Page 57 of Kylo
“Right? He was like that as a puppy, too. He’d have these short bursts of energy, playing tug on the bed, then he would pass out hard for hours. It sounds ridiculous, but he really did make a huge difference for me.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Remember that neighbor I mentioned?”
“The one who is married to your friend now?”
“Yeah. Siana. She struggled a lot with anxiety. And she had an English Setter that really helped her cope.”
“My parents didn’t like pets. Especially dogs. They found them dirty and demanding and… pointless, I guess is the right word. I had no idea how much love he would have to offer. He really was the biggest part of me finally being able to start functioning. And then… one day, I got a call.”
“From Claudia?” he asked, making my lips curve up that he’d remembered my grandma’s name.
“Yes. She was a different person from the grandmother I remembered when my grandpa had been alive. So much calmer, freer. Just talking to her felt like basking in the sun. And when she offered me a chance to start over, I just… jumped.”
My parents had been furious. With her—for offering—and me—for accepting. They thought I was too fragile, that I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of having my own place, let alone running a business.
And while a part of me understood their concerns, and had my own worries, something told me I had to do it. I had to take the opportunity, try to prove to myself that I wasn’t broken, that I could find some joy in life again.
So I packed my things, grabbed Ernest, and headed to Florida.
“Did you feel better, or was the stress a lot at first?”
“Well, at first, I had a lot of help from my grandmother. Looking back, I think she wasn’t just showing me the ropes of the house and the business, but keeping a close eye on me. So, yeah, the stress was lower. Eventually, I got the hang of taking care of plants. I started making the house my home. I met and hired and befriended Traeger. Little by little, life got better. The depression kind of went away. Enough that I eventually weaned down on the meds, since I didn’t really need them like I used to.”
I knew from therapy that sometimes lifestyle changes could be just as effective for anxiety and depression as meds could be; that for some people, you just needed the meds to get your motivation back to work at building a life you loved again.
The move to Florida made a lot of pieces fall into place. I had a career I was thriving in, my own space, a supportive grandmother, a friend, lots of sunshine which was good for my vitamin D levels, and I was more removed from the pressures and expectations of my family.
It was all going amazingly.
Until Marco.
I shook those thoughts away.
“But, sometimes, things like this cycle back,” I concluded, shrugging. “I adjusted my meds. But I’ve been feeling kind of blah, and I can’t figure out if that is still the depression peeping through, or if it is just the meds themselves.”
“And then you have stress like tonight on top of it all.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t help,” I agreed.
Sure, he only thought my place got ransacked, not that I’d been forced to commit crimes and threatened with violence. But even just having your business torn apart was enough to stress out anyone.
“Are you going to tell your grandmother about what happened tonight?” he asked, making me jerk up.
I hadn’t even considered that. Mostly because I’d been planning on not saying anything to anyone. But with the pots broken, I knew I’d have to tell Traeg, unless I wanted to pay for all of them outright—and I wasn’t sure I could afford that. If I told Traeger, there was a small chance that could possibly circle back to my grandmother. She followed him online, and if he posted about hustling extra hard because his other pots got destroyed, she would have questions.
It made sense to just tell her what I’d told Kylo. Wild kids did destructive things all the time. I could claim I’d been in the kitchen when a crew came in and quickly started to wreck things. By the time I came out, they rushed off and I didn’t really get a look at them, so calling the police felt pointless.
Just annoying kids doing annoying kid stuff, like smashing pumpkins around Halloween or TP’ing trees.
I’d assure her that I got the cameras fixed in case it happened again.
I hated to lie.
But I’d been lying for quite a while about the whole Marco situation already. What was one more in the grand scheme of things? The last thing I wanted was for her to get involved in any way. She was in danger enough already.
“So, your next day off… you wanna try to scratch something off that list of yours again?” he asked. “Or do you need to keep things chill for a while?”
Was he actually still… interested?
