Page 81 of Late Bloomer
“Well, it’s been over two weeks since we’ve agreed to it, and we’ve only hooked up once. And now we’re breaking one of the three rules and sharing a bed.” I laugh, but she doesn’t join me, and I pull back to see her expression, hopefully read whatever cue I’m missing.
Opal looks at me, then bites her lip, slipping away as she rolls onto her back. “I’ve been, uh, nervous. To initiate anything, I mean.”
“Why?” I ask. I’ve been terrified to initiate anything either, but I don’t know what I’m doing—how I’m supposed to react—if a single night swirled up such a riot of emotions in my chest.
Opal swallows, opens her mouth, then locks it closed, shaking her head. “Because I’m worried it would mean breaking a different rule. And I shouldn’t do that. Wecan’tdo that,” she eventually says to the ceiling.
I’m silent as her words sink into my skin. I want to pick at the silence, prod it like a bruise. See how badly I could make it hurt.
“Oh,” I eventually whisper.
“Yeah,” Opal says back. “Can’t go down that road. It would only lead to issues.”
Issues. Right. I’d be one big issue. I’d almost let myself forget that I’m only worth being around as long as I’m useful to others.
And, in a sick, perverse way, I’m thankful she just squeezed my heart to a pulp. People usually only pretend to like you with the intent to hurt you. I’m not special, and neither is this. Foronce, someone is doing me the courtesy of warning me of the con that lies ahead.
I shift my body, shift away from her warmth. “Well… we can’t have that.”
Opal pivots again, turning so her back is to me. “No,” she whispers to the wall. Her words become weapons, sharp little daggers slicing me open, mortification dumping salt in the wounds. “We can’t have that.”
“That’s the last thing I would want,” I say, staring out the window next to my bed and wishing on a star for the complete opposite. But I’m desperate for the last word, for any upper hand I can find in this sinking ship. “That would be a disaster.”
Chapter 27OPAL
“Well…” I say, staring out at the swamp that was once a vibrant flower farm. “Fuck.”
Pepper audibly swallows but doesn’t say anything.
Thick humidity presses on us like a wall, the resurfaced sun glinting off the pond-sized puddles dotting the land. While not all the plots are destroyed, many are, broken branches and felled trees crushing the plants, the row covers uprooted and wrapped around the damage. Even those that didn’t get demolished were still hit hard by the wind, broken stems and ripped petals littering the area.
“What are we going to do?” I ask, a knot of stress ballooning in my gut.
Pepper lets out a slow breath through her lips, and I look at her, shocked by her calmness. She continues staring straight ahead, pale purple circles rimming her eyes. “I really, truly have no clue.”
After another minute of hopeless silence, we softly advance across the grass, the tall rain boots Pepper loaned me squelching in the mud. We haul debris away, piling it up in the back of the barn.
“There’s not much more we can do but wait,” Pepper says when we carry the last branch away, dusting her hands off on her jeans. “Luckily, the farm was designed on a slope, so a lot of the water should drain down the mountain, but only time will tell how long it will take for the soil to fully dry out.”
She swallows, eyes hollow as she stares at the field. “But excess rain like this introduces a world of problems. Fungus. Lack of oxygen. Runoff pulling all the nutrients from the dirt… Even if we do somehow avoid all that, our blooms for the next two to three weeks are shot to hell. It’ll be a while before there’s anything viable to sell.”
“Let alone use for the competition,” I whisper. Pepper nods, slow and disconnected.
“Not sure there’s a way out of this one,” she says, voice flat.
I open my mouth, trying to think of something encouraging, but she turns before any words come, shoulders slumped and hands shoved in her pockets as she walks away.
About an hour later, the contractor shows up to evaluate the damage to my room.
“Y’all got hit hard,” Bruce, a big burly man with a stellar mustache, says as he takes a few pictures of the gaping hole inmy ceiling. “I’ve stopped at a few other spots this morning, but this is one of the worst.”
“Lucky me,” I say, banging my head against the doorway.
“Y’all just a crop farm?” he asks. I appreciate that he thinks I have any fucking clue about agricultural lingo. “Or do ya have some livestock?”
“Specialize in flowers,” I say, gesturing at some of the tenacious bundles that still hang from the non-broken part of my ceiling.
“Huh. How’d they fare?”
