13. Az
— ? —
Az
Day Four
“Don’t.”
Lupe says it over coffee, before I’ve even brought it up. Like she can read my mind, which she probably can. She’s known me since I was seven and couldn’t lie to save my life.
“I wasn’t going to-”
“You were. I can see it on your face.” She sets her mug down with a decisive click. “A man who says the right thing on the internet is still the man who did the wrong thing at your table. Remember that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She leans back, arms crossed. “Because I watched you check that phone four times before breakfast, and that’s four times too many.”
“I was checking on the shop-”
“You were watching his video again.”
I don’t have a response to that. Mostly because she’s right.
Marisol has also sent a list of supplier invoices. I forward it to the part-time bookkeeper and ask her to confirm the payment schedule. It feels like dealing with it. That is not quite the same thing.
Wren calls at noon. I’m in the greenhouse, hands deep in potting soil, phone wedged between my ear and shoulder like some kind of agrarian multitasker.
“I’m going to say something, and I need you to actually hear it,” she starts.
“That’s ominous.”
“Hot, inked, sorry.” Wren’s voice is flat. “None of that’s a personality. You know that, right? Like, I love you, and I understand that he’s objectively beautiful and built like someone designed him specifically to star in your fantasies, but that’s not a reason to forgive someone.”
“I’m not forgiving him.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not.”
“Az.” I can hear her shifting, probably pacing her apartment the way she does when she’s worried. “You gave back the ring. You left. That was brave, and it was right, and I need you to remember that when he inevitably shows up there with some grand gesture.”
“I let Dez tell him where I am. That I’m safe.”
“Does that mean you want him there?” Wren’s voice goes careful.
“It means I didn’t want him calling hospitals. I haven’t invited him.”
“Okay. Those are different things. Keep them different until you decide.”
“I can make a decision, Wren.” It comes out sharper than I mean.
“I know. And you can change your mind. You don’t owe either of us a performance of being fine.”
I pick soil out of the crease of my glove. “I’ll call you later.”
“You’d better. I have more terrible advice.”
“Save some for your other clients.”
Mateo finds me in the greenhouse an hour later, still replaying the video.
I’ve watched it eleven times now. Possibly twelve.
I’ve lost count, and I don’t even care anymore because every time I see his face, the way he looks directly at the camera, the way his voice catches when he says she was right, I cry.
I’ve cried so much today my eyes feel like sandpaper and I’ve gone through an entire roll of paper towels, and I’m so angry at myself for being affected by this.
“You want me to handle it?” Mateo asks, leaning against the doorframe.
“Handle what?” I wipe my eyes.
“The music guy. I know people.”
“You’re seventeen,” I remind him.
“I know intimidating people.”
I laugh despite myself, wet and pathetic. “Your grandmother would kill you.”
“Worth it.” He shrugs, all teenage bravado. “You’re family. Family handles things.”
“That’s sweet in a vaguely threatening way.”
“I do what I can.”
I wipe my face with my filthy sleeve, which probably leaves streaks of potting soil across my cheeks. “I’m fine. Really. I just need to-”
“Watch the video twelve more times and cry about it?”
“Shut up.”
“Just saying.” He pushes off the doorframe. “I’m taking the south fence on the bike if you need anything.”
He disappears before I can respond, and I turn back to the seedlings I’m supposed to be transplanting. My hands are shaking. My eyes are still leaking. The baby is doing some kind of gymnastics routine in my midsection, apparently unimpressed with my transplanting technique.
“I know,” I tell her. “I know. Give me a minute.”
Before I can talk myself out of it, I text Eli. Five o’clock. The porch. We can talk, but I’m not inviting you to stay. His reply comes a minute later: Five. I’ll leave when you ask. I show Lupe the exchange so nobody has to guess whose decision this is.
I come in from the fields at five.
The sun is starting to go gold, and I’m covered in dirt, and I’m thinking about nothing more complicated than a shower and maybe some of Lupe’s leftover stew when I turn the corner toward the house and stop dead.
The porch is buried in flowers.
Dahlias. Hundreds of them. Every variety I can name and a few I can’t, dinner plates and pompons and cactus types and waterlilies, spilling out of buckets and vases and tin cans and what looks like an old milk jug.
They’re everywhere, crowding the steps, lining the railings, filling every available surface with color so vivid it hurts to look at.
Not one rose. Not a single one.
And pacing between the buckets, huge and rumpled and muttering to himself, is my husband.
My body knows him before my brain does. That’s the worst part. My stupid heart lurches sideways, and my hands reach for him before I snatch them back, and every cell in my traitorous body leans toward him like a plant toward sunlight.
He looks terrible. Beautiful and terrible, three days of stubble, shadows under his eyes, a flannel shirt I don’t recognize that’s too small in the shoulders and strains across his chest. He’s gesturing at nothing, practicing something, rehearsing like he used to do before big shows when he thought no one was watching.
Then he sees me.
“Az.” Just my name. Just two letters, but he says it like a prayer.
“You’re early.”
“I know. I-” He gestures helplessly at the flowers, at the chaos of color surrounding him. “I had a whole thing.”
“I bet.”
“I wrote it down. The thing. What I was going to say.” He pats his pockets, comes up empty. “I think I left it in the truck. But the point was… the point is-”
“Eli.”
He stops. Looks at me. And I see it all on his face, the hope he’s trying not to show, the fear underneath it, the love he’s never been good at hiding.
“I’m not asking for anything,” he says quietly. “I just want to see you. And again. And-”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to. “You don’t get to use that.”
The doorstep line. The first morning, seven years ago, when I found him pacing outside my apartment at six AM because he couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour to tell me he wanted to see me again.
And again. And… I’d told him I wanted to see him again too.
Then I’d kissed him, and later we’d gone inside for eggs.
He flinches like I’ve hit him. Then, slowly, he nods. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
We stand there, ten feet apart, the setting sun turning everything amber and the dahlias so bright between us it feels like standing in the middle of a painting. I don’t know what my face is doing, but whatever it is makes his expression crumple at the edges.
“Go,” I say. “You need to go.”
“Okay.”
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t beg. He just nods, once, and turns toward the truck parked at the edge of the drive.
His shoulders are set, rigid with the effort of not falling apart, and I watch him walk away and think about the last time I left him standing under the streetlight, after I gave him back the ring, when I told him I knew he didn’t cheat but I needed time anyway.
He opens the truck door.
I turn on the porch light.
He freezes, hand on the frame. Doesn’t turn around, but I can see the tension in every line of his body, the hope he’s fighting not to show.
“Bunkhouse.” I’m not looking at him. I can’t. “With the seasonal workers. Touch a dahlia wrong and Lupe buries you.”
“Yes.” He says it so fast he trips on the porch step, catches himself on the railing, nearly sends three buckets of café au lait dahlias cascading into the dirt. “Yes. Okay, yes.”
“I mean it about the dahlias.”
“I know. I believe you. I’ll be… I’ll be careful. I’ll be so careful, Az, I swear-”
“Go find Lupe. She’ll show you where.”
He goes. Still not looking at me. Still not pushing for more than I’ve given.
I stand on the porch surrounded by three hundred dahlias until the light fades and the stars come out and my feet ache from standing too long. Then I go inside, and I don’t cry.
Progress.