Page 76 of When Fate Breaks
“Not quite. I’m actually back in Ramer for the weekend.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. It’s Leah’s birthday. I couldn’t miss her being flung off a mechanical bull twice.” A loud shriek comes from inside the bar, followed by a round of cheers and Leah’s unmistakable giggle. “Sorry, make that three times. Thrice? Is that a real word?”
Blake chuckles heartily. It might be the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. “You’re weird,” he says.
I can’t help but smile. I know he’s on the verge of being wasted, but I weirdly love hearing him like this. Care free (and filter free) suits Blake.
“Not as weird as you. Where are you?”
“At Diego’s house.”
“Carlos’s brother?”
Blake gasps dramatically. “Wow, youdolisten to me.”
“On occasion,” I smirk. “What are y’all doing?”
“Diego’s parents are out of town. Carlos hooked us up with a keg.”
“Wow, hitting the big boy stuff, are we?”
“Mmmm,” Blake hums. There’s a lot of shuffling and whistling sounds in the background.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m in the backyard.”
“You always manage to find the grass, don’t you?” I chuckle.
Blake laughs. I can practically hear his eyes rolling through the phone.
“The plants. They call to you. I get it,” I continue.
“Shut up,” Blake says.
I laugh at my own joke. “Speaking of plants, how’s the new job?”
After a lot of thought and going back and forth with his parents, Blake decided college just wasn’t for him. Though my nervous overplanning self couldn’t have imagined skipping out on getting a degree, I can’t say I was surprised at all to find out Blake would be doing so. Even though Blake is completely smart and capable, not everybody is built for college education and desk work. I’m fairly certain Blake would have gone stir crazy by a week into his first semester.
Though Blake was not exactly stressed to figure out his next step after high school, an absolutely perfect opportunity fell right into his lap by Spring Break of his senior year. A new guy on his baseball team this last season’s dad happens to own a landscape construction company and, once their family was over at the Di Fazios’s one night and the dad got one look at Blake’s beautifully constructed greenhouse shed and side garden, he let Blake know he was welcome to come work for him anytime.
Blake is going to quite literally be paid to grow grass and play with plants. He’ll have to start out doing mostly grunt work and manual labor but will gradually get to work his way up into design and project management if he sticks with it, which I know he will; the job was literally made for Blake. He, of course, said it was fate the way it all worked out. I say he just got incredibly lucky. That sure seems to happen to Blake a lot. Regardless, I couldn’t be happier for him.
“S’good,” he says. “Finished my first full project last week. I got to pick some of the plants.”
“That’s great, Blake.”
“Mhmm,” Blake mumbles, his voice muffled and a clinking sound coming from the other end of the line. “God, ice cream is so good,” he groans.
A chuckle bursts out of me. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your favorite kind?”
“Caramel,” Blake says without hesitation.
