Chapter 6 #3
It was a boring, lengthy process, but Denny would pick it over office duties any day.
She sang along to her mental playlist as she worked, plucking out excess leaves, chopping off stalks to make them all even.
The arrangement was the hardest part. It’d taken her years to develop the skill that had always come naturally to Grandma Tansy, born with an innate grace that Denny couldn’t even dream of.
She was clumsy, sloppy, so disorganised in everything she did that sometimes she got on her own nerves.
But she had learned to keep a rein on what her mum had been affectionately referring to as ‘the beast’ since her childhood.
Now Denny could almost pass as a perfectly functioning adult.
In a way, Denny was feral, too. She was just better at pretending she wasn’t.
“Wanna try?”
Eris shot a perfunctory glance at the mess on the table and went back to scrolling.
The door swung open. Rocco poked his head in. “Boss, Ludwig’s here.”
Denny dropped everything to go and help unload the flowers. Ludwig’s lorry wasn’t big and they never took too long, but there was always some git willing to start an argument because they were obstructing the pavement.
When Denny was finally able to get back to her work-in-progress, she found Eris at the table with a fully assembled bouquet that looked far superior to many of Denny’s creations.
“It’s gorgeous!” she exclaimed, startling the poor girl, who hastily set the bouquet down like a thief caught in the act. Denny picked it up to inspect it: the stems were properly placed, forming a spiral from the bottom up, and the top was a canopy of evenly distributed shapes and colours.
“Have you done this before?” She asked, impressed. Eris stared at her, then at the bouquet, then back at her. It was a no. Meaning she’d figured out how to do that just by observing Denny for a couple of hours. “You’re a natural!”
Eris made a face that screamed ‘Bollocks!’, but Denny’s compliments couldn’t have been more genuine.
“Rocco, look at this!”
Rocco, who was recovering from carrying the flower and foliage crates inside, eyed the bouquet without any enthusiasm.
“Do you want an applause?”
“Not me! Eris made it!”
“Yeah, right.”
“I was outside with you!”
“The Spawn of Satan made the bouquet.”
“Yes!”
Marvel flashed across Rocco’s face. Denny was so smug that she forgot to reprimand his rude choice of words.
“Here. Wrap this and the other ones up and feed them to Mira, then check the online orders. I’ll take care of the delivery.”
Rocco complied, muttering something in Italian that sounded like ‘Uno ads a rope R lay.’
Denny sulked. “I need to learn Italian.”
Something like a smile tugged at a corner of Eris’ lips.
* * *
It was a relatively uneventful day. Eris stuck around for most of the morning, but preferred to stay upstairs in the afternoon.
Coming home after closing, Denny found her setting the long-neglected books back into the bookcase.
She was following the order of the piles they were divided into.
Denny didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was no logic in how they were stacked.
She didn’t have a system: her books, much like everything in her life, were sorted by sentiment.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” she said, but didn’t manage to infuse any severity into her words. Eris looked too pleased with herself to berate her. “Leave the books, yeah? I’ll put them back.”
All she got was a sceptical chuckle.
“I’ll put them back right now! Get out of here!”
Eris had no choice but to raise her hands in surrender and leave the room.
Denny remained alone with her havoc.
She owned more books than she thought. She wasn’t even sure how many of them she’d read.
She mostly bought them compulsively because the cover was pretty or she’d seen someone gush about them on TikTok.
Buying books was always a joy, even if she ended up not reading them for months, or even at all.
Just the idea of having a new story to dive into and characters to fall in love with made real life seem more bearable.
When she was finally done, some titles were upside down. She didn’t really care. She fixed them just because she had a feeling that Eris would do it if she didn’t.
She’d just turned the last one when she heard the scream. It was loud and throaty and so angry that she feared something horrible had happened.
She found Eris leaning over the bathroom sink, wrapped up in one of her worn-out towels, gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles had gone white. The tips of her hair were dripping water on the vanity top and all over the floor. The mirror was wet, too.
Denny ran to her to make sure she was alright. Icy eyes snapped up on her, the rage in them so deep that it almost scared Denny. A bottle of shampoo lay on the ground, a few feet away.
“You scared the life out of me,” she exhaled while retrieving the shampoo. She set it by the sink, turned the water off, and gently pried Eris back. “Why didn’t you wash it in the shower?”
Eris’ look hardened. Her hands were shaking. She pushed Denny away, but the movement caused her to wrap an arm around her ribs with a grunt of pain.
The penny dropped.
“You can’t lift your arms up, can you?” And probably couldn’t bend over the sink properly, either.
Eris turned away with a terse sniff. Her arms were covered in goosebumps. Denny grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her.
“You’re such a stubborn idiot! C’mon, let’s get you dressed, then you’ll let me wash your hair.” Eris tried to protest, but was immediately shushed. “Nuh-uh. It wasn’t a question.”
Denny fetched a chair from her bedroom and had Eris straddle it backwards so that her head could lean back into the sink.
As the water flowed over Eris’ tresses, the basin became a dark pool.
Her hair was really long and thick. After the shampoo, Denny got her nourishing balm and applied it to the lengths, then combed all the knots away and rinsed.
The blow-drying took forever.
If Denny had had so much hair, and so long, she would’ve shaved it all off. Her lack of patience couldn’t have tolerated it. It was different doing it for someone else, though. She found it relaxing—save for the couple of times the blow dryer slipped out of her hand. At least it made Eris laugh.
It was an unexpectedly cute laugh.
* * *
She nearly dropped the parmigiana casserole while serving it, but, other than that, dinner was quite enjoyable.
After cleaning the kitchen (Eris forced her to load the dishwasher right away), they moved to the living room with tea and biscuits. Eris wasn’t enthusiastic about either.
The TV was on at a volume so low it was barely audible, but no one was paying any attention to it anyway. Denny was reading, Eris was watching a doctor explaining neurodevelopmental disorders on TikTok. It was nice to have company while reading.
Around 11 PM, their heads started lolling.
“We should go to bed,” said Denny with a wide yawn.
Eris nuzzled into the cushions with a little moan.
“You can’t sleep here. It’s not good for your cracked ribs.”
Eris moaned louder. Her cheek, squished against the cushion, did funny things to Denny’s heart.
“Don’t make me carry you to bed.”
Eyes still closed, Eris let out a scoff.
“You don’t believe I can, do you?”
Eris’ shoulders shook with a soundless laugh.
Nothing fuelled Denny’s determination more than being told she couldn’t do something.
“Alright, you asked for it.” Denny stood up, stretched, and placed her hands on her hips. “Permission to prove you wrong?”
One of Eris’ eyes cracked open and set on her with an unspoken challenge: ‘I’d like to see you try.’
“I’m about to pick you up.”
The sceptical silence only galvanised Denny’s determination.
“One day,” she said, leaning down, “when you find your voice again,” she slipped an arm under Eris’ knees and one under her shoulders, “the first words I want to hear from you are: ‘Forgive me for doubting you, Denny.’ Deal?” And with one fluid motion she lifted Eris off the couch.
No words could have compared to the sweet reward of Eris’ stunned reaction. Gasping, she swung her arms around Denny’s neck, staring at her in utter shock. She was heavy, but well within Denny’s deadlifting range. She could’ve done squats with Eris in her arms.
Eris was stock-still like a deer in the headlights, but her eyes went comically wide.
Slowly, her expression melted and a laugh—a real, vocal laugh—bubbled up from her so forcibly that she had to smother it into the crook of Denny’s neck, its warmth ticking the bare skin, rising goosebumps everywhere.
Denny laughed, too—heartily, happily—as a funny tingle rippled down to her knees.
Something fuzzy and warm quietly lodged itself between her heart and her soul.