Every summer, the community garden hosts classes on starting your own vegetable garden, painting pots, and woodworking. I call it Mr. Haverford’s side hustle.
“Paint me a picture.” When Kristen raises her eyebrows, I explain, “So that I can understand.”
She squints at me, trying to gauge where I’m going with this, but decides to continue.
“Well, he was in my dad’s class. It was the end of July, when I still thought he was a douche. So, I was like, ‘What would a douche want with woodworking?’ I avoided him, even though he was nice to my dad and the old people in the class. He even started coming in early to help me move supplies.
“Toward the end of the week, it was hard to avoid him, since we were the only ones there under fifty.” She smiles to herself, making me wonder if some of my late nights with Hannah were mirroring her early mornings at the garden with Vincent.
“So, I finally came out and asked him,” she continues. “He told me that his granddad used to make furniture and he always tried to teach him, but Vincent was too stubborn to listen. Hisgranddad died back in April, and Vincent was really torn up about it. So, he decided to finally learn.”
I shake a branch, and Kristen hops back into photographer mode, snapping some shots with the pink petals falling around me like snow. I use the action as an opportunity to hide my face while I collect my thoughts.
“Not trying to sound like a jerk,” I warn, “but how does wanting to make furniture because of a dead relative cancel out all the rumors and torment?”
“It doesn’t,” she admits, surprising me. “It means he’s changed and gained some perspective.”
I guess I could say the same for myself.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?” she throws back. She holds the camera away from her face so that she’s looking at me with her eyes instead of through the viewfinder.
“I will make an effort.”
“You already promised to make an effort,” she says with a hand on her hip.
“Well, this is me reinforcing that promise.”
“All right, then.” She smiles, looking more confident than I’ve seen her since she told me the truth about their relationship. Yet her gaze remains on me, and it shifts slightly to that strange look she had at lunch yesterday.
“What?”
“I know you’re totally against me playing matchmaker, but… Clarity, I want you to know what it’s like—to fall in love. Well,maybe not fallin love, but to have someone in your corner—”
“You’re in my corner,” I remind her,notwanting to go down the road of Kristen pairing me up with someone.
“Yes, but I mean romantically. It’s special. You’ve never had a boyfriend, and I know that’s not a bad thing, and sometimes people don’t start dating until their twenties or whatever. But, if we could do this together, that would just be so awesome. Like, you saw me fall into whateverthatwas with Tyler.” She laughs. “And, now, with Vincent, it’s different. Maybe it’s selfish, but a part of me—as your best friend—wants toseeyou find that feeling…”
I know that feeling.When you adore someone so much it’s borderline obsessive, where just seeing their face or hearing their name in a conversation they aren’t even a part of turns a light on in your chest. Having someone in my corner romantically… That’s exactly how Hannah was when the Incident happened. She didn’t stand by, she stood with me, tried to shield me and take as much of the blow as possible.
She loved me through it.
Love. I know what love is.
And I chose to throw it away.
“All I’m saying,” she adds, “is just keep an open mind. Like, if it happens naturally, if you do meet someone and it turns into something more than a date to the festival, let it turn into that.”
“Okay…”
“You promise?” she asks, holding out her pinky, curved like a hook.
I step down from the roots of the tree and hook my pinky through hers. “I promise.”
Promising to keep an open mind isn’t the same as promising to let it turn into anything, and even though it is an honest promise, it ripples in my stomach like a queasy lie.
Chapter Ten