Page 50 of Red Flag, Green Light

So long as I play my cards right.

And speaking of cards…

Ceres startles when a card lands in the seam of her front door, right beside the lock she was reaching for. Stiff, she twiststoward me.

“Come on, little goddess,” I say, flicking a new card between my fingers. “We have plans.”

“Is this a threat?” she asks.

Chuckling, I stride toward her, lean past her, and pluck my card free. “No, no, of course not. Consider it a friendly suggestion.”

“Friendly, huh?”

I meet her eyes. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Business partners. And neighbors, actually,” she corrects.

“And—” I tap her nose with my card. “—friends.”

“Closer to enemies.”

I shrug, take her hand, and drag her back to my car. “Makes no difference to me.”

Both tropes end the exact same way.

“You could have told me this is what you planned,” Ceres mumbles through my phone speaker while I navigate the Walmart aisles according to her instruction.

“Had I told you that I was planning to let you stay in the car, you would have logically stated that you could have stayed home.”

“Yes, well. Because I could have.”

I get some bread to replace the toast we had this morning and plop it in my basket. “The car ride would have been so lonely without the tension of your disapproval and the strain of your burgeoning panic filling the cracks.”

Silent moments pass, and I wince. Maybe that was too far. Maybe I should shut up. Maybe I shouldn’t ever say anything ever again. Maybe— “People exhaust me,” she says.

I swallow my worries. “Yes, that’s a natural side effect ofbeing around the lousy buggers, I think.”

A tinge of laughter taints her voice. “Lousy buggers.”

My soul soars into the stratosphere. That’s the second time she’s laughed because of me. I don’t care that it was tiny and barely an intonation of joy. It was joy thatIcaused. I am a positive influence in her life, not just a natural disaster.

“It’s just so much to keep track of in person. So many things are happening. Anything could go wrong.” Breath leaves her. “I prefer environments that I control. End call buttons. Power buttons. Locks on doors without spare keys. That sort of thing.”

She prefers a box. No risks. No pain.

I can’t say I don’t understand on some level.

There’s less loss involved when you never take a chance, less grief to handle when you have nothing to mourn. No threat of rejection when no one is around to reject you.

However, that said, we seem to have opposite issues where rejection is concerned. I’ve faced it my entire life. People scorned me when I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong. I learned to use my reputation to my favor. I learned to carve a place for myself, however lonely it might be.

Ceres has a gift for reading people and saying the right things. She’s beautiful. Calm. Soothing. She unwittingly invites people in, and they dissolve into the peace that emanates from her without ever realizing how overwhelming it is to have someone thrust themselves upon your grace.

She’s left holding fragments of the souls she encounters.

I’m left wishing someone could give me a scrap of that same trust, kindness, or emotional depth.

I face rejection outright, and I don’t know how to fix it.

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