Page 64 of Late Bloomer
“So it’s settled. You’ll both move down here and I’ll buy us a mountain mansion and we’ll live out our days listening tofolkloreand lying in fields of overgrown grass reading June Jordan poems.”
“Sounds pretty gay. I’m in,” Ophelia says.
“Think you’re forgetting the tiny little problem of already having invested most of your winnings into a flower farm being run by a ridiculously gorgeous woman with a penchant for dungarees who is going to take years to buy you out. But yeah, let’s go be forest nymphs with no income flow.”
“Party pooper,” I say, crumpling up my napkin and tossing it at Olivia. I hate that she’s right. I’m as lost as ever and in a hole so deep, I’m having trouble tracking the light. But even in this tangled disaster I feel… content.
I know I should want to have a plan and a checklist and know exactly when and how I’m going to actually get my fresh start. But, I find it kind of hard to care. Ilikeliving on the farm. I like my tiny room and my even tinier shed. I like my crabby roommate and her group of friends I’m trying to force to be my own. For once, I don’t have that nagging itch in the back of my mind that there’s something else I should be doing, somewhere else I should be, a different person living a better life.
This one I have is a mess, but it makes me happy.
Or a chump.
I guess time will tell.
“And to stay on brand, we better hit the road,” Olivia says with a glance at her watch and an exaggerated frown.
My lip wobbles a bit as I smile at them. “Thank you for coming down. I miss you two so much.”
“Don’t get sappy, Opie,” Ophelia says, blinking rapidly as she looks up at the ceiling. I kick her under the table.
We draw out our goodbyes for another five minutes before Olivia steps fully into big sister mode, pushing Ophelia into the passenger seat and revving the engine. I wave as they pull away.
I drag my feet to my own car. I stare out the windshield as the engine idles, pulled by conflicting urges to zip home as fast as possible or putz around here for the rest of the day. I haven’t seen Pepper since I left her bed last night, and I feel almost feverish with the anticipation of our paths crossing.
I didn’t sleep at all, staring up at the ceiling, ears pricked for the tiniest squeak of a sound in the cabin, some desperate knot of hope that maybe Pepper couldn’t sleep either. That maybe she was kept up thinking of me. Of what we’d done.
Bitch apparently slept like a rock.
She woke up with the sunrise like usual, and I watched from my window as she loaded up her van with buckets of flowers to sell at the farmers market she had a booth at every Sunday.
I was tempted to meet her on the lawn, walk across the dewy grass with the golden sun poised behind me à la Matthew Macfadyen sluttily strutting inPride & Prejudice(2005). But fear that I’d be bothering her, disrupting her flow by insertingmyself and probably saying something stupid, kept me trapped on my bed until the dirt of the driveway settled after she pulled away.
Which is all so ridiculous and melodramatic and very much the old Opal and not the new and improved Opal.
Because I can do this. I can have sex without emotions. Just because I’ve never been able to successfully separate feelings from hooking up with somebody before doesn’t mean I can’t now. I can have a no-strings-attached arrangement and thoroughly enjoy myself and ignore that jagged, achy void in my chest every time I need to feel close to someone. It’s called growth, dammit.
I need to get over myself. I can’t avoid Pepper forever—we have a lot of work ahead of us with the competition, and helping her win brings me one step closer to her buying me out. And then I’ll be able to have my fresh start for real. Plus, avoiding her throws a wrench in the whole us-having-sex thing, which I’m really,reallylooking forward to.
With a sigh, I throw the car in drive and wind my way through the mountains back to the house.
“This was a mistake,” Pepper says, appearing in my shed doorway out of thin air a few hours later. I jump so hard I tip over an ink bottle, all of it oozing across a leather bag I was working on.
I groan, tossing it aside. I’ll try to fix it later, but my creative well is so bone dry I can’t be bothered to deal with it right now. I’ve actually had a pretty great response to posting my first fewlistings on my Etsy shop, but something about people actuallywantingmy work has my brain shriveling up the second I sit down and try to create. It’s times like this that a drink sounds its best; something to blur out that booming voice of doubt and give me enough false confidence that I can make something clever and important.
“A massive mistake,” Pepper repeats, now pacing the length of the shed.
Not the nicest way to be greeted by the woman you recently agreed to hook up with, I’ll admit it.
She digs her hands in her pockets as she moves, puffs of white flowers spinning like tops between her active fingers when she pulls them out. My entire body sears hot as the wind pushes the scent of chamomile toward me.
“Good to see you too, Pepper. How’s the freak-out?” I ask, blotting up the rest of the ink that landed on my desk.
She shoots me a dirty look. “Great, thanks. I love a good Sunday spiral.”
I huff. “Listen. If this is about last night, let’s just talk it through. Get on the same page.”
Pepper stops in her tracks, tilting her head as she looks at me. “Last night?”
