick up the scent. I know.” I picked up the shovel and stomped it into the dirt, a few inches behind a murdered rosebush.
His mouth popped open just as lightning slashed across the black, angry sky behind him. A deep rumble rolled through the warm, heavy air, drowning out his retort before it could reach me. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
Dominic’s eyes flicked over my expression.
“You can go away now,” I said dismissively as I busied myself with digging a hole in what used to be a pristine flower bed. “I don’t need you for this part.”
He didn’t move. For a minute or two, he just stood there and watched as I randomly dug around the garden with no rhyme or reason, trying to distract myself from the painful tension rippling over my shoulders as my breathing started to change.
“There’s a severe thunderstorm warning,” he eventually said.
“I know. It fits the grave-digging vibe perfectly, don’t you think?” I winced when thunder cracked again, then immediately smoothed out my expression, pretending it never happened.
“So you don’t want to come inside.”
“Why would I want to come inside?” And why would he want me to come inside after what I’d done to his mother’s garden?
My stomach crumpled with guilt at the reminder.
I didn’t know how I was going to fix this mess. Gardening had been Adrien and Rosie’s thing. Not mine. But the thought of Rosie finding out that I’d destroyed her new garden so heartlessly made me sick to my stomach, so the least I could do was try.
The first step, according to the internet, was to figure out which plants were still salvageable, which meant digging up the bushes and examining the roots. Or, you know, taking pictures of them to show someone who actually knew what they were looking at.