Page 19 of The Pumpkin Pact
Harper tucks one foot under her leg, turns, and I feel her attention like a hand between my shoulder blades keeping me upright. “You didn’t fail,” she says. “You survived. That’s not the same as failing.”
I swallow, throat tight. “Doesn’t always feel different.”
She looks out at the street. “My last ‘almost’ wasn’t dramatic,” she says. “No ultimatum, no dramatic scene at theairport. He just… chose other things. I was always one degree to the left of the thing he wanted most. Work, a hobby, a person with shinier edges. He kept telling me it was timing. I kept trying to be more convenient.”
I hate that for her with a clean, simple hatred.
“I opened the store because I wanted to be the thing I chose,” she says. “Not a placeholder. Not a backup plan. Not someone’s second choice. The books don’t forget me. The lights come on when I flip the switch. Mr. Darcy judges me daily and still comes home.”
“Harper,” I say, and her name feels like something I should be careful with. “You’re not a second choice.”
She huffs a laugh that isn’t a laugh. “I know that in my head. My heart is… remedial.”
We drink our tea as the porch boards click as they cool. A moth throws itself into the porch light again and again as if devotion is a sport.
“I brought something,” I say, because this is the only time it makes sense. I pull a paperback from my jacket.The Princess Bride.The spine is cracked enough to be honest. Our notes run like a conversation down the margins.
Her eyes widen. “You stole that from me. That’s my copy.”
“Borrowed,” I correct. “In high school. Then I took it on leave because I needed your sarcasm in my pocket. I kept it because I’m a coward. I fixed the torn page last week.”
She takes it as if it’s a fragile animal. She flips to page 136 and finds the red pen scrawl.as you wish.She laughs, soft and wrecked and delighted all at once. “God, we were ridiculous back then.”
“We still are,” I say. “Just with better clothes.”
She turns another page. Her handwriting needles mine.Of course, you picked the sword fight as your favorite.I wrote back;you picked the bookshop scene.She smiles like the insideof a sunrise. “Thank you, and I still have your copy. It’s under my register.”
“Yeah,” I say, and it is not enough, but it’s all the word we have for this.
She sets the book between us on the step. “Okay,” she says. “If we’re doing this—this optics thing—we should say the parts out loud. My line is drawn around second choices. I won’t be the understudy for someone else’s life again.”
“Copy,” I say. “My line is truth. I’m not pretending I don’t want things I want. I won’t use the plan as a place to hide in.”
She nods as if we just agreed on fire exits. “Rules,” she says, counting them off. “We check in when something feels off. We don’t let other people narrate this for us. And if one of us says pause, we pause.”
“Deal,” I say.
She reaches without looking and taps the book’s cover, like we’re signing a contract in ink only we can see. “Optics until the vote,” she whispers.
“Optics until the vote,” I say back. It settles in my chest like a steadying hand.
“Tell me something good about the Army,” she says after a while, because she refuses to leave a thing on just its sharpest edge.
“Easy,” I say. “Meeting Cole, even though he’s a pain in my ass. Also, I learned to fix anything with duct tape and a prayer.”
She laughs into her sleeve. “Tell me something bad.”
“Leaving,” I say. “And coming home different.”
She doesn’t pretend that’s simple. “Tell me something true about right now.”
I look at the book. I look at her. “I don’t want to leave,” I say, which is ridiculous because I live six blocks away and the night is not dangerous. But it’s true the way rain is true.
She nods like she heard more than I said, which I did. “I don’t want you to either,” she says, very quietly. Then she stands, because she is careful with her own heart, and I respect that like the law. “Walk me to the mailbox,” she says, a half-smile that means thank you and not yet and maybe all at the same time.
We walk the thirty feet to the corner. The mailbox is the same municipal blue it’s always been. She slides a stack of vendor forms into the slot, lets the lid clang, and it sounds like a promise sent to someone who can actually do something about it.
On the way back, she bumps my shoulder with hers. “We are going to win,” she says, not for the crowd, not for the plan, but like an oath two people can keep.
