Page 91 of Shroom for Improvement

“I really miss my pee-bale. It was so handy when I was working in the walled gardens. Now I have to walk inside, and Jenny likes to hide the toilets. Or put them in ridiculous places. I don’t know how many times I need to tell the house a urinalon the top of a pommel horse is about as far from practical as it gets.”

Claude snorted.

“Jenny even placed a rank of judges at the sideline, and when I finished, they held up signs with grades on them. I got a seven-point-five average.”

Claude smirked at me. “Sounds like a record-scoring piss.”

A soft, distant thump echoed through the field. Both Claude and I popped up onto our elbows and craned our necks like meerkats in the desert.

“My pee-bale!” I was almost giddy with excitement. A pee-bale waited for me where the old one used to frequent. “Is that the one from before? Or a new one?”

Claude paused, tilted his head to the side like a puppy as he waited for Jenny to confirm. “It’s the one from your Remy apartment. Jenny said it stinks something rotten, so it’s probably ready to... do whatever you need it to do. It said it’ll get you another fresh one.” He paused again. “No, I’m not telling him that.”

I decided I didn’t want to know, and didn’t ask. “Thank you, Jenny.”

“Jenny says you’re welcome, weirdo.”

It was my turn to snort. “Do you feel anything yet?”

“No, do you?”

“Not yet. Now you tell me a secret.”

Claude thought for a moment. “My favourite vegetable is sprouts.”

“That’s not a secret,” I said. “We had this conversation about four weeks ago. I ate so many sprouts that for about a week, I couldn’t take a single step without a little extra jet propulsion squeaking out.”

“Gods,” Claude said, but he was still laughing. “Okay, but before sprouts seven ways my favourite vegetables were radishes.”

That admission made my tummy do weird flippy things. He’d changed his favourite vegetable because of a shared moment with me. I tried not to read too much into it. It didn’t mean anything. It was a funny experience, and I expected lots of people changed their favourite things because of random, flippant reasons like that.

“It’s not really a proper secret though, is it? Not something embarrassing or rude,” I said.

“Fine.” He puffed out a breath, thinking. It was a full minute before he answered. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go back to Remy. Once this is all fixed, I’m gonna... stay here at Stinkhorn Manor.”

I leaned up on my elbows again. “Oh?”

Claude was a fully grown adult. He could make these kinds of decisions. Not as though he was doing it to purposefully tear my heart open. But I wouldn’t get to see him every day in the mornings and again in the afternoon on my way to and from the uni. We wouldn’t get to date. Damn. I was really looking forward to that.

“I just... feel like I’m needed here. Nobody will miss me in Remy.”

I will,I thought. I didn’t say it aloud, though. If his heart belonged here, I shouldn’t try to convince him to come back to Remy.

“Here, people... sort of need me. Jenny would miss me. Also, seems unfair to leave Oggy and Willow alone with the residents.”

They have each other, they won’t be alone.

“And it would save a lot of travel to and from Borderlands.”

Twice a year.

Everything he said was the truth.

“I understand.” And I did. I just didn’t like it.

Because I wanted more. From life, from my research, from him—from us. I wanted there to be an us, which wouldn’t happen if I was in Remy and he was in Agaricus. Long distance never worked. Besides, we didn’t even have anything yet. Our romance was a vegetable allotment and all we’d done was plant the seeds. Seeds stood very little chance of growing by themselves without any help.

If we were a thousand miles apart, how could we possibly water those seeds?

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