Overdue - 17

I called Mika in a fevered state the next morning. “What if we did it? What if we opened a bookstore together?”

She could tell that the question was serious, so she gave me a serious answer. “I’m sorry. I wish I could say yes, but we already co-own the dojang with Bex’s business partner. Owning a business is stressful. We barely made it through the pandemic. I don’t want to take on another.”

I was crushed. In that early morning headspace, still so close to dreaming, I was positive that she’d be excited. That I could convince her to do this with me. But I couldn’t argue with her reason. “I guess I got carried away. It was a silly idea, anyway.”

“It wasn’t silly,” she said. “Thank you for asking me.”

I wanted to return to bed and savor my dejection, but it was a Monday. Mondays were when my coworkers and I scheduled things like haircuts and dermatologist appointments, and that Monday, I had a particularly unpleasant errand to run that couldn’t wait. My car was overheating again. I drove to my mechanic to get a patch on the leaking radiator, and he chastised me instead. What I needed, Harvey said, was a new radiator and new hoses. But a patch was a hundred bucks, and replacing the whole thing would be closer to a thousand. I demanded the patch, and we both felt surly about it. “It’ll be a few hours,” Harvey said with unveiled contempt.

I was prepared for this, so I grabbed the bag of food scraps for composting that I’d brought from home and trudged the half mile to Macon’s house. Because spring had arrived in February, the town already glistened with an aura of early summer. Sure, April was still occasionally showering, but the May flowers were in bloom, hanging baskets of ferns were swinging on porches, and wind chimes were tinkling in the breeze.

I found Macon in his garden, harvesting tender crowns of broccoli. He startled to see me at his gate. I’d never shown up at his house uninvited before.

“Drop-off for the shit pile,” I said, borrowing Cory’s old phrase because it matched my mood.

But Macon didn’t seem to mind my sudden appearance. I thought I might make him nervous, but since he was in his element, he took everything in stride. I explained about my car, and he gestured in the direction of his compost pile and wheelbarrowed over some weeds to add. He was wearing a dirty black T-shirt and crummy work pants, and he smelled like sweat, soil, and sun. The scent was warm and comforting. I felt the urge to lean toward him like a seedling reaching for sunlight, but managed to resist.

Wooden boards surrounded the compost on three sides to keep it neat, and the pile spilled onto the ground in front of the open side. In addition to the expected food scraps, yard waste, and shredded brown paper, I was intrigued to see toilet paper rolls and cotton balls and other household surprises. “Is that dental floss?” I asked as I dumped out my bag.

“Yep.”

“Could I bring you my dental floss?”

“Probably not. I buy a special kind.” He picked up a pitchfork that was resting against one of the walls and leaned his weight against it, taking pleasure in what he was about to say next. “But you could bring me your nail clippings and hair.”

“What?”

He laughed. “They’re organic.”

“Oh my God.” It made me laugh, too. “I will. Just you wait.”

“Hey, since you’re here and you have some time, would you mind giving me some advice?”

“Really?” My curiosity was piqued. I was the one who usually sought advice from him.

“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other week—about my house needing help—and was hoping you might be able to provide some guidance.”

He set down his pitchfork, and I stuffed the bag into my pocket and followed him inside through the back door. The kitchen still looked tired and empty, but buttery sunlight warmed the room, and a round loaf of freshly baked bread was resting on the counter. I was tempted to poke it to see if it was warm, too. “I’d like to fix it up,” he said, removing his work gloves to wash his hands, “but I don’t know where to begin.”

I wandered toward the front of the house. All of the wood—floors, baseboards, crown molding, door casings—was scratched and dinged up. But it was also original and unpainted. Mostly it just looked thirsty. The living room was a good size and had lots of windows. Two had been shuttered with cheap mini blinds, and the whole row of them spanning the longest wall were unadorned, but all of them looked out upon the garden.

My throat thickened with envy. “You’re so lucky.”

He trailed into the room behind me. “Why?”

“Because of this house. I would love to have a house. My entire generation would love to have a house.”

Thankfully, he wasn’t the type to deny or downplay it. “I am lucky,” he said, although he also sounded weary. Perhaps it was the same weariness that shrouded these rooms.

I put my hands on my hips as I looked around the void that was his living room. “God, Macon. It’s so bare . I still don’t get it.”

“I have a couch.” He pointed in one direction. “I have a coffee table.” Pointed in another.

“Have you been waiting all this time for—” I stopped. My question was rude.

“Waiting all this time for what?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You can’t do that.”

He was right, so I spoke more carefully. “Do you think you’ve been waiting for her to come back?”

My directness seemed to startle him, and I sensed that he had been expecting a different question. I became afraid of his answer. I tried to wave it off— never mind, too far —but he interrupted the gesture.

He spoke carefully, too, and firmly. “No.”

Relief shamed me anew, that some part of me still wanted him for myself. I knew better than to want him. Mostly I thought I didn’t anymore. But there it was, proof that the desire still existed.

He was watching me closely. Thankfully, his cat chose that moment to slink into the room. “Edmond!” I said, and the slink became a trot. I dropped to the floor, and he greeted me with a head bop. I rubbed his cheeks. He purred and pressed his chin into my hands.

“Edmond likes you,” Macon said.

“Is that unusual?”

He considered it. “I don’t actually know. I know that he likes me, and he didn’t care for his previous owner or the vet. But of course he likes you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone likes you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”

“It was meant as a compliment.”

I stood back up and brushed my hands together to remove the fur. “Well, you don’t often like things that other people like.”

“You aren’t a thing .” He sounded offended on my behalf.

It made me laugh. “Sorry, I was teasing you. I’m well aware that you like me. You never would have invited me inside your house otherwise.” I said it lightly and with enough offhanded flirtatiousness to convey that I was still talking about our friendship. But the truth was that I was feeling muddled. “Speaking of!” I said too enthusiastically. “Your house.”

“My house,” he said, blinking. He seemed muddled, too.

I couldn’t look at him directly anymore. “So the basic idea, I think—and granted, you’re getting your advice from a woman with a shitty apartment—isn’t to fill the space with whatever. It’s to add more of the things you already love.”

“I’m a forty-year-old man who owns nothing.”

“Thirty-nine.”

“So what’s more of nothing?”

“Oh my God, Macon.” I turned back toward him in exasperation, but there was a twinkle in his eye. He’d purposefully tried to provoke that reaction. It made me laugh again.

“Tell me what I love,” he said.

My heart painfully skipped a beat. But my smile only faltered for a second. “Well, reading, obviously. Cooking. Gardening.”

“So I need to buy more books, food, and plants.”

“No—”

“And my couch is fine. That’s good.”

“Your couch is not fine.”

“And I don’t need a china cabinet, or china to put inside the cabinet—”

“Nobody needs china anymore, unless they love it.”

“Oh, I love it.”

He was trying to bait me again, so I ignored him. “You love to read, so I’d create a beautiful space for your books. You love to cook, so I’d create beautiful spaces to prepare your meals and eat them. You love to garden, so I’d fill the inside of your house with plants, too. That’s where I’d start.”

“What about the rest of it?”

“Eh. The rest comes later.”

He picked up Edmond and held him against his chest and shoulder. “Okay. Pretend I would like nice places to read and cook and eat. Pretend .”

“I’m pretending.”

“How does one design those spaces?”

“Well, how did you learn how to garden?”

“My aunt taught me.”

“Damn. I thought you were going to say books . It was such a perfect setup.”

At this, Macon finally broke and laughed.

“Hey, how is Bonnie?” I was careful to keep my voice light. She was still in rehab, and he didn’t receive many updates. But I always asked anyway, whenever I saw an opportunity.

“Maybe better? Probably the same.” He shrugged—an uncomfortable shrug that was doing a lot of work—before steering me back on topic. “So, what would you do if it were your house?”

“I’m not designing this for me. It needs to be for you.”

He brushed this off. “I’m asking what you would do if it were your house.”

“Oh.” My gaze softened. Then it wandered, absorbing everything again until it landed on the kitchen. The walls and cabinets were painted the same dull shade of decades-old, beaten-up white, but the natural light still warmed the faded gloss of the cabinets, almost making the little doors glow. “I’d start in the kitchen. I’d paint the walls a buttery yellow to match the sunshine. And I’d scrub the cabinets and give them a fresh coat of paint, too. Curtains on the window above the sink. A pretty utensil crock to keep all my wooden spoons handy.”

“That sounds cheerful,” he said.

“Too cheerful for you.”

“This is your house, remember?”

I smiled. “I’d put a big round table in the dining room. Enough chairs for me to sit somewhere new every night of the week. Though of course I’d always sit in the same spot.”

“Of course.”

“Colorful woven placemats. Mismatched cloth napkins.”

“Why mismatched?”

“So when I inevitably lose one, it’s not a big deal. I don’t have to replace them all.”

“Ah. Practical.”

“Sometimes I’m practical.”

“Go on,” he said.

“I’d lose the mini blinds and put curtains on all these windows, too. Lots of comfortable seating and pillows. Reading lamps and rugs. And I’d display my bookcases in here, right in the front room, because—I don’t know if you know this about me—I like to read, too.”

“I’ve heard something about that.”

But I was already past the joke and back inside the dream. “No! I’d turn that whole wall into shelving. I’d just … completely surround myself with books. And I’d paint the door a friendly color. I’m not sure what yet.”

“It sounds perfect.”

I made a face.

“I’m serious. That all sounds great. Well, maybe not the friendly door. I wouldn’t want anybody to get the wrong idea.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“I’m being honest.” He laughed. “It sounds like an incredibly cozy house that I would like to live in.”

The mood shifted, subtly but swiftly. Because Macon did possess the ability to make my dream a reality—for himself—while I was still stuck in a beige one-bedroom.

“At least put up some art,” I said, hastening toward the exit. “Bare walls are sad.”

His expression faded. “Noted.”

I gave him a tight smile as I marched back outside. “See you tomorrow.”

But he picked up his gloves and followed me toward the garden gate. Suddenly he swore, and I glanced back over my shoulder. He was holding the broccoli that he’d been harvesting when I’d arrived. It had wilted in the sun.

That night, while I was mourning the loss of a hundred dollars to the mechanic—and eating instant ramen in an effort to rebalance the financial scales—I received a text from Mika.

I’ve been thinking about your store all day , she said. You should do it anyway.