Page 39 of Late Bloomer
Pepper grimaces. “This situation would be a lot funnier if we didn’t have to share a bathroom.”
Another booming laugh. Damn, Pepper has some jokes. It’s rather unfair that she’s both hot and funny.
“Alfie would wring my neck if he found out I passed over his biscuits and scones for a soggy waffle,” Pepper says, pouring a generous helping of syrup over her plate before digging in.
I frown at her, placing both fists on the table with a sturdy thump. “Waffle House waffles are the perfect level of limp. Put some respect on the name.”
Pepper blinks at me for a moment like she’s worried she actually offended me. My frown cracks, and I give her a playful wink. A giddy electricity hums between us—something about the late night and shitty food and slumber-party giggles that has my heart thrumming in my chest.
“Thank you again for helping out today,” Pepper says, taking a sip of tea. “You really did me a huge favor. I promise I won’t dump my problems on you like that again.”
“I didn’t mind it at all,” I say, cheeks stuffed with hash browns. Pepper gives me a disbelieving look. I swallow down my food. “Seriously, I’ll help out whenever you need. I had a lot of fun.”
“Fun?” Pepper says the word like it’s profanity.
“It was cool to get a glimpse of what you do during the day. And I liked spending time with Diksha. She’s really nice.”
“Nice?I don’t think anyone’s ever described Diksha as nice before.”
“Well, I love her,” I say, stealing a piece of Pepper’s toast. She lets me get away with it. “I love all of them. So, fair warning, I’m not-so-subtly going to insert myself into your friend group and annoy them until they like me.”
Pepper tilts her head, brow furrowed as she looks at me. Studies me. “Why?” she says at last.
“Because being obnoxious is my natural state.”
“No, I mean why them? I’d be surprised if someone like you didn’t have a million friends.”
Something about the question opens up a small crack in my chest, pressing on a dull, quiet ache that’s always there. “Well, um. I’m not actually sure I really have any friends. Besides my sisters, I guess. And I’m, um…” I clear my throat. “Really fucking lonely? Like, all the time?”
I glance at Pepper, then stare back down at the table. This kind of honesty is bare-bones and gratuitous and mortifying to share, but I can’t seem to hold it back. “A lot of the time it feels like I don’t have a place I fit. Or one where I’m not having to work double time to be enough for the people around me. It…I… I’m not making any sense,” I say, blowing out a raspberry in defeat. I twist my face into a goofy look. “Ignore me.”
She stills my fidgeting with that piercing gaze of hers, eyes tracing across my face as a beat of silence grows between us.
“You’re rather impossible to ignore,” Pepper says at last, the words soft as a lullaby. “The pink hair pretty much ensures that.” She reaches across the table, giving one of the short strands a gentle tug. “I’ll pass along the warning to everyone else that you’ve infiltrated the group.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks and floods through my body, a big buffoon grin stretching from ear to ear. Pepper smiles too, brief and dazzling, before averting her eyes and focusing on her food.
My ridiculous smile is stuck like that through the rest of the meal.
And the drive home.
And the next few hours lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling with that warmth still pressing through me, every cell in my body alive and vibrating. And one thing becomes rather obvious:
I’m so undeniably fucked.
Chapter 14OPAL
Pepper’s birthday-celebration-FriendsBitching-thing is tonight and I’m ever so slightly shitting my pants with nerves. Well, not like,fullyshitting, but like, atriskof shitting because there’s a greater-than-zero chance I might have a fat crush on Pepper and a raging need to integrate into her group of friends.
I study Pepper’s birthday gift, then compare it to the tiny photo propped on the corner of my desk in the shed, one I found a few days ago, taped to the wall of the storage unit, while I was searching for materials to use for a flower press. The snapshot has become the touchstone for my eyes to land on in the short time it’s been there, an endless well of inspiration.
Teenage Pepper, her crooked smile tentative but brave, small creases lining the corners of her eyes, her long, gangly arms thrown around Grandma Lou’s shoulders, their cheeks pressed together in a hug. Norman Rockwell himself couldn’t have conjured a scene that embodied joy so fully.
It wasn’t necessarily hard to render the gist of the photo in my painting, but knowing it’s going to Pepper makes me feel like it could never possibly be good enough of a gift.
I tilt my head back and forth, analyzing how the different angles change the watercolor portrait. I don’t use watercolors that often, and I have to fight the urge to crumple the damn thing to a pulp and chuck it in the trash.
“It’s okay,” I whisper to myself, dragging the pad of my index finger over the background, giving the damp mix of colors one last loving smudge. “You’re allowed to play. You’re allowed to try.”
