Page 15 of The Guy Sure Looks Like Plant Food To Me
Will he come after me?
Her hair is still damp when it falls over my shoulders, her body pressing up against me from behind as she nuzzles into my neck. “Hmm,” she hums, giving me a squeeze. “This is perfect.”
I can’t help but agree, it hasn’t even been an hour, but just being here, with her … this is freedom.
I’m sure of it.
“Help me unload Chewie from the truck?” Runa’s already got gardening gloves on and she’s dressed in denim overalls.
I follow her lead, undeniably distracted by how good she looks in them.
“Are we planting her?”
“Yes!” She chirps, swinging open the tailgate. “I think the universe is asking for it, don’t you?”
Her smile is brilliant, it’s warm and so full of joy and hope that it eases every tightness still remaining in my chest. I’menamored with the way she sees things as signs and how her interpretation of those very things determine her day-to-day actions.
She’s intoxicating to be around.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough.
“I do.” I whisper my reply, but she’s already on the other side of the truck bed, squatting to grab the edges of the pot.
Scrambling to catch up before she hurts herself by trying to do it alone, I climb the truck and help her. Chewie looks bigger than she did just a few days prior, there’s no way she’s grown in such a short time, but I don’t recall having to tilt my neck up so much to look at her before.
“It’s a good thing, probably,” I wheeze, stepping down little by little, the struggle on both our faces borderline amusing as we try to lift and move this plant. “If we waited any longer she was just gonna have to stay up there.”
Chewbacca makes her gurgling noise, as if protesting my joke to the fullest degree.
Runa laughs, “You’re lucky she’s not a Wookie or she’d tear your arm off for that one.” She comes back to a stand, wiping glistening beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm. “Where do you think?”
I do a full 360-degree spin on my heels, slow, taking my time to scope out the landscape. “I think right here,” walking only a few feet toward the Southeast corner of the house, I point to the spot in front of the window, “she’ll get tons of full, direct, sunlight, she has space to expand her roots, and we can still see her from our front window.”
Runa nods, “Plus her trap can still reach the front door, and if anything, that’s a built-in security system on its own.”
I laugh harder than I can control, tilting my head back and making a fool of myself. An awkward embarrassment lingers. Runa notices my discomfort with myself, the way my composurestands and I suddenly want to run away, go home, forget I’ve done any of this.
“Hey,” her voice is a low hush, “I like you as is. Don’t be anything you’re not around me.” Her fingers rake against my throat, her hold becoming firm as she grips the back of my neck to force my gaze up to her, “Okay?”
I can’t blink, can’t look away from her, so I simply rasp out, “Okay.”
A slow clapping sound breaks the bubble of intimacy around us, a vile, sinister, laughter that’s too familiar for me to not know from deep in my bones. Williams steps out from a covering of trees, that wretched look on his face like he’s just won again. “Wow.”
I’m suddenly paralyzed, every possible fear coming to fruition just hours into our plan, the proof of what I’ve been told my entire life presented in front of me; I will never escape my family.
“H-how?” Runa manages to choke out, the look on her face surely identical to mine.
“You think the senator doesn’t keep a tracker in his daughter’s car?” He looks at us like we’re idiots, taking one confident step after another as he gets closer to us.
I’m trying to ask where he came from, for the details, but I only manage one single word before I realize that none of it matters if he’s here to take it all away from me. “W-where?”
“Where what?” He frowns, looking back from the way he came. “My car? It’s parked on the road, I wanted to make sure you two didn’t sneak off and hide when you heard me pull up.”
His sneer is more venomous than the baneful vines surrounding us, full of contempt, as if this is somehow so much more personal to him.
“Why do you even care?” I manage to complete a full thought when I feel Runa’s hand close around mine, the simple gesture syphons her strength directly into me.
At least, it feels like it.
