Chapter 19 #2
For some reason, “you can use while watering plants,” scribbled in black ink, brings tears to my eyes.
Lottie used to wear aged yellow gloves to carry her huge watering can to her garden, where she would water each plant with meticulous care.
In my memory, the sun shines behind her smile lines, and butterflies dance around her brightly colored dress, mistaking her for a flower.
Watching her take care of her plants felt like watching someone fall in love.
She looked at them adoringly, like they were whispering compliments only she could hear.
For the first time, I could picture myself living in the cottage.
Waking up from the spill of light through the sliding doors.
Making myself a latte and enjoying it on the small wooden deck.
Purchasing gloves of my own to water the garden I would make in her memory.
And then settling down at the desk to write or help my mom with managing the stores.
For once, the thought of living here didn’t feel like a prison built by grief, it felt like the key to unlocking the prison doors.
It would still be painful, but it wouldn’t be as painful as being alone in a tiny New York City apartment, thousands of miles from the beautiful town that reminded me of her. If I missed her, I wanted to come to this tree, by this ocean.
Tears are falling from my eyes when I hear shuffling in the sand in front of me.
“Blair?” the voice says.
I wipe my tears before looking up to find Declan in a wet suit, with wet hair and tanned skin, staring down at me.
“Declan?” I reply in shock. “You… surf?”
He laughs softly as he shakes his head, and the movement makes tiny droplets of water spray from his hair. “I’m not sure you could call it surfing quite yet. I started last year and I’m still not very good, considering the…” He gestures to his left leg. The one that has a limp.
“Oh, right,” I say in a small voice. “That’s awesome, though. You look… awesome.”
I clamp my lips shut the second the words are done flying out. He chokes a laugh at my regretful expression. “Not like that. You know what I meant. Like, oh it’s you in surf attire, that’s awesome. Like in the way that surfers look cool, but I wasn’t saying that you—”
“Thank you, Blair. I’ll make sure not to let it go to my head.” He offers me the slightest curl of his mouth in that familiar, knowing way. It takes this from embarrassing to intimate.
I let my head drop, unable to withstand the way I feel with him looking at me while looking like that.
Dripping wet, ocean-water-drenched hair and dark wet suit towering over me.
Give a girl a break. My eyes land back on his blueprint, now with two teardrops wetting the page.
He must follow my eyeline because he says “Whatcha got there?” like he knows exactly what I’ve got here.
“Oh, uh.” I dab the teardrops with my cardigan. “I was just looking over your blueprint sketch again. It’s…” I nod awkwardly. “It’s really beautiful.”
He sits beside me in the sand and despite the freezing-cold ocean water soaking his wet suit, I feel a wall of heat. He doesn’t say anything in response, just stares at my profile for a beat.
“Is there something wrong, Blair?” he says tenderly.
Just the fact that he knows there’s something wrong makes my throat squeeze. I thought I’d successfully hidden all clues of my tears, but I guess he was just being polite. I have to keep my eyes on the sand to maintain any sense of composure.
“Lottie,” I start, voice cracking. I clear my throat and try again.
“Lottie loves gardening.” I use the present tense out of habit, but he doesn’t correct me.
“And your idea for a pebble path through the garden just—I don’t know.
It was the first time I could really picture myself living there.
Making a garden. Taking care of plants just like she used to. ”
Declan nods. “That’s awesome,” he says in the most heartfelt, genuine voice. But his use of my previous, awkward word choice makes a wet chortle fly out of me.
“No, I’m being serious!” he insists.
“Oh, I know!” I say through laughter. “I know, it’s just funny. And awesome.”
“It is huge though, really. I know it’s just an idea, but even the thought is progress.
” He runs his hand through his wet hair and then shakes his head like a dog after taking a bath.
“It took me months to picture anything close to normal life after the accident. Even going to the grocery store with my mom for the first time felt like an impossible task.” He looks away for a moment.
“Just getting through the parking lot without flinching was hard.”
“Oh—wow,” I sputter, start again. “I’m so sorry. Gosh, that must have been so hard. I didn’t even think about that,” I admit, head shaking while I stare at his cheekbone. He’s looking out at the shore, eyes squinting in concentration.
“No, that’s alright.” He brushes it off. The hurriedness of his voice when things turn earnest reminds me of… me.
“You know,” I start, voice sputtering like a car engine on the first day of winter. “I pictured what it must have been like for you so many times. The hit, and the hospital, and the recovery. But I never pictured you sad. Or scared.”
He turns to me and traces the outlines of my face with his eyes like he’s committing it to memory. His green eyes soften into emerald pools, and I feel slightly off balance staring into them.
“Really?” The side of his mouth pitches up like I’ve just told him he’s handsome.
“Yeah, really,” I say, nodding. “Sounds kind of stupid now that I say it out loud, though. You were hit by a bloody car.”
He laughs, and the dimple under his lip deepens. “Turns out, the car ended up being not that bloody.”
“Oh my gosh.” My stomach flips. “You can’t just say things like that, Declan. I’m not used to it yet,” I yell, indignant. “Man, that’s grim.”
My reaction causes him to laugh harder. The sound of it is warm and full. I wish I could bottle it and take a bath in it.
And that’s not what friends picture when their friends laugh, I remind myself.
“That’s alright. I’ve acclimated enough for the both of us.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t,” I protest, voice losing humor. “It was one thing to picture it. It’s another to hear it from your perspective.”
His face melts into a look of thoughtful consideration, head tilted at me like he’s seeing something new.
“I guess I know what you mean. I never pictured you sad at Pepperdine. You were always free and happy and… laughing, actually, in my imagination.”
Now, that causes a dry laugh to splinter out of me. “I wish that were the truth, but no. I was like a sad little puppy. Lost from home.” I confess it to the waves because if I look at him, I won’t be able to speak.
But Declan doesn’t laugh, so I risk a look over at him. Our eyes latch, and then his gaze trails down my face and lingers on my mouth. “I was the same way,” he admits quietly.
I let his eyes rove over me like hands, pretending our admissions aren’t the closest we’ve gotten to “I miss you.”
Waves crash as we let the silence stay taut between us. I concentrate on a drop of water dripping from a tendril of his salty hair. My breathing stops being a subconscious function.
“Come to my house,” Declan says, breaking us out of our reverie.
“What?” I blurt.
“I’ll show you how I renovated it. And you can ask me anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.” His voice is gravelly and sure.
Butterflies start a war in my stomach, and I try to call a ceasefire.
“Meet you there?” I ask.
“Meet you there.” He nods, and I catch a grin blooming on his face as he stands.