Chapter 12 #2
Julian shakes his head and Lana snorts. They look at each other and start snickering. “I don’t know how I feel about this duo,” I grumble and grab a glass of water for myself. “But it’s not my garden.”
“Get over yourself, Christian,” Lana sighs.
“Yeah, Christian, get over yourself,” Julian says.
“I’ll be outside. I don’t feel like getting ganged up on.”
Lana sticks her tongue out at me. “Boooo.”
“Boooo,” Grace adds into the mix of taunts.
Lana laughs. “You secure men go on with your garden, me and Gracie are gonna have ourselves a tea party.”
“Yeah!” Grace claps then whispers, “Can we have cupcakes?”
“It’ll be our secret,” Lana whispers back.
I roll my eyes, hiding my amusement, and go back outside. Julian follows suit holding all of the gardening tools I never knew he had. I get over to the section I’ve picked out to dig holes and place the flowers while Julian sets down his things.
“So a garden?” Julian asks, pulling on his gardening gloves.
I shrug. “Lana likes flowers, so I just wanted to give her flowers.”
“How cute.”
“Shut up,” I grumble. “You garden so often you have gloves?”
“Haley… She liked gardening and I do it with Grace now.” Julian frowns. “If you’re still groveling by next spring, you should get some.”
Julian hands me his extra pair and I pull them on. “I probably will be,” I sigh. “That or I’ll just…keep growing this garden.”
“Great plan,” he deadpans as he lowers onto his knees to get started.
“I don’t have any other plans, Julian,” I sigh heavily, again, and join him.
“Christian, man,” he breathes, annoyed and already digging out holes. “Honesty is the best policy.”
“You sound like a dad.”
Julian freezes and shoots me a look. “It’s a policy I’m teaching Grace. And apparently you too.”
“Right.” He’s the gardener, so I just follow his lead. “Honesty.”
“Have you not told her anything about rehab?”
I shake my head.
“Idiot,” he mutters. “Have you told her why you went?”
I shake my head again.
“What about the meetings?”
I shake my head.
“Dude.”
“This is going to sound stupid,” I mumble, “but I’m scared.”
Julian snorts, pulling the flowers from the pot and planting them in the ground. “You know, if you did, you could save yourself so much torture, right?”
I shrug and do the same things Julian does. I want to tell him I deserve it but…
We don’t say anything for a while, we’re just two friends gardening. Well, he’s gardening and I’m just trying to make my girlfriend smile at me. I hear her and Grace from outside, the two of them laughing. Both laughs are beautifully contagious, but Lana’s? I can see those dimples in my mind.
Dimples of a heartbreaker, I used to say.
Dimples of a heartbreaker.
She doesn’t deserve the vague, incomplete explanations, she deserves the answers and closure. She deserves the actions to show how much I love her and appreciate her.
I clear my throat and build up enough courage to ask Julian, “Do you know—Did she date anyone while I was…”
Julian grunts as he digs out a chunk of dirt. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
I nod as my heart drops into my stomach.
“No,” he says. “If she did, everyone would have known. Unless she kept it an airtight secret, I don’t think so.”
I nod. “Right.”
“She did tell me once that she was thinking about going on a date with this guy named Sam last year. Didn’t work out though, she stood him up because she couldn’t get herself to go. She never spoke to him again.”
“She told you that?”
He shrugs and digs another hole. “Yeah, we’re, like, best friends.”
I frown. “Oh.”
“She needed someone and so did I, Christian. Haley died, I was a single father to a newborn, and I didn’t have anyone else other than my dad. But Lana was there. We were both grieving for a long time, still are maybe.”
“Grieving…”
“I was grieving the mother of my child, and she was grieving you. We both lost. And the way she was…it was like you died. So we helped each other. She came over a lot to help with Grace, especially when I had to work. She’d babysit if I had something I couldn’t get out of.
And we went together to get Grace’s ears pierced.
She picked out the earrings and everything. ”
“Oh.”
“She’s Grace’s aunt and they have a really deep connection.
” Julian huffs a laugh and puts one of the flowers in the hole he dug out.
“Grace called her mama for a bit when she started speaking, but Lana would laugh and say, ‘No, it’s Auntie Lana. La-Na.’ I get it though.
To a one year, Lana and mama sound kind of similar? ”
“So Lana and you are best friends?”
“Kind of.”
I swallow, my brain turning into my worst enemy. “Did you two ever—”
Julian laughs loudly—full belly laugh. “I know you didn’t just ask me that.”
“It’s just a question—”
“It’s not. You think that little of me?”
“No. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Stupid question, man.”
I sigh, taking a bunch of flowers from the plastic pot and burying into the hole I dug. “So she’s one of your best friends,” I say, accepting.
“Are you jealous?”
“Stop it,” I groan, and fill the hole with dirt. “I just want to know if she was taken care of.”
“Another stupid question on your end.”
“When did you become such a dick?”
“Always have been.” Julian is a tattooed grump with sunshine personified as his daughter.
“Thank you,” I mutter. “For being with her when she needed someone.”
“Of course,” he says. “But it should have been you here with her instead.”
Yeah…
Grace is refusing to leave Lana’s hip, crying and wailing, “Auntie Lana!”
Lana frowns, her eyes glossy. “I know, baby Gracie. I love you! I’ll go see you tomorrow, I promise.”
Julian hugs Lana and walks away, holding and consoling his crying daughter as he sets her in the car seat. Lana waves as they pull out of the driveway. I hide before she turns from the door and goes toward the quiet living room.
I made her a garden and now I’m scared to show her. I look like a disaster, covered in dirt, but it’s worth the mess if she glows when she sees it. I take a breath and go into the opening beneath the stairs to the living room. She’s in her cozy, yellow loveseat with her nose in a book.
Sometimes I like just watching her exist. In our old apartment, Lana would be moving around, humming while she cooked or sitting on the couch reading—I could never look away.
When she reads she gets lost somewhere, and when she read aloud with my head on her chest, I’d get lost with her.
She was there and perfect and alive, just like she is now.
She might be this beautiful, bright sunflower, but I think she might actually be the sun and I’m the sunflower. I’m the thing searching for her light and following every and any direction she goes in.
“Lana?” I rasp.
Lana looks up from the book. “Yeah?”
“Can you come with me?” I ask. “Please?”
She places a bookmark and closes the book she’s reading before getting up from the couch. Her brows furrow when she looks up at me through her lashes and asks, “Where?”
“Just come with me—”
Then she looks down with a gasp and I know I’m in trouble. “Christian you’re getting dirt on my floor!”
I chuckle. “I’ll clean it, I promise. Just come please.”
Lana growls quietly. “Fine, but you better clean it.”
“I will, I promise.” I smile and take her hand, pulling her out of the living room. Back in front of the back door, I stop. “Close your eyes.”
“Christian—”
I stand behind her and put my hands over her eyes. “Just follow my lead, okay?”
Lana nods and I feel the apples of her cheeks lift. She’s smiling and I wish I could see those dimples, but I know them in my mind from memory. You don’t forget Lana’s dimples.
I keep one hand over her eyes and slide open the door with my other. When we are finally on the patio with a wide view of the back yard, I say, “Can you pretend Julian didn’t ruin it?”
Lana chuckles. “Ruin what?”
“The gar—”
“Christian.”
“Oh.” I press my lips together. “Right.”
Lana laughs. “Can I see my surprise yet?”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Okay.”
I remove my hands from her eyes and exhale, shaking them out at my sides and putting them in my pockets.
I move aside to see her face and capture her reaction, which is everything and more than I was hoping it would be.
Her lips part before they pull into a beautiful grin and her eyes widen, brightening beyond what I’d anticipated.
“Christian,” Lana gasps, the sound turning into a soft, quiet laugh. “It’s…”
“Too much?”
“No,” she says, turning to face me. “No, Christian, it’s perfect. It’s beautiful. It’s—”
I take slow steps toward her, for my own sake, and pause just a few feet from her.
“Christian,” she breathes, silver lining her homey eyes.
“Do you like it?” I ask quietly.
Lana takes a step forward. “You know I do.”
I take a step. “I need to hear you say it.”
She takes two steps, then a few more until we are toe to toe and her head is tilted back to connect her eyes with my own. “Christian,” she whispers. “I love the garden.”
“You do?”
“It’s one of my favorite things you’ve ever given me.”
“Which is your first favorite thing?” I ask. “Is it Dwight?”
She laughs. “No, it’s not Dwight. But I have it on all the time, every day.”
I squint at her but she only smiles wider, and I could drop to my knees. “What is it?”
Lana shrugs and stands on her toes, giving my jaw a quick peck. “You’re a smart man, Christian Calloway. Think.”
Then she walks down the patio toward the garden, throwing a wink over her shoulder. I watch her frolic about in her backyard as though it is green hills under the sun in a movie. Lana smiles as she smiles and brushes her fingers across the different shades and different kinds of flowers.
Miss Violet told me some of their names, but they’ve been completely lost from my memory. I had to make room for this moment. I lean against the banister, crossing my arms, and watch her.
I love the simple moments of her existing. There is nothing better in the world than that for me.