Poinsettia Lane

Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE DELIVERY GUYS—or rather, individuals, as there was also a well-muscled woman who lugged a boulder with surprising ease—have come and gone. The decorative rocks have been unloaded and spread evenly across both terraces, and Everly proudly snapped a picture of the finished project to send to Asim as soon as it was done, eager to share her joy with him.

That was two days ago.

She glances down at her phone for the hundredth time to see if Asim has replied yet. She’s barely heard from him since they texted about the delivery, only a couple short replies here and there, and it’s been radio silence for the last two days since she sent that picture. She assumes he’s busy, but he hasn’t even replied to the silly photo of the accent rock that reminds her of Moose, if you squint and tilt your head just right. She thought for sure that would get a reaction out of him.

Tapping the back of her phone with her index finger, she texts him again to check in, anxiety hounding her while she does her best not to give in to it. Bouncing her legs in anticipation, she looks through the steam over her mug of tea at Frankie working behind the counter of Roasted as she takes a sip.

Frankie senses her gaze and they quirk an eyebrow in her direction. Everly sends them a strained smile, lowering her mug to the worn wooden table in front of her, then looks back down at her phone. She tries to tell herself he’s just busy, rationalizing the thought as best she can. The spring must be a busy time of year for plant related things, and he probably isn’t ignoring her on purpose.

She pushes the worries out of her head as much as she can. Tonight she’s having Frankie over for dinner and drinks, to show off her hard work. Whether her relationship with Asim ultimately works out or not, she is happy with the changes she has made in her life so far. These are the thoughts she’s trying to hold on to and keep at the forefront when, for some reason, it feels like she’s on the edge of something, like her life could change at any moment and she isn’t sure if it would be for better or worse.

When closing time hits, she hops up from her seat, then pushes it under the table and snags a rag from behind the counter. She wipes down the tables and counters while Frankie closes out the register, having already dismissed their other worker for the day. Thankfully it’s Sunday, so it’s still light out when they lock up and head out.

As they stroll down the street, they pass by José, who tips his hat at her in greeting, and Everly blinks before smiling and nodding back at him, surprised he remembers her. To her consternation, Chantel, the owner of the cute little locally made shop who she also met while dropping off poinsettias, acknowledges Everly too. She’s also closing up for the day and is just locking the door when they pass by and she smiles at the two of them, greeting them both by name.

Frankie gives Everly a strange, sideways look in response to these interactions, which Everly promptly ignores, because she has no idea what she would even say. Being recognized with friendly greetings around town isn’t something she has much experience with. The two of them walk back to Everly’s place, trading stories about their busy weeks and joking about a spicey romance book they both recently read.

When Everly dramatically flings open the back doors to the patio, leading Frankie out and throwing her arms wide with a theatrical “ta-dahhh”, Frankie claps good-naturedly.

“Honestly, I can’t believe you did any part of this," Frankie says, laughing as they walk down the steps next to the terracing and leaning over to smell the flowers. Their eyes are wide as they consider the new landscaping, and they truly look both surprised and impressed.

“I can’t believe you doubted me," Everly says. When Frankie quirks an eyebrow and tips their head at her, she relents. “Okay same, I kind of can’t believe I did this either, but it looks great, right?!”

“It really does. Looks amazing.”

Everly lifts and drops her shoulders in a satisfied bounce, a small smile on her face.

“Want to order or cook?” she asks. Everly and Frankie have an unspoken agreement not to wait on each other. Either they cook together, helping out no matter whose place they’re at, or they order in, and they always clean up together.

“Hmmm.” Frankie meanders back up the stairs and plops into a patio chair. “I’m feeling pizza. Can we do pizza? Order or make, doesn’t matter to me.”

“Pizza sounds divine. Let me check what I have in the pantry, we may need to order.”

Frankie nods their agreement, calling that they’ll be in shortly as Everly tromps inside, poking through her cabinets and determining that no, she does not have even half the ingredients they’d need for homemade pizza, so she places an order to their local pizza joint.

“It’ll be here in forty five,” she calls out the door to Frankie.

“Perfect, how about a drink?” Frankie hops up and joins her inside, making their way to the kitchen and helping themself to her alcohol stash before the two settle out back on the patio again, bringing the whole bottle with them.

“So, I met this girl…” Frankie begins.

“Hold, please," Everly says. “I have a feeling I’m gonna need a refill for this story.”

“That’s for sure.” Frankie drains their glass and holds it up for a refill too, before proceeding to tell Everly in excruciating detail about their latest love interest, who they went out with a few times, until it came to light that she was just “experimenting”. Everly cringes, hiding behind her half-full glass while Frankie continues, telling her how in the middle of the last date, she decided the bisexual lifestyle wasn’t for her after all. The dramatic exit sounds movie-worthy and Everly’s heart aches for her friend.

Hours later, the pitcher plus two bottles of wine sit empty on the table, and neither one of them is able to stand up straight.

~~~

Everly wakes with a pounding headache and pats around her body in search of her phone. Finding it under her pillow, she squints her eyes in an effort to minimize the light beaming into her tortured retinas and taps it, then flips it over and looks at the back for some reason, not comprehending why the screen is remaining black.

Throwing it back down, she flings her arm over her eyes and groans.

“Aspirin," she croaks, and then nearly startles right off the side of the bed when she hears an answering groan from the floor next to her.

“Frankie?” she says. “You didn’t go home?”

“Apparently not," Frankie mumbles, sounding like their face is buried in a pillow.

“Why are you down there?” Everly’s brain isn’t quite working yet, and she can’t figure out why Frankie wouldn’t have shared the bed with her like they’ve done on countless other sleepovers.

“How should I know.”

Everly closes her eyes again, mind blank. Obviously, neither of them is vibing well with the concept of functioning right now.

“About that aspirin?” Frankie’s voice is still muffled, and very cranky.

Everly doesn’t blame them if they’re feeling even half as bad as she is right now. She’s absolutely never drinking again.

Everly heaves herself out of bed, stumbling to the bathroom with her eyes closed and hands outstretched in front of her, then fumbling in the medicine cabinet until she finds the right bottle. She shakes a few pills into her hand and dips her mouth under the faucet to suck up some water like a classless heathen, then brings the other two to Frankie, shooting them a glare when they tell her to shhh.

She wasn’t even being loud.

Clearly, the alcohol was too much for both of them last night. Everly doesn’t have the foggiest idea how they ended up in her bedroom, but it’s better than waking up on the patio or couch. Hopefully Frankie isn’t too stiff from the floor.

“Do you want me to call you a ride?” Everly whispers, picking her phone up again. She taps the screen, then remembers it’s not turning on and flings it back down. “Dead. Never mind, you’re your own.”

Everly turns back to the bathroom and strips out of her pajamas. By the time she steps out of the steamy shower and brushes the cottony gunk from her mouth, the aspirin has kicked in and she’s feeling marginally better. She pulls on her robe after hesitating for a split second when reaching for it, trying her best not to think about Asim wearing it, and wanders downstairs for some tea. She hears the guest shower running, and Frankie walks out in a pair of her sweats a few minutes later.

“Coffee," they mutter, then flop onto a barstool at the counter and lay their head on their forearms.

Everly starts the coffee machine, having already prepared it in anticipation of the request. Frankie is the only reason she even has one; they can’t function without their morning fix. Now would be a very bad time to not give Frankie their coffee.

When they’ve both recovered a bit and nibbled on some food, a slice of plain wheat bread for Everly, not even toasted, and cold, leftover pizza for Frankie, her friend breaks the silence.

“I know why I got hammered last night. Pretty sure I ranted to you about it for at least an hour. But why the hell did you drink so much?”

Everly knew it was coming. She still doesn’t want to acknowledge it, though. Steam from her mug curls in front of her face as she takes a fortifying breath.

“I haven’t heard from Asim.”

“What does that even mean," Frankie says it as a statement rather than a question, their voice muffled by the hoodie sleeve from laying their head back down on their arms.

“I mean, he stopped texting me. He was short with me for a couple days, and then once the landscaping was done, he just ghosted me. I haven’t heard anything since.”

“Wait, for real?” Frankie picks their head up and looks at her directly for the first time all morning.

“Yeah. For real.” Everly flattens her lips, eyes on her finger tracing the fine lines in the marble countertop in front of her. They look like cracks. It looks how her heart feels. “I don’t know what happened. Things were good. Great, I thought.”

“Nothing happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“But… you two totally hit it off. I could tell. You didn’t talk to me for days. That has never happened, and then when I did see you… You were happy. Like. Happy, happy.” Frankie’s brows are furrowed.

Everly doesn’t reply. She doesn’t have anything to say. She was happy. She was really happy, and she fell for him. Hard.

“Is this real.” Again, Frankie says it as a statement rather than a question, almost accusatory.

“Yes,” Everly sighs, “unfortunately, this is very real.”

Frankie looks away and squints their eyes, staring into the distance. They sit in silence for an eternity, and Everly can no longer hold back the swirling thoughts.

She wonders if she did something to turn him off. She thinks back to all the time they spent together, inspecting every moment for a mistake, a misstep, something she said or did, or didn’t say or do that she should have. She even has the thought that it was because they didn’t sleep together, but she dismisses that one. That was entirely on him, not her. He was the one putting the brakes on when Everly was ready to strip him naked in the desert. That’s when the most mortifying thought so far crosses her mind. Maybe he didn’t want to sleep with her, or maybe he felt pressured. Now she’s wondering if she made him uncomfortable or if he thought she expected or wanted certain things he wasn’t willing or able to give. As the chaos starts to spin out of control, Frankie interrupts her inner turmoil.

“Nah. I don’t believe it," Frankie says. It takes Everly a moment to catch up. She thinks for a second she had said her thoughts out loud, but then realizes Frankie is referring back to their earlier conversation. “Something must have happened.”

“Nothing happened. I’ve been spinning every moment over and over in my head, and I can’t find anything. Nothing happened, Frankie.”

“Not between you two,” her friend says, exasperated Everly isn’t somehow on the same wavelength as them. “I bet something happened on his end. Maybe a family thing, isn’t he close with his family? Or something, there has to be something .” Their words taper off, and Everly cocks her head.

She hadn’t thought of that possibility. She can’t think of anything she did wrong, so maybe she didn’t do anything wrong. Enormous relief fills her lungs for the first time in days.

Maybe it’s not her fault.

Then everything comes crashing down again, because if it’s not something with her, or them, then it’s something else. What could keep him from contacting her? It must be serious, and Everly’s mind starts spiraling in a whole new direction. She jumps up from her seat and spears her fingers into her hair, still damp from the shower.

“Oh my god. Do you think he’s okay? What if he’s hurt? He could be in the hospital!” Everly’s voice rises frantically, her pitch increasing and Frankie claps their hands over their ears.

“Ugh, Everly. Stop. My head.” Frankie ignores her crisis and grabs their coffee, then stumbles to the couch in the adjoining room and curls up with a blanket.

Everly follows and rips it off, causing Frankie to growl and curl into a tighter ball.

“I’m serious, Frankie. You said it. Something happened. What if he’s…” Everly can’t say the words. She hasn’t heard from him in days. What if he can’t answer, or even worse, what if he’s not answering because he’s not around to do so anymore. Everly can’t even think the words she’s afraid of .

She flashes back to when she received the news her parents had been in an accident. It was the worst phone call of her life, and she still has nightmares about the voice, the words. Sometimes it’s just a phone ringing and ringing and ringing and she knows what will be on the other end of it. She can almost hear it again now, and she stumbles, her back hitting the wall. She slides down it and her legs tangle in the stolen blanket puddled around her feet.

Everly doesn’t know how long she sits there, eyes blank, staring into the void of her parents’ funeral and the loneliness that took over in the days, weeks, months following. She isn’t aware of anything, not her breathing, or her empty thoughts, or Frankie crouched in front of her gripping her hand.

It’s just darkness, and ringing, and emptiness.

Gradually, she becomes aware of a hand stroking her arm. Everly blinks, takes a gasping breath.

“Hey, I’m here, you’re okay," Frankie says, their hand tightening around hers. “Just breathe.”

Everly breathes, sucking air into lungs that feel starved and panting it back out again. Her mind feels like it went from empty to overdrive, and she can’t pick one single thought apart from the others.

“You told me once it helps to focus on one thing," Frankie says, their voice quiet and slow, eyes steady on hers. “How about you focus just on my voice for a sec, okay?”

Everly nods. Frankie’s voice, she can do that.

“I’ll just talk to you for a minute. You can focus on my voice, my words, and just listen. You don’t have to do anything else.” They speak slow and calm, and Everly’s eyes start to refocus. “You’re okay, we’re here in your living room, with a blanket, sitting on the floor. You have a surprisingly plush rug, I’ve learned. We should sit down here more often.”

Everly’s lips twitch at the wry note in Frankie’s voice.

“I know that was scary, but we don’t know anything for sure. Don’t get stuck in what if’s. What would Carrie tell you right now?” Frankie asks.

“She’d say…” Everly thinks for a moment about Carrie, and her thoughts start to slow and coalesce. “She’d tell me to use my senses.”

“Your senses, okay," Frankie looks around. “Like, what you see?”

Everly nods. “I see you. The blanket.” She reaches her free hand out and strokes the blanket, noticing how soft it is under her fingers. “It has a textured pattern on it. I see the hard floor, and the rug.” She blinks up at Frankie.

“It’s a nice rug.”

Everly exhales sharply through her nose, almost a laugh.

“What else?” Frankie says.

Instead of answering, Everly leans forward and pulls them into a hug.

“Thank you," she mutters, cherishing Frankie’s arms around her and their hand rubbing comforting circles on her back.