Page 5 of Petals and Plot Twists
I give the table a nudge to get Peter’s attention—a totally juvenile move but one I know will work without annoying him because we’ve both been doing it since high school.
Peter breathes out a patient sigh and lifts his gaze to mine, peering at me over the top of his computer.
I grin. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he repeats…definitelynotreturning my grin, though I see humor behind his brown eyes.
“What’s up? It’s after six o’clock on a Saturday. Are you working?”
He closes his laptop. “Just answering a few emails.”
“How did things go at your parents’ house?”
Sadness flickers behind his eyes, but he quickly masks it. He hasn’t said much about his parents’ planned move but knowing Peter and how close he is to his family, it has to be hitting him pretty hard.
“I brought home most of my LEGO sets,” he finally says.
I let out a little gasp, sitting up a little taller in my seat. “All of them?”
“As much as I could fit in my car without taking them apart.”
I look around his kitchen. “You brought them here? Where are they?”
Peter slips his fingers under his glasses and presses them into his eyes. Then he runs his hands through his light brown hair. “In my office. That’s why my laptop is out here. I don’t have enough room in there anymore.”
I stand and dart through the kitchen, ignoring Peter’s calls to be careful as I fling open his office door.
On every surface. On top of his desk, on every bookshelf, on every available inch of floor space. Peter’s office is filled with LEGO models. Cars, trains, airplanes. Even the super expensive Starship Enterprise that he got for his sixteenth birthday and spent an entire summer putting together.
I feel Peter approach behind me, the heat of his six-foot frame warming my back.
“It looks like so much more in this smaller space,” I say, looking over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” he says, the word sounding heavy.
I turn to face him. “How are you feeling?”
He shrugs. “It’s finally starting to seem real, I guess.”
I study Peter’s expression, sensing how much heisn’tsaying. His parents are selling the house where he grew up, the housethey’velived in since before Peter was born. They’re selling, and they’removing.All the way to South Carolina, where they’re planning to live it up as retirees in a state where it only snows once every ten years.
“I can’t believe they’re taking Allison, too,” I say. I step into the room and adjust the wheels on a bright red racecar.
“Allison is an adult,” Peter says. “They aren’ttakingher; she’s moving because she wants to. She’s excited about the warm weather, and she needs a new start.”
Allison broke up with her fiancé of two years over Christmas, so sure, I can see her wanting a new start, especially since she and her ex currently work at the same accounting firm. But does her new start really have to be five states away?
I turn to face Peter, pushing my hands into my back pockets and feeling indignant on his behalf.
His parents only told him three weeks ago that they were putting their house on the market. I know he’s feeling things, but I can’t get him to talk to me about it.
I know Peter.
He keeps his social circle small, but once you’re in that circle, he is fiercely loyal, and his family is right at the center of it. His parents are kind and supportive, likable and easy to be around, and his sister is just as amazing. The four of them talk frequently and have family dinners at least a few times a month.
He must hate everything about them leaving, and I’m worried that by not saying it, admitting it out loud, he’s setting himself up for some kind of crash.
But then, what do I know? I speak all my feelings out loud the minute they pop into my brain.
