Homewrecker

60 - 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓮𝔃𝓮

I felt the early afternoon sun beaming down against the back of my neck, the scent of recently applied sunscreen still clinging to my skin and coming in with each of my breaths, as I wandered down the steps of the back patio and headed for the vegetable garden at the edge of the property, the edging now completed and thirty pound bags of black mulch were waiting beside it.

I had already brought the butter crunch lettuce plants over to it, and in my gloved hands were packets of carrot and radish seeds of multiple varieties. My hair was pulled back into a braid, which made me feel like I was conforming to the Shelridge teenage girl prototype, and my mirrored sunglasses tinted the garden as I approached it, tearing open a packet of rainbow carrot seeds.

It was the day after the Fourth of July, and I decided to plant the vegetable seeds the Solidays bought from Katia's nursery the other day while I waited for Ethan to get back from helping one of his dad's friends move, almost certainly another connection he wanted maintained from afar, so we could leave for Shiloh.

I had spent most of the morning, trying to decide if I should text Jude first or just knock on his front door and hope he was there. But if I texted him, he could've told me not to come and made sure he wasn't home when I got there if I didn't listen. Eventually, after deciding that I wasn't going to text him, I dropped my phone on my top bunk and gathered my gardening equipment, passing Andi's filming room as her muffled voice slipped out through the crack in the door.

We didn't really speak to each other after the fireworks started, instead we watched them from our separate corners of our half of the beach, eating our respective ice creams and whispering to those around us who weren't us, but when it was time to leave, she didn't go back with Cass and the others. She listened when Taylor-Elise said it made more sense for us to all go in Ethan's car and quietly got into the backseat, but when I caught a glimpse of her reflection in the rearview mirror, she didn't exactly look angry or exasperated. It was more like weary and guarded.

I stuck my gloved pinkie into the dirt and dropped one of the red seeds inside, then covered it. Behind me, I heard the patio doors opening and then flip-flops frantically smacking against the ground. A moment later, Danny was barreling down the wooden boards of the dock, creaking and groaning under his sprint, before cannonballing into the lake.

"Danny," David called out. "Take your sandals off. We're not buying you another pair if you lose them in the lake again."

I buried another seed as Danny grabbed his drenched flip-flops and tossed them onto the grass.

"How's your gardening coming?" David asked me as he approached, squinting against the sunlight even though sunglasses were folded against the collar of his shirt.

I nodded. "It's good. Big. Hope you like carrots."

"Well, I wanted it to be big enough for next summer when you had more time to grow more vegetables. But yes, I do like carrots." He looked over to where Danny was running back up to the shore, wobbling barefoot on the pebbles where the water lapped against the ground, and ran back onto the dock. "Think you could use a hand?"

I hesitated. Even though I felt like Ethan had made a couple of valid points about the Solidays being responsible for my mom's murder, and I was slowly becoming convinced that Jude wasn't just her boyfriend but also her dealer and that he had been there that morning, there was still a part of me that felt reserved around him. Like there was something about him I couldn't trust, and I didn't know if it had to do with my mom or him, how I had grown up without him. And now, after seventeen years, I didn't know what to do with him.

Especially now that I knew that wasn't what he wanted.

I didn't look at him as I held out one of the packets of white icicle radish seeds to him, or when he took it from me. I kept poking my pinkie through the earth and depositing carrot seeds as he read the back then wandered over to the other side of the garden. He set them down and went over to the shed, grabbing a pair of gardening dirtied garden gloves from inside.