I walk down the stairs silently, my head spinning. The lights in the kitchen are off, and the living room appears dark, which I suppose means that Kent went up to his room. We have an early delivery at the store tomorrow, I remember vaguely. Makes sense.

But when I step into the living room, one lamp is still turned on, casting a gentle orange glow over the armchair by the window. Kent is sitting there, gazing absently through the glass. He clearly hasn’t noticed me, and he looks deep in thought. I don’t want to bother him, so I silently begin edging back into the kitchen. I’ll go out through the back.

I pause in the doorway of the kitchen. Kent has shifted, leaning forward in his seat, and now I can see that he has his phone in his hand, a number already dialed. I watch him hit a button and lift the phone to his ear. The silence stretches, punctuated only by the soft ringing I can just discern from the doorframe. The ringing cuts off. A distant voice says something I can’t make out.

“Jules,” Kent says. “It’s me.”

There is so much tenderness in his voice that I suddenly feel like I am intruding on a deeply personal moment just by stumbling into the room. I turn quickly and step out through the back door before Julia can answer or Kent can say anything else. The fence is low. I can hop it without too much trouble.

It feels good to step out onto the sidewalk. It’s solid footing, which I feel like I’ve been sorely lacking recently. I walk along slowly, taking deep breaths, thinking hard. The slip of paper with Aiden’s phone number on it is still between my fingers. I have to think about what he said, and I don’t know where to even start.

Am I being nice to him just because I’m a softy, like he thinks? I’m not sure. He’s so different now that I almost don’t know how to connect him with the version I knew in high school. That Aiden was a lot more like Ralph and company: surly, quick to anger, a party ruiner, a taker, and, most frighteningly, unpredictable. You never knew what weird thing would make him furious. Half the time I never even figured out what I said or did to make him so angry with me specifically. He was manipulative, and a liar, and -

So many other things that he doesn’t seem to be now, at least not on the surface. There are traces of his old self in his appearance, but his face is changed completely when there’s no malice in his eyes. The newfound softness in his expression darkens some parts of him, but it makes others glow. What used to be a nasty sneer now looks like a sloping smile. His eyes, which used to look like two headlights of a car about to purposefully run you over, now look like clear blue waters, inviting you in for a swim. His powerful build, which used to fuel a lot of my fears, now kind of just - looks very good in a suit.

You are such a sucker, a nasty voice in my head whispers. This is the moment you’ll look back on when the curtain falls, and you’ll think, I was such a stupid idiot…

But during and after the party, talking to Aiden felt as easy and natural as talking to Kasey. I can’t totally convince myself that none of this is genuine. He’s no actor - that I know of - and if he’s been faking all of this he should win an Oscar, ‘cause I’m the one person who should know not to believe him, and I do. I think. At least a little.

It doesn’t really come down to Aiden. It comes down to me. He purposefully made it that way, by offering me this phone number to use or ignore. He doesn’t want to pressure me into a friendship with him, so he’s offering me a simple, easy way out. That already sets him a million miles apart from the Aiden of old. It means he actually sat down and thought about my feelings, for one thing.

So how do I feel? I’ve been so busy trying to figure out Aiden’s motivations that I haven’t really stopped to think about my own. Ketterbridge is a small town, but I could probably avoid him easily enough. Even at the party we both attended, it would have been nothing to slip off with someone else and leave Aiden alone. Instead I spent half my time trying to get away from other people and back to him, but he always found me first. Every time he’d spot me across the crowd and start cutting through everyone else to get to me, I felt a warm ripple of delight. I guess I pinned that down to the cutest guy at the party paying so much attention to me. Just like how Aiden pinned down my behavior towards him as stemming solely from my general obligation to be friendly. Are either of us right? Neither?

I think maybe neither. Or maybe we both are, but only partially.

It’s four in the morning. I came home, ate a snack, showered, and watched two episodes of The X-Files without really processing - well, any of it. I’ve been in bed for hours, thinking, thinking. Kasey is here, but she seems to know I don’t want to talk, because she simply dozes off in one of my armchairs. I consider waking her up, but I’ve already been wading through my thoughts for so long that it would take forever for me to explain everything and catch her up, and it’s already an ungodly hour.

Here is what I’ve landed on: this is about second chances. I think Aiden is asking me for one.

I reach over to grab my phone from my night table. I pull up a new text message and punch in the phone number Aiden gave me. He won’t text me back at this absurd time of night, but maybe once I do this, I’ll be able to fall asleep.

New Message (Unsaved Number) / Where was your job interview? Is it somewhere with juicy employee perks? Because if you wanna be my friend you better come with benefits

I click create a new contact, save him as Companion Plant 🍃 and hesitate with my thumb over the confirm button. It feels like once I save his number this is all locked in, although in actuality I suppose it was the moment I sent him the text. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when he responds. Hopefully early. I’m not anticipating a particularly restful night’s sleep.

He responds before I can even plug my phone back in. Instantly, pretty much. At four in the morning. I immediately drop my charger and roll back under my covers, clutching my phone.

Companion Plant 🍃 4:08 AM: I come with many benefits, none of them related to my job thank u. They sent me an email, by the way. I got it.

Me 4:08 AM: Wow, they must be really desperate to hire you

Companion Plant 🍃 4:09 AM: They clearly are desperate. Pretty sure I could have walked in there naked and still would’ve gotten it

Me 4:13 AM: They must have liked your answers to the five questions they asked you

Companion Plant 🍃 4:16 AM: I like your answer to the one question I asked you.

Me 4:17 AM: Hold up!!! I did not say I would be your friend. I’m more saying I will extend you the very generous opportunity to maybe work your way back into my good graces EVENTUALLY and after many years of hard labor and contrition. There are many steps and step one is for you to get me a Sérapias à Pétales Étroits. It’s one of the rarest orchids in the world and it only grows in Tunisia and Algeria. There are like 50 mature plants in existence & they’re endangered so you’ll have to find a way to get it without harming its population even a little bit

Companion Plant 🍃 4:18 AM: Easy. What else?

Me: 4:18 AM: You have to bring it to me with a giant cake in the shape of my face and you have to bake it yourself. And then you have to do it five more times and then we’ll move onto step 2

Companion Plant 🍃 4:19 AM: That all sounds good, I’ll get right on it. One request, however - let’s make the Sérapias à Pétales Étroits step two. I have a different idea for step one. Coffee on Friday?

~~~~

“And you said yes?” Kasey leans against the counter at the flower shop, her eyes wide. “Wow, Jamie.”

“Is it such a big deal?” I’m trying to fill in price tags and talk at the same time, mostly unsuccessfully. “He wants to be friends. Listen, don’t get me all confused about this, I thought about it a lot, and everything made sense last night, and-”

“Hey, take a breath. I didn’t say anything except wow.”

“Well - you’re freaking me out!”

“You’re freaking me out!” Kasey laughs incredulously. “You must have realized I’d be surprised about this? You should hear how different you sound talking about him now than you did when Ms. Callahan asked you to get him from the airport.”

“Because he’s different. He’s just not what I expected.”

“Okay. I don’t want to sound like a bummer, because I can tell that you’re excited about this. But that’s also the reason I have to say something.”

“Here we go.”

“Jamie. Seriously. Look at me.” I stop and look across the counter at the ghost of my best friend, who right now has a very familiar facial expression on. “I hear all this stuff you’re saying about him being different. Honestly, I do. But you and I have no idea where he’s been or what he’s been doing for the last ten years-”

“Eight years.”

“Whatever. The point is, he only just got back. In this amount of time, the only things you know about him are the things he wants you to know. Right? We can’t account for those eight years, and it sounds like he hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to talk to you about them. You don’t know who he is, but you know who he was. How many times did he make you cry, Jamie?”

“Okay, okay, first of all-”

“Just listen to me for a second, babe. When he left Ketterbridge, I was so fucking happy, because I thought: Aiden Callahan is never going to make Jamie cry ever again.”

“Well, thankfully I’m not a kid anymore and I don’t cry so easily. If it turns out he doesn’t really want to be my friend - well, I’m a grown-up, I can handle it.”

“Yes,” Kasey says, “But… Jamie.”

“What?”

“Are you not… kind of… like… into him, a little bit?”

“Into him?” If I could scald a ghost with my eyes, it would be happening right now. I drop my hands onto the counter, forgetting that I have the pen between my fingers. It makes a much louder sound than I expected, and Kasey flinches.

“Okay, calm down. It’s just the way you look when you talk about him.”

“What? What is happening right now?”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing! Who’s the last person you went out with, anyway? Roger? The fireman who collected Funko Pops?”

“Do not talk about Roger.” I press my fingers to my nose. “I’m still afraid there’ll be a fire and they’ll send him. He’s the reason all my smoke detectors are unplugged and hidden away in my closet. Next to the Funko Pop he gave me.”

“That was like two years ago, Jamie. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I liked the summer of Roger, the views were awfully nice. God, he was fine. Fine.”

“You know what? The sexy fireman calendar you got me for Christmas that year was equally as unwelcome as this line of conversation.”

“You should really put back up your smoke detectors, by the way.”

“Kasey.”

“Alright. We’re done talking about Roger, but I’m not quite done with Aiden. Just - you hated him before, so I never had to worry about…” She hesitates. “This is an entirely new way that he could mess you up, Jamie. You realize that, right?”

I recover the pen from the countertop and begin pointedly filling in the price tags again.

“We are not talking about this. It’s becoming a whole chaos thing when all he did was ask me to get coffee and be friends. He would probably laugh if he knew how long we’d been talking about this like it’s front-page news.”

“It’s just-” Kasey looks apologetic. “I know what a softy you are, and-”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I groan.

“Jamie?” I turn to see Destinee poking her head out of the back room. “Are you - um - talking to yourself?”

“Oh -” I glance from Destinee to Kasey and back again, then straighten up. “Yeah, sorry. I’m having a long day.”

“It’s like 9:30 am,” Destinee answers, checking her watch.

“No, I know. And yet.”

“Don’t even worry, I get it.” She steps out of the backroom and brushes some soil off of her fingers. “You should have seen me the day I got the parking ticket. Thanks for letting me take some of your shift last night, by the way. That was really sweet of you.”

“Not a softy at all,” Kasey murmurs.

“It’s no problem,” I tell Destinee, pointedly ignoring Kasey. “I hate all the two-hour parking zones in this stupid town.”

“It wasn’t even that!” Destinee throws her hands up in frustration. “I was trying to park outside of my little sister’s school for her damn recital. My whole family showed up before me and took all the spots. So I had to circle like fifty times and then practically park on top of someone else and then rush inside just in time to see the last like, two seconds of Olivia’s playing. And then my mom was mad that I was late, it’s like, let’s get real. It’s not like Olivia ever comes to any of the slams I perform in.”

“Isn’t she like, ten?”

“I went to my first slam when I was nine. I mean, I wasn’t supposed to, but at some point a woman needs to claim her independence.”

“Yeah, Olivia had better get started on that.”

“Anyways, I’m going to need the cash. I just found out my mom is the judge I need to contest the parking ticket before, which sounds like it would get me off the hook, but actually means I’m definitely going to have to pay it. Because that’s my life.”

“I miss her so much,” Kasey says, looking affectionately at Destinee.

“Why’s your day been long?” Destinee asks, coming over to take one of the price sheets. “What are you talking to yourself about?”

“Uh - Aiden Callahan moved back into town.”

“What?” Destinee’s eyes widen. “Oh no. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m totally fine. It was just um - a surprise.”

“Okay, we’re gonna talk about this when I finish pricing everything.” Destinee grabs the rest of the tags and sets off towards the back room. “Hang in there!”

“You see?” Kasey swivels around the face me as soon as the door closes. “Everyone remembers what kind of guy he was. So why are you acting like you’ve forgotten? You’re really ready to just let him pretend that he never-”

“I haven’t forgotten!” I blurt out, then pause to take a breath. “You don’t know, because you haven’t talked to him. He’s not trying to rewrite his history, he’s trying to rewrite - himself.”

Kasey falls silent, watching me closely.

“I trust you, Jamie,” she says quietly. “I just don’t trust him.”

“It’s just coffee,” I answer, and Kasey turns away. “Just coffee,” I murmur again, and this time I don’t know if I’m talking to Kasey, or myself.