Chapter 26 Eliana
ELIANA
bouquet garni /bo?o?kā ɡ?r?nē/: noun
“We need to establish some ground rules,” I say as we begin our walk. Excalibur is sniffing the ground ahead of me like a dog, pointing out pebbles and cracks in the sidewalk like he’s got a life and a mind of his own.
It’s strange and funny to have the world take on new dimensions.
The Daredevil superpower promises were certainly overblown; it’s not like I can suddenly detect crime taking place a few towns over.
But there are things that are there for the senses if you just open up to them.
New wavelengths, sort of. Cut grass is nice.
I mean, duh, everyone knows that. They literally sell laundry detergent with that aspect as the leading sales pitch.
What about the faint scent of honeysuckle drifting unseen from someone’s backyard, though?
What about the feeling of sun-warmed pavement leaching up through the soles of my sneakers?
We pass a yard with a sprinkler going, and it occurs to me that that chh-chh-chhk sound of it going is such an utterly beautiful normality.
You don’t take these kinds of these into close appreciation when you can see them.
When I had working eyes, I would’ve just swept them across the whole scene and been like, Yep, that’s a suburb.
It’s not that, though. Well, not just that. It’s a world, rich and full of nice things.
You’re safe here, Eliana. You can breathe.
The tired rumble of Bastian’s voice snaps me back to the present moment. “Ground rules? Such as…?”
“Ground rule, really. Singular. If you’re going to join me on these walks…” I stop and point meaningfully at his hand, which, even though I can’t see it, I’m certain is floating nervously around my lower back. “… then you are not allowed to touch me.”
Sure enough, there’s a guilty gulp and a whisper of fabric as Bastian snatches his hand away and stuffs the offending extremity into his pocket. Knew it.
“God forbid a man keep you from falling,” he says with a scowl.
“That’s the point, doofus,” I say, not unkindly.
“If I always have you around to keep me from falling, how am I ever supposed to stand on my own?” I sigh and tuck some loose hair behind my ear.
“I don’t hate you, you know. Try as I might, I can’t quite get there.
But it’s important to me that you listen to me and respect my boundaries.
Even when you disagree with them. Actually, especially when you disagree with them. ”
“I’m always going to keep you safe, Eliana,” he snarls like I just told him he wasn’t allowed to do that.
“I know.” I lay a palm on his forearm to steady him. “That’s a big part of the reason I can’t hate you. I’m just saying that I can stand on my own. I have to. I need to. So let me.”
He does that frustrated sigh-growl again, but I can sense the note of resignation in it. “Fine. So be it. Hands to self.”
“Atta boy.” I resume walking. “Now, let’s have ourselves a nice promenade.”
“Promenade?” he snorts.
“Yeah. Isn’t that a nice word? ‘Walk’ is so pedestrian.
My mom used to say it like that when I didn’t want to leave the house, though.
Let’s promenade, darling, in this real posh, high-society British voice.
It always made me giggle, and then we’d go off.
Usually to the liquor store, but beggars can’t be choosers. ”
Bastian chuckles. “Promenade it is, then.”
We continue our stroll around the block.
Excalibur is still eagerly skimming over the pavement a couple feet ahead of me and Bastian is still lurking at my side.
It’s a good thing for both of us that I can’t count how many nervous glances he casts my way, because the number would surely be too damn high.
It’s much better to pretend for a moment.
Because there are such nice things I can pretend about.
I can pretend that we’re a normal, boring couple who met in a normal, boring way.
We have normal, boring jobs and a normal, boring house, and we’re about to have a normal, boring child to love normally and cherish boringly in normal, boring ways.
That’s the issue with growing up the way I did: You fetishize things that other people take for granted.
The toxic chaos of Dereks coming and going made me green with envy whenever I heard friends at school complain how their parents were so lame and gross and did stuff like celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversaries and kiss each other in the kitchen while they cook dinner together.
I would’ve killed for something like that.
Bastian would kill, too, as he has repeatedly proven—but he would only do so in order to prevent accidentally stumbling his way into something as normal and boring as a happily-ever-after. It’s like he’s allergic to peace. Hard-wired to reject it.
And therein lies the ultimate tragedy of whatever it is that he and I almost had together: The thing I want most is the thing he’s least able to accept.
So letting myself wander through this fantasy of normal, boring stuff is ultimately stupid. Kind of masochistic, really. It’s like dangling meat in front of a starving woman and never letting her close enough to grab it.
To be fair, I’m both the starving woman and the one doing the dangling, and I have already had a taste of the dangling meat, in both literal and metaphorical ways, and—
I might be getting off-track. Point is, the hope is dangerous. I know that. But for just a few more steps, I let myself have it. I let myself hope.
“You’re quiet,” Bastian observes.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“Nothing important.” I nimbly step over a tree root. “Merely appreciating the moment. Nobody’s trying to kill us right this second. Isn’t that something?”
“The bar for appreciation has gotten concerningly low.”
“Sure has.” I laugh deliriously. “Three months ago, I was worried about figuring out how many bales of electrical wiring are needed for a skyscraper. Now, I’m just grateful for a nice morning walk without gunfire.”
“Character development,” he deadpans.
“That’s one way to put it.”
A dog barks somewhere to our left—not aggressive or threatening, just a friendly, hey, who’s that? kind of bark. I hear the jingle of a collar, the shuffle of paws on grass. The owner calls out something I can’t quite catch, and the dog quiets.
Normal. Boring. Beautiful.
“You’re quiet, too,” I add. “Still mad at me?”
He laughs softly. “No. That’s a difficult state to maintain, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately for who?” I tease.
“Both of us. Unfortunately.”
I laugh again, but as I do, I misjudge a step off the curb and do a half-stumble. I hear the sharp intake of breath as Bastian starts to help me, then stops before his hands maintain contact.
The effort in that simple little gesture speaks volumes. I catch myself and stay upright, no harm done. And even though he’s basically bleeding with angst at the prospect of me going through such a terrifying ordeal without his intervention, he lets me go at it alone.
God, I needed that.
“If you weren’t a chef,” I say as we settle back into our pace, “what would you have been?”
“Hm.” He ponders the question for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t know. I was always going to be a chef, I think.”
“But if you weren’t,” I insist. “Never had any other dreams?”
“Not really, no.”
“Meh, you’re lame. I was going to be a princess-astronaut, in case you were wondering.”
He chuckles as we pause to let someone back out of their driveway. “A princess and an astronaut? That’s a busy schedule.”
“No, a princess-astronaut. It’s not two jobs; it’s one.”
“Oh, yeah? How would that even work?”
“I’d hold court in space. Tea parties and galas while orbiting Venus. I’d wear jewels from meteors in my crown and rule the cosmos with an iron fist encased in a very fashionable silk glove.”
“Of course,” he says. “How short-sighted of me. You would have excelled at it, I’m sure.”
“Indubitably,” I agree with a haughty sniffle and a hint of my mom’s promenade accent. After a moment’s hesitation, I ask something that’s been on my mind for the last few days. “What about Sage? Does he ever talk about what he wants to be?”
Bastian is quiet for a moment as we walk. “Before the accident, he wanted to be a pro skateboarder. He had all these posters on his wall—Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, the guys from Jackass. He’d spend hours watching videos and trying to learn tricks.”
The only follow-up question I could possibly ask feels gross on my tongue, but I ask it anyway. “And after the accident?”
“After, he stopped talking about the future for a while. It took him almost two years before he started making plans again.” He purses his lips. “Last I heard, he wants to be a software engineer. He said he’s going to design accessible video games for people with disabilities.”
“That’s actually really cool.”
“He’s a good kid,” Bastian says, and there’s so much pride packed into those four words that it makes my throat clench up. “Better than I ever was at his age. Better than I am now, too.”
“You’re not such a lost cause,” I mutter, then feel my face grow hot. I can’t let myself do that. Complimenting him is a dangerous road for both of us, even if I really do mean what I’m saying.
Because the problem has never been that Bastian is a bad man. It’s that he’s a good man who’s done bad things.
In so many ways, that’s worse.
Without warning, Bastian’s hand closes around my wrist.
“What did we just—” I start, ready to unleash the fury of a thousand suns on him for breaking the one rule I established.
But he cuts me off. “There’s a rose bush,” he says simply. “On your right. You’re about to walk straight into the thorny part.”
Oh. Right. My bad.
He’s not done, though. Before I can formulate a response that isn’t just embarrassed sputtering, he’s guiding my hand, gently, carefully, toward something soft and cool. My fingers brush against velvet petals, and the scent hits me a second later: sweet, rich, wild.
“There’s a beautiful one here,” he murmurs. He positions my palm so I’m cupping the bloom without touching the stem. “And a big red one just below it. The thorns are—yeah, right there. Don’t move your hand down.”
I lean in and inhale deeply. The smell of a rose on a summer day—is there anything alive more cliché than that?
I can’t think of one. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, though.
On the contrary, it’s so achingly beautiful, and normal, and boring, that my heart wants to crack into a bajillion little pieces right here on the sidewalk.
That life we can’t have opens up wide in my mind’s eye again: a man and his woman, a woman and her man, hand in hand, stopping to smell the actual damn roses.
If only we could.
If only we ever could.
Bastian holds the door open for me when we get back to the house. I’m halfway through when he stops me with the softest of touches on my waist.
“Thanks for letting me join you on your walk,” he says.
“It was a promenade,” I correct with teasing sternness. “And you’re welcome. I’ll be back at it tomorrow, if you should care to join again.”
His touch flutters on my hip for a second, that exposed strip of skin where my sweater has ridden up again, before vanishing as he withdraws. “Sure thing,” he tells me with a winking, devil-may-care freeness that reminds me of the old Bastian. “It’s a date.”