Page 75 of Drawn Together
Any hints of smiles are gone, but our fingers are still wrapped together. This time, it’s my thumb brushing his.
“He had this tendency to freak out over every sickness. Growing up, if Lenny had even a cough, he would lock himself in his room and refuse to come out. Their mom had to slide crackers under the door.” Fletcher laughs, and it’s broken and watery. “And when we lived together, he would do the same with me. If I even mentioned some distant cousin of mine having a stomach bug, he would hide away for at least a whole twenty-four hours. And so, when he had any slight illness, we all brushed it off. Lenny, Stephan, even Noah and Margot. All of us would poke fun at him for it, and he never minded. He would mess right back with us, and really, I never felt bad about it.”
His sigh is so guttural that I barely notice the shaking in his hands against my touch. “But that day it was just me. I was the only one there. He said he was hurting, that he had been sore and aching for the last week, and I told him he was over thinking it.”
I know where this is going. I know how it ends. I don’t know the middle, and I don’t know the details. But, I know where Fletcher and Lennon and their entire group are today without that man, and my stomach twists in a knot at what he is about to say.
“He had a clear diagnosis two weeks later.” He clicks his tongue, twists his mouth, and bites down on the corner of his bottom lip. Through it all, my grip stays tight. “He would’ve gone earlier had I not—”
“No.” My voice is strong, a strict contradiction to the tears forming in my eyes. “No, I will not allow that.”
“Flora, you can disagree, but it’s so glaringly true.”
“Stop, Fletcher,” I say, matching his tone. “I don’t care what you think about it, nothing in that horrible situation is your fault, and I refuse to sit here and let you toss the blame on my closest friend.”
“Every moment mattered, and he wasted time because of me. Because of my big mouth and the words that so easily slipped out.” When he looks back up to me, the pure devastation in his eyes makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. “I know now what words can do. My whole career I’ve used words so carelessly in everything I have written and put out for the world to read as their own interpretation. But, I never realized just how powerful the tongue is until Ryan was gone. How every letter and every word and every sentence is shaping up someone else's life.”
How…silly. How silly of me to think all this time that Fletcher was just quieter with others because he simply didn’t want to talk to them. That he didn’t want to talk to me. I imagine Fletcher at night, pacing his living room, hair all astray as he pulls and stretches to find a solution that no one could have come up with. To regret the words he put out in the world, and wishing he could shove them right back down. My stomach lurches.
“Fletcher,” I whisper. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t get to find out.” He looks out to the city skyline, wind whipping around us. “But, I know I will never say something I don’t mean again. I won’t ever slip outa word without knowing it’s exactly what I want to and should say.”
Moments pass like sand in an hourglass, each granule a different space of silence where we allow his promise to the world to linger in the distance. I don’t have the capacity to push comfort. For someone who has all the words, I fall surprisingly silent.
“That’s an awfully pathetic career if it comes down to the fate of a baked good.”
“Hm?” Fletcher squints back at me, the devastation in his eyes long gone, just scars left behind in those dark honey pupils.
“That’s what you said when we first met. I told you that everything in my job was relying on that muffin and you said—”
“Oh.” His brows furrow. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. It was a rough morning, and that muffin was the only reason I came there, and I really just said that without thinking much—”
“That’s my point, Fletcher. I’ve always thought that you just blurt out everything you’re thinking. I always liked that you had that tenacity, but now that I think about it, you don’t do that with everyone. You take such long pauses between answering your friends. Stephan asked you if you liked his curry the other day, and you thought about it for so long before you answered that I wondered if you even heard him. Maybe you do overthink every word with everyone else, but you’ve never done that with me.”
Fletcher’s mouth falls open, then shuts abruptly. His jaw shifts. Fingers curl tighter. Shoulders slump more.
“I…didn’t realize I was doing that.”
I squeeze his fingers again. “You don’t have to overthink every word with me, okay? If you pick one person that gets to have you unfiltered, then let it be me.”
He doesn’t look my way when he nods. “Okay.”
Fletcher Harding apparently also likes to make you cry on first dates. Or maybe, that’s just me that gets that treatment as well. It turns out that he sets unreal expectations on first dates, too.
Once the water taxi has done a full loop, we are back by the Brooklyn Bridge where Fletcher takes us in a mostly silent uber—save the German Christian metal core that our driver has blasting full volume—to…wherever this is. I thought after our last conversation that maybe Fletcher just felt uncomfortable putting so much out there with me; I thought maybe he needed space. So, when he let go of my hand to pick up his phone, I didn’t say a word. I let him go about whatever he was doing through the ride here, and when we slipped out of the Uber and I asked if everything was okay, he said, and I quote, ‘never better.’
Which, judging by our recent talk, I took that as the highest of decrees.
And now, I believe it. Because here we stand in front of a stone building covered in different variations of chrysanthemums and dahlias with a massive green and white striped awning leading out to the water, the city across the river. The golden string lights’ reflections bounce around the water as boats pass by at their leisure.
It is—and I say this within the deepest pits of my easily pleased heart—the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
“What—”
“I had to do it last minute. I wasn’t exactly planning on it, but you mentioned the water felt like home, and I thought maybe you’d like this. I had to get a table toward the corner, and I know we ate already, but they have really good desserts and a huge drink menu. You can try anything you want. I thought you might—”
“Incredible,” I whisper out in the cool October evening air.
