Not a knock. Not a polite three-rap request for entry. The entire doorframe rattles, wood groaning against the deadbolt, and for one terrible second I think the animated flamingos have come back for revenge.
I'm sitting on the kitchen floor. Surrounded by broken terracotta. The orchid I hurled at the wall an hour ago drips soil down the baseboard in a slow brown river. My eyes are swollen. My nose is running. I've eaten four spoonfuls of peanut butter straight from the jar because the grocery store felt like a bridge too far for a woman whose heart just got used as a doormat by a seven-foot lawn fascist.
The door shakes again.
"Junia."
"Go away, Flynn."
"I can't."
"You absolutely can. It's a simple mechanical process. You rotate your body one hundred and eighty degrees and engage your leg muscles in a forward direction. I believe the technical term iswalking."
Silence. Heavy breathing. Then, quieter:
"I was wrong."
The peanut butter spoon stops halfway to my mouth.
"About the rosebush. About the fertilizer. About everything I said to you." A long pause. Something hits the door with a dull thud. His forehead, maybe. "It wasn't you. It was never you."
I set the jar down. Wipe my hands on my overalls. The knees of them are still stained from yesterday, from the trenches we dug together, from the loam we packed with our bare hands shoulder to shoulder. The soil under my fingernails is his soil. Mine. Ours.
He accused me of destroying his rosebush.
Not in a calm, let's-discuss-this way. In a roaring, vein-popping, finger-pointing way that made the windows vibrate. And the worst part wasn't the volume. The worst part was his eyes. The way they shuttered closed. The way he looked at me and saw chaos instead of a person. Instead of the woman who fell asleep against him and traced his shoulder with her fingertip until he rumbled like a diesel engine.
"Junia. Please open the door. I have proof."
"Proof of what?"
"Proof that I'm an idiot."
I stare at the door from the kitchen floor. The deadbolt is a cheap brass thing, probably wouldn't survive another impact from those massive green fists. But he isn't hitting it anymore. He's just standing there. Breathing.
I get up. Terracotta crunches under my boots. I cross the living room, step over a toppled fern, and press my eye to the peephole.
Flynn Danger fills the entire fish-eye lens. Moss-green skin flushed dark at the cheekbones. His tee shirt torn at the collar, drywall dust on his knuckles, blood on two of them. He's holding a laptop with both hands like a priest holds a hymnal. The screen faces outward.
I open the door three inches. Chain still on.
"Talk."
He holds the laptop higher. The screen shows grayscale security footage. Timestamp reads 0312.
"Watch."
A figure crosses his lawn. Tall, lean, moving like a cat on a marble floor. Dark overcoat. Pointed ears catching the infrared light.
Valerius.
The elven HOA president stops at Flynn's rosebush and pulls something from inside his coat. A shovel that glows blue with enchantment. He drives the blade into the soil. The handle writhes and pulses. The root system surrenders in seconds, cut clean by magic that no organic fertilizer could ever replicate.
Valerius rips the bush free. Stomps the root ball. Kicks the halves apart like garbage. Brushes his gloves. Walks away.
Ninety seconds. Start to finish.
The footage loops.
