I take it. Because I always do. And because this is what they dole out to me week after week…millennia of amendments, addendums, fine-print revisions. Busywork designed to keep me chasing cracks in a contract that doesn’t break.
I take it because I don’t know who I am if I don’t.
• • •
The air outsideis sharp enough to bite, but I barely feel it. The folder crumples in my grip and I can still hear Constance’s sugary voice ringing in my ears:
Or retire the performance.
Gods, I hate them.
One moment, I was outside city hall, vibrating with fury. The next, I’m in front of Full Bloom’s greenhouse as if I’ve been summoned. I don’t remember walking here. My lungs remember first. Then my feet. Then the anger loosens its jaw.
And then I smell it.
The distinct, unholy aroma of fresh manure.
A towering heap of it, in fact, steaming faintly into the crisp morning air, unapologetically grotesque beneath the blue sky.
Levi Wilder, elbow deep in a wheelbarrow of said shit, grins at me in his denim overalls smudged with dirt. “Thank god you’re here. Grab a shovel.”
I take a slow, careful step backward, assessing the situation. I stare at him, then down at my crisp, dry-cleaned suit and perfectly polished shoes that have never known such treachery. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on.” Levi wipes the back of his wrist across his forehead. “It’s just fertilizer.”
“It’s excrement,” I say flatly.
He props his shovel over one shoulder, eyes brightening mischievously. “Aren’t you the god of the underworld? Shouldn’t this be nostalgic?”
“Sure,” I say dryly, taking in his cheerful confidence with a scowl, “and I’ve left said filth precisely where it belongs. In the underworld.”
He tosses me a spare pair of gloves, the filthy things hitting me squarely in the chest. I catch them reflexively before they fall to the ground and I stare down at the stained fabric.
“Look,” Levi says gently. “You clearly have some pent-up anger or something you need to work through, and I’ve got dozens of these bags to fill. Win-win?”
“I don’t have pent-up anger,” I mutter irritably, pulling at the cuffs of my suit jacket with indignation.
He smirks, eyes sparkling. “Then consider it charity. Please, Funeral Guy?”
I groan, resigned to the absurdity of the situation I’ve found myself in. “Unbelievable,” I mutter under my breath as I change into a spare pair of Levi’s coveralls, which, against all laws ofnature, are simultaneously too loose and uncomfortably snug in certain areas.
My life is unrecognizable.
Thirty minutes in, my fate is sealed. Levi is effortless, tossing bags of fertilizer onto his cart with ease, his body moving like he was built for this. Fluid, strong, purposeful. I, on the other hand, wrestle with the concept of earthly tasks, glaring every time a speck of dirt lands on my coveralls.
I loathe everything.
“Are you absolutely certain this is necessary?” I grunt, stabbing the shovel into the heap.
Levi, unfazed and annoyingly agile, tosses a bag onto his cart, laughter echoing in his chest. “Plants need nutrients, Hayden.”
“Plants need watering,” I counter, frowning dramatically at the pile. “Not…this horror.”
He tips his head back in a full-throated laugh. “You’re cute when you complain.”
“I’m not complai—”
“And so grumpy,” he teases, nudging me with his hip as he hauls another bag onto the cart.
