31. “Dolores is going to love it.”
“DOLORES IS GOING TO LOVE IT.”
HALE
She was pissed at me. I didn’t know why.
I’d spent the past week trying to take care of her after I found her quiet and shaking in her living room. I hadn’t known what the hell else to do that night except pull her against me and keep my mouth shut.
Yasmine cried easy. I knew that about her. She cried at sad songs, the wrong kind of movie ending, old couples holding hands. Little things that caught her soft and left her laughing at herself a minute later. She never made a production of it.
That night was different.
That night she held on like the ground had given out beneath her.
I’d put the food away, ordered takeout instead and spent the night with her tucked against me in sheets that smelled like birchwood. She didn’t tell me what happened. What he’d said to break her down like that. What finally slipped past the shield she’d built around herself. But I could guess.
Shaun and I were going to have words.
A man could be angry. A man could be scared. A man could be stupid enough to burn his whole life down and still swear he was the injured party.
What he could not do was put his hands on a woman in her own home.
He was still a child in too many of the ways that counted, and I’d been inclined to give him grace. Not anymore.
In the morning her mother called and I took the phone out of her hand before she could answer.
“She’ll just show up here if I don’t pick up,” she said.
“Then pack a bag. Come stay with me for a while.”
She hesitated.
“Dolores misses you,” I coaxed.
“Dolores hates me.”
“Then it’s time you worked on that relationship.” I smiled and touched a finger to her chin. “Come away with me.”
She nodded. “I’ll get a few things.”
My smile dropped the moment she disappeared into her bedroom to pack, the phone still ringing in my hand when I switched the whole fucking thing off.
I’d wanted her under my roof, where the world had to come through me first, and I’d gotten my wish. For a few days, it had been her and me and nothing else. I thought I was doing all right by her.
But now she was pissed at me, and fuck if I knew why.
I kept replaying the week, trying to find the seam.
Saturday morning. We’d stayed in bed long past any reasonable hour, both of us reading. Me, a biography I’d been working through for a couple weeks. Her, lost in a dark novel with a one-word title. Her feet wedged under my calf for warmth. Coffee going cold on the nightstand.
At some point she reached for her camera.
“Don’t,” I said.
Click.
She was grinning behind the lens like she’d caught me naked. I didn’t tell her how much I loved it, but I had a feeling she already knew.
Then the ducks.
Her crouching by the pond in my oversized rain boots, waiting patiently while they floated in a trailing line across the water. They ignored her completely. She took pictures anyway.
“What are their names?”
“They don’t have names.”
She looked at me the way she looked at Dolores when Dolores was being difficult. “C’mon. They need names.”
“Fine,” I said. “Big one’s Peking. Brown one’s Confit.”
Her eyes went wide with immediate moral outrage.
I kept going. “Or Honey Soy and Five-Spice. Orange Glaze if you wanna go fancy.”
“You’re unhinged.” She turned back to the ducks. “Hi, Martin. Hi, Gina.”
The ducks kept moving, deeply unconcerned with their christening. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably better.”
Sunday afternoon I was reading in the study when she appeared in the doorway.
“How do you turn on your chainsaw?”
I answered on autopilot, realized what she’d said, and was halfway down the hall in the next breath. Found her balanced on the kitchen counter, half her body hanging out the window. “What the hell are you doing?”
“There’s a branch,” she said, voice muffled. “It’s blocking the light.”
Twenty minutes later I was up a ladder with the chainsaw and she was on the ground, squinting up at me.
The branch came down. Light poured in. She’d stood at the window for a long time after, just looking.
Wednesday, the coop.
“Dolores deserves better,” she said, and I didn’t argue. I was learning not to argue about that damn chicken. I’d told her to work on the relationship and she was taking me at my word.
So hardware store. Paint aisle. Two swatches in her hand.
“Morning Songbird or Buttercup Dreams?”
I considered. One slightly orange, one slightly gold.
“Morning Songbird.”
Her smile.
We painted all afternoon. I rolled, she cut in, and by evening the whole place smelled like fresh paint and cut grass, the coop a loud, aggressive yellow screaming across the field. “You think we should have gone Buttercup Dreams?” I asked.
She leaned into me, paint smeared on her arms, a streak on her cheek.
“No,” she said. “Dolores is going to love it.”
I knew more than a little about chickens. I was learning I didn’t know much about women who talked to them.
I was figuring it out, just not fast enough apparently. Because what in the hell had I done?
I picked up my phone.
Me: Did Yasmine say anything about me?
Annie: This isn’t fourth period. We’re not passing notes
I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Me: Funny. So did she?
Annie: Duh
Me: What did I do?
Annie: Ask her
Me: Give me a hint.
Annie: Leave me alone.
Me: I’ll give you the Chevelle for a week.
Annie: Of my choosing?
Me: Yeah
Annie: Deal.
Me: So?
Annie: starts with an M ends with you being dumb
Me: That narrows it down less than you think.
Annie: Monae.
Me: What about her?
Annie: Figure it out.
I thought it through.
Friday at the farmers market.
Yasmine in overalls and that straw hat, like she was two seconds from churning butter. I’d called her Farmer Brown.
“That’s Ms. Brown to you,” she’d retorted, charming every customer who wandered up to the stand. An old man bought three dozen eggs. Some woman took a picture of the crooked little sign Yasmine had painted for the egg stand.
I stood behind her and let her run the show.
Then Monae showed up. Old friend. We went out a couple times years back. She said hello. I said hello. I introduced Yasmine. That was it. A two-minute conversation. I didn’t think anything of it, but apparently I should have.
The fuck was the problem?
Yeah. No.
I was up the stairs in the next second, found her with her laptop perched in her lap. She was editing photos. Not wildlife. People. A candid of Tabby and Nico. She’d been doing more of that lately.
I dropped down beside her, plucked the laptop away, and pulled her straight into my lap.
“Hey—”
I set it on the table and kept her there.
“What are you doing?” she asked, tortoiseshell glasses sliding down her nose, hair in a messy, unsettled halo around her shoulders. She looked soft. Annoyed. It nudged at that too greedy spot inside me that never seemed to get its fill, but I shoved it away.
“Getting answers.”
“About what?”
“Why you’re mad at me.”
She rolled her eyes and tried to stand. “I’m not mad at you.”
I caught her around the waist and brought her back down. “Try again.”
“Hale.”
“Yasmine.”
She wouldn’t look at me. She stared past me toward the bedroom window instead.
“Annie told me everything,” I lied.
Her head swung around. “Bullshit.”
“I’m very persuasive.” I held her eyes. “Promised her the Chevelle if she talked.”
Her mouth dropped. “She sold me out for car keys? That heifer.”
“Not completely. Just enough to point me in a direction.”
She still looked annoyed, but not at me so much anymore. I put two fingers under her chin and brought her back to me.
“Monae,” I said. “I’m trying to figure it out, and I’ve got nothing.”
Silence.
“She touched your arm,” Yasmine said finally, quiet and almost embarrassed. “Flirted.”
“She—” I blinked. “What?”
“When she laughed, she touched your arm. And you—” She stopped. Tried again. “You didn’t move.”
I stared at her. “I didn’t notice.”
She looked away.
I tipped her chin back. “That’s the problem? That I didn’t notice?”
“No.” She pushed my hand away. “The problem is that I did. I wanted to walk over there and—” She shook her head. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“It’s completely stupid. We’re not even…” She gestured between us. “I don’t even know what we are.”
“Then ask me.”
She finally looked at me. Wary.
“Barista on Main,” I said. “Draws a heart in your latte foam every damn time and acts like it’s standard practice.”
Her brows pulled together. “It’s not?”
“Hardware store,” I continued. “Aisle three. Dude offering to help you pick out paint like I wasn’t standing right there. And let’s not forget the guy at the farmers market who bought eggs he didn’t need because you smiled at him. I notice.”
For once, she had nothing smart to say.
“Same boat, darlin’. I’m just quieter about it.”
Her fingers curled into the front of my shirt.
“We’re figuring it out,” I said. “I don’t know what this is supposed to look like. I just know I don’t want to do it with anyone else.”
Her shoulders loosened.
I brushed my thumb across her jaw. “I’m crazy about you, Yasmine.”
Hadn’t meant to say it yet. But there it was.
She did that careful, searching thing she got sometimes, like she was trying to see past what I was saying to what I meant, and I couldn’t tell if I’d just made everything better or ruined it entirely.
Then she kissed me.
And I stopped trying to figure anything out.