Overdue - 9

That night as I was trying to fall asleep, it occurred to me that something else had been missing: I hadn’t seen a single houseplant. Had they been there before? I wasn’t positive, but they were present in my memory. And Macon took such tender care of the library’s plants and devoted so many hours to his garden. It was impossible for me to imagine him not surrounded by greenery. Had Dani taken them when she’d moved out, or had he gotten rid of them when Edmond had moved in? Many common houseplants were toxic to cats and dogs.

I turned over in bed, thinking about the garden. I’d been saving food scraps for Macon’s compost pile for years—I’d literally been helping fertilize his garden—yet I’d never seen it. I’d always bagged the scraps and brought them to the library for him to take home. Ridgetop didn’t have curbside composting, so residents had to either drive their scraps to a commercial facility or create piles in their own backyards. For most people, both of these options required too much effort. Macon was not most people. He was doing me a favor by taking my scraps, but I was also doing one for him. His garden was notoriously huge, every inch cultivated around his entire house, so he needed the compost. But how was it possible that I had never seen it myself?

It had been too dark earlier, but it had also been dark on my previous visit. And while it was true that we were only work friends, I spent more waking hours with him than with anybody else. The garden mattered to Macon, and he mattered to me. I should have asked him to show it to me. Maybe if I’d attempted to hang out with him away from work, our friendship would have been more solid, and then I wouldn’t have tried to kiss him. Everything came back to that failed kiss. My heart had a physical ache, a scooped-out hollowness, in the shape of Macon. I should be trying harder to be his friend again. I shouldn’t be provoking him into fights. Especially because if I did go to library school—if I didn’t quit my job—he would remain in my life, at least until I got another position elsewhere. And that would take a few years. My only option was to try to make it work with him. The decision was practical, but I also missed my friend so badly.

All night long, I lay awake thinking about Macon.

I did not think about Cory or Gareth.