Page 34 of Late Bloomer
But this is supposed to be the new me or whatever, so I stand still, swallowing before I repeat myself. “Why do you dislike me as much as you do?”
Diksha stares at me, her mouth a tight line, eyes sharp and assessing. After a moment, she lets out a breath, turning back to the lilacs. “I don’t trust anyone to treat Pepper like she deserves,” she says at last. “She doesn’t have a stellar track record of people treating her well, and I can’t say this little situation you’ve tied her up in with Trish gives you any brownie points.”
“I’m not looking to hurt Pepper,” I say, the words far more defensive than I intend. But it’s true. I kind of…likethe woman. “I’m not looking to hurt anyone. All I wanted to do was… was…”
“What?” Diksha says, tone clipped.
“Start over,” I say, hanging my head. “My life was kind of a mess before this and I—” I wave my hand, trying to find the right words. “I don’t know. I feel like I make a mess of most things. Or I let people in my life make messes of things because I’m too afraid to stand up for myself. But then for the first time I had actual money and this dream of painting shoes—”
“Shoes? Who are you, Mother Goose?”
“—and I thought this would be my fresh start. But apparently, I can’t even do that right.” A knot of suppressed frustration unravels in my throat, words and tears pouring outof me. How mortifying. “I’m trying my best. I’m always trying my best and I don’t really know what I’m supposed to actually do, and I’m sick of making even more problems for people wherever I go but I—Oof.”
Diksha pulls me to her with so much force, all the air sweeps out of my lungs, more of those silly tears continuing to fall. For a moment, I’m scared she’s trying to wrestle me into shutting up but she’s actually…huggingme. It feels so damn good to be touched, I melt into her.
“You’re okay,” she whispers, one hand drawing motherly circles up and down my spine, the other cradling the back of my neck, her chin resting on the crown of my head. “I promise, you’re okay.”
“Wait, why are you being nice to me now?” I mumble into Diksha’s shoulder, getting whiplash from her moods. But I’m so comfortable in this tight hug, I’m not sure I even care about the answer.
“I can be wary you’re going to screw over my best friend and still offer comfort to someone who needs it. I’m a woman of multitudes,” she says, a tiny smile in her voice.
“I’m not going to screw Pepper over,” I say again, a tiny bit of fight coming back to my voice.
Diksha lets out a long sigh, giving me one more squeeze, then pushing me to arm’s length. “I believe you,” she says at last, eyes meeting mine. “Now, enough of the dramatics. Let’s pick some damn flowers or whatever.”
“Now who’s acting like Mother Goose?” I say with a smile as I drag my hands across my tear-streaked cheeks.
Diksha rolls her eyes and makes a big show of grabbing her shears and cutting another bough of lilacs, but I don’t miss the tick of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
We work in friendly quietness for the next few hours, filling up bucket after bucket with blooms.
Diksha shows me the converted cooler attached to the barn that keeps the cut flowers from wilting as quickly, explaining Pepper’s organization system—grouped first by color, then by type. It feels like standing in the center of a color wheel.
“They’re all so beautiful,” I say, pressing my nose to a pale pink peony, inhaling the softly sweet scent.
“And Pepper knows everything about all of them,” Diksha says with a nod. “When they like to bloom. What pH level they prefer for the soil. How much sun. Water. She keeps it all stored up in that brain of hers like an encyclopedia.”
I grin. “I love it. Not everyone can make careers out of a special interest like that.”
“She’d do anything for this place.”
“Truer words, darling,” Alfie says, bursting into the cooler, arms filled with daffodils, Tal close behind. “You’d think she sprouted from the soil like her flowers for how connected she is to it.”
“The Grandma Lou effect,” Diksha says softly, a gentle sadness ghosting through the space.
“It’s going to be her first birthday without her,” Tal says from the corner as they evaluate a bundle of pale blue puffballs of flowers.
“Is her birthday coming up?” I ask.
“End of the month. May twenty-ninth,” Alfie says. “She’s a Gemini. Try not to judge her too harshly for that.”
Diksha slaps his shoulder. “We’ll have to make this the best FriendsBitching yet.”
“Friends… bitching?”
Alfie giggles. “It’s our tradition of sorts. Pepper has always hated celebrating her birthday so, naturally, we make a really big deal out of it, but she refuses to acknowledge our efforts. It was, what, probably four years ago now that she renamed it FriendsBitching?” Alfie looks to Diksha, who nods.
“Yeah, just about. None of us celebrate Thanksgiving because, well, fuck Thanksgiving, but we were always trying to do something for her birthday so, instead, Pepper dedicated the day to us all ordering a bunch of food from local restaurants, drinking way too much cheap wine, and bitching about the atrocious injustices in American politics.”
