“I worry.”
Whether it was about him, or Dennis’s health, or any number of things, Brook didn’t say, and it didn’t matter. “I know.”
“Someone has to.”
“But it doesn’t always have to be you.”
On that note they finished their goodbyes, and Levi ended the call. Then he slouched in his chair to catch his breath. Talking to his sister for ten minutes was more exhausting than an entire day spent building a raised bed with Mina. For all Mina’s chatter and energy, Levi had felt better after building the raised bed than he had before.
This was why he didn’t call his family and only occasionally answered the phone when they called him.
His breathing back to normal, Levi glanced up at his windows. Mina’s blinds had all been closed, and her house was dark.
It was too late to go over and apologize, but he could at least prove his sister wrong about the baby thing. He sighed. He knew the growing list of items he needed to apologize to Mina for, though he didn’t know what he wanted out of it. To be back on her couch kissing? To be friends and neighbors? To make the barest effort at not being a total ass?
Or did he need to apologize simply because he was wrong and sorry about it?
Levi rolled his eyes at himself. No matter what he was sorry for and why, he could at least be less ignorant when he apologized. Gathering his phone, he went in search of his laptop.
* * *
IT WASN’T UNTIL Friday that Mina was finally able to be outside after work, hands shoved in the new dirt in her new raised garden bed. Even though the nights were getting cooler, the sun had shone on the dark dirt all day, and it pressed warmth and possibility against her skin. She didn’t even care if the greens she was planting grew into anything edible, so long as she had the excuse to be out here, away from her thoughts and her work and her problems.
The past week had been rough. Classes were starting, increasing the amount of work she needed to do and the amount of time she had to spend on campus. Departmental meetings, syllabi, double-checking on the assigned readings and that the bookstore and library both carried what the students would need, etc. The meetings were the worst. She could work on the syllabi from home, but the department wasn’t yet willing to hold meetings through Skype. She’d always suspected that her emotions played a big role in the side effects of all her meds, and this week had done nothing to disprove her theory.
She’d spent more time on the toilet than she cared to admit to herself. Today wasn’t just the first day she’d been able to be outside in the sun, it was the first day her stomach had felt like it belonged to a normal human being. Or mostly normal. She’d gotten accustomed to the base level of nausea her meds caused.
She patted the soil down over the seeds, trying not to let her feelings press down too hard.
Her emotions and her side effects fed off each other, making everything worse. She felt self-conscious about the time spent in the bathroom, which brought her thoughts back to Levi walking out on her, almost without a word. She’d stay later in her office, hunched over her desk, hand cramped from her tight control on her drawing—which meant her drawings were shit. And she’d both wish she were home where she would be more comfortable and be glad that she couldn’t see if Levi’s truck was pulling into his driveway and wondering if she’d catch a glimpse of him.
It had taken her three days of concentrated effort on what her therapist had said about thoughts just being thoughts before she had been able to say, “I’m better off knowing his true stripes now,” and mean it. Only then had she been okay with leaving her office and spending time at home, in her garden and near her own bathroom.
Of course, when her emotions had settled down, so had her nausea.
“Hey, Mina,” a woman’s voice called from behind her. Mina stood and turned around to see her neighbor Echo standing on the sidewalk with her fluffy little dog on the other end of the leash, the dog’s tongue flipping in and out of its mouth in exaggerated, adorable pants. “Nice garden bed.”
“Thank you.” Mina took advantage of the opportunity for a break. She and Echo had spoken a couple of times when her neighbor walked past with her dog. The woman seemed friendly and interesting and worth getting to know a little better.
“Was that Levi I saw helping you build it?”
“Yeah...” Mina replied, not sure where this was going.
Echo looked right and left, as if checking for spies in the bushes. “I’ve barely gotten Levi to say hi to me when Noodle and I walk by.”
Noodle? The dog with the papillon ears and dachshund body and Pomeranian coat was named Noodle? Echo might be even more interesting than Mina had thought.
“I’m not sure he wanted to help,” Mina said, feeling the lie stick on her tongue as she tried to make Sunday sound like no big deal. Echo caught the lie, too, because her eyebrows lifted up to her hairline.
“Okay, so he wanted to. And he’s brought over my mail and helped me buy a lawn mower, but there’s nothing more.”
Given the continued elevation of her eyebrows, Echo understood the subtext of there might have been something more as easily as she’d recognized the lie. “I want to hear about this. You have dinner plans?”
Other than pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese? “No.”
“The store had some nice-looking salmon. I bought myself a piece for tonight and a piece for tomorrow, but one indulgent dinner with a friend is better than two indulgent nights in by myself. Come over for dinner and a glass of wine, and you can tell me all about how Silent-Neighbor Levi ended up building you a garden bed.”
“Honestly, Echo, there’s not much to tell.” And Mina wasn’t certain she was comfortable sharing what information there was. After all, blurting out “I’m HIV positive” rarely went as well as she hoped with possible friends, too. And she still hadn’t figured out how not to overshare.
“Do you not like salmon? Or wine?” A teenager rode by on a bicycle, and Echo’s little dog barked and jumped about like the devil himself had been on those two wheels. “Or little barky dogs?”
“I like salmon. And I like wine. I’m okay with little barky dogs that aren’t coming home with me.” And she needed to make friends. So she needed to trust a little. Dinner and boy talk wasn’t a bad place to start. “Is there anything I can bring?”
“Bring dessert. Come over in about an hour.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Gossip in the neighborhood.” Echo tapped the tips of her fingers against one another. “This is doubly exciting because no one ever tells me anything.” The movement of her fingers stopped, and she looked down at her dog, who looked up expectantly. “Probably because gossip is always a trade, and I only like to take. Greedy, my ex-husband always said.”
Mina laughed at the blatant attempt to reassure her. “I’ll be over in an hour, with ice cream.” She was less sure about bringing gossip.
MINA STOOD ON Echo’s front stoop, ice cream in a plastic bag in one hand while attempting not to clench her nerves too tightly in the other. Once, in another lifetime, she would have been bouncing with excitement at a new friend. Her body still remembered those times, and wanting them back was the reason she’d made a point to introduce herself to as many people as she could in her new town, including her cranky, handy-with-a-drill-and-friends-with-the-hardware-store-guy neighbor.
But that Mina had a different, naive understanding of the world. She’d grown up in a happy household, with parents who loved each other and their children. Maybe they were