Page 38 of Surviving the Merge
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“Itake it you stuck to the plan of not addressing the past until we’re all in session?”
“How can you tell?” I asked as I perused the menu of the diner Blake and I stopped in to have breakfast on our way back to Oregon. I didn’t remember falling asleep last night, but I woke up this morning to Blake carrying me from the floor to the bed.
“I’m not missing any teeth for one. And this”—he touched the mark Damon left above my collarbone—“is an indicator of a good time.” The tic in his jaw said the opposite. Blake struggled to understand how Damon could love me but hurt me, no matter how much I lived for it.
“Does seeing that bother you?” I raised my eyebrows.
He roughly shook his folded cloth napkin out and spread it across his lap. “I’ll never get used to knowing it’s my hands that handle you so forcefully.” He looked at his open palms before balling them into fists. “Or my…” He stopped, his lips forming a hard line.
“What? Or your cock that fucks me mercilessly?” Never had I been so crass with Blake, but he needed to get over this. Or maybe I was pissed about being reminded ofthatnight before I’d had my morning coffee. Who knew anymore. I internally shrugged.
“So, that’s a no? You didn’t bring it up?” He chose to ignore my taunt. Blake wouldn’t provide me with the fight I wanted.
“I was close. Either I’m consumed with anger and all I want to do is maim him, or it’s put out of my mind completely, and I get lost in him?” I stopped short. It didn’t seem natural to talk to Blake about Damon in that way. It almost felt like cheating and rubbing his nose in it. Ridiculous, but true.
“You can speak freely to me about him, you know. It might have felt like you couldn’t in the past, but we can change that.”
I thought about it for a moment. “If I spoke too freely to him about you, you’d come back to find holes in the wall.” Our waitress appeared, taking our order before leaving us alone again.
“I’m not saying you have to, but you can. And without censoring yourself first or trying to gauge what you think my reaction would be.” He would try his best to handle hearing the parts he’d rather not. A true martyr.
“Yeah, okay,” I said to appease him. I had my childish moments of lashing out, looking for a fight, but overall, I didn’t relish hurting Blake or making him squirm. Which meant I wasn’t sold on the idea of speaking to him abouteverythingDamon and I shared. I’d much rather he simply have the memory of it.
“He knew about my plan to move.”
“Ah. Julie was onto something after all. Do I need to ask how he took the news?”
“He tried to dismantle the plan, but I told him I’d already signed the lease, and I wasn’t breaking it. In the end, he relented.”
Blake looked a bit disbelieving. “That easy?”
“No.” I gave him a telling look, and wordlessly, he decided that more details were unnecessary. The truth was Damon demanded the address, key copies, code to the security system, and his name on the lease. When I told him no, he proceeded to “convince me” to agree.
I won. It felt good.
“On another note, you’ve got a birthday coming up, and the season’s changing.”
“What does one have to do with the other?” I asked, laughing.
“Your birthday is Friday, and I was thinking since the weather will break soon, you might want to head down to the house and start your garden. We could have a weekend-long birthday slash garden party.”
The most unfun birthday idea ever. I sat forward, resting my forearms on the table of the corner booth we occupied. “For my twenty-eighth birthday, you think it will be fun to get dirty and sweaty, not by plantingyourseed in me, but by plantingrealseeds? And flowers? In the dirt?” I peered around looking for the hidden cameras and heard him chuckle. “Is this your way of both nudging me to go to the house and to try something new?”
“You’ve been known to procrastinate when afraid. I have to balance out Damon’s influence somehow. I’m sure he’s more than willing to allow you to stay in your hiding place. How about starting a new year of your life by doing something you’ve never done but want to try, in a place you ran away from but need to get back to? I ordered some of what you’ll need and had it delivered. Tools, flowers that are good for planting this time of year…” He trailed off as our food arrived.
After confirming we had everything we needed, our server left us to it, and Blake continued. “Most of the fun comes from the journey, not the destination, so you’ll need to research and make some decisions and purchases on your own. There’s a lot of ground to cover between the front and backyard.”
He stuffed a huge helping of pancakes into his mouth, and I studied him as he chewed.How do I tell this man how much he means to me?How much his support and unwavering belief in me meant? That I didn’t think I could do this... this life without him? He was the walking definition of unconditional, selfless love.
In the end I went with, “I love you.”
He stopped chewing to beam at me, and I beamed back.
* * *
We got backto the city, and after picking up my car, the rest of the afternoon into the early evening was spent snacking on the couch while watching shows on gardening, with intermittent napping in between. That night, Blake instructed me to put on my finest suit, without offering any further details. No matter how hard I tried topersuadehim otherwise.
