Page 24 of Searching for Thanksgiving

Roam scuffed his foot along the edge of the path and stared down at her with a frown.

“Why are you always mad at me?” he asked.

Spring blinked in surprise. “I’m not always mad at you,” she defended.

“It seems like it. You’re always yelling or scowling at me,” he said.

Spring lifted an eyebrow when he carefully stepped into the garden, taking care not to trample on any of her freshly planted flowers. She was surprised at how light on his feet he could be when he wanted to. She always thought of him as stomping his big feet everywhere and on everything. Her face flushed at the thought that he might be right. Maybe she was a little harsh with him.

But he is always doing things or saying things that make me feel…

She shook her head. She didn’t know what she felt. The only thing she knew was that whenever he was around, her dragon and her symbiot liked it way too much and didn’t seem to mind when he did stupid things.

“You make me mad sometimes…,” she reluctantly agreed.

His lips twitched, and she raised an eyebrow wondering what he found so funny about that. Frustration and annoyance flashed through her.

Not annoyance… fear.

The thought made her frown. What did she have to be afraid of? Roam would never hurt her. She started with surprise when soft fingers traced a line along her cheek. Her face flushed a rosy color when she realized that Roam had squatted down next to her until he was less than a foot away. He was brushing his fingers along her cheek. She couldn’t have looked away from his brilliant blue eyes if she tried.

“I like that you don’t care about getting dirty,” he said.

“Roam…”

“I’m sorry I dug up your garden and took your worms,” he said.

Her blush deepened, and she lowered her eyelids to conceal her confusion. She absently rubbed at a spot of dirt on her thigh. It wasn’t until then that she realized how dirty her nails were. She curled her fingers into a fist to hide them.

“I’m sorry I put the sticky worms in your bed,” she replied.

He dropped his hand and laughed. She looked up at him and saw he was grinning at her. Relief flooded her that he wasn’t mad about that.

“They were pretty nasty… but also cool. Jabir taught me how to handle them. I didn’t realize they were so cool. Jabir explained to me about how important the worms were to your garden. I didn’t know. I just thought that they were… well, I just thought they were worms. I didn’t know what they did. I do now,” he explained.

“Oh… good.”

She didn’t know what else to say. She idly glanced around the garden she was working on. There was still a lot that needed to be done. The feel of Roam’s warm hand wrapping around her clenched one made her look back at him again.

“I’d like to help you… if you don’t mind. I thought maybe you could teach me about gardening,” he said.

“You want…” she paused and stared around the bare, open area again before looking back at him with a confused expression. “You want to learn how to garden?”

He grinned and nodded. “Yeah. Jabir said there are lots of cool bugs and weird plants that if I knew about them, I wouldn’t be so quick to trample on everything. I figured you could show me what he was talking about.”

A shy, pleased smile curved her lips, and her dragon purred with delight.

“Have you ever seen a glowing spider lily before?” she asked, tilting her head.

Roam shook his head. “Nah. What’s that?”

Spring turned her hand under his until she was holding his hand. She lifted it to the bloom she had just planted. Lifting her other hand, she gently stroked the burnt orange stigma. Roam’s lips parted with awe as dozens of tiny, glowing spiders climbed out of the pistil.

“That is so cool!” he breathed.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” she promised.

“Will you show me?”

---