Daphne carried it toward the shed, brushing dust from the edge with her thumb. “I understand. I too have seen compost.”
Tyler, who was close enough to hear, looked wounded. “Why does everyone keep talking about the compost like I did something wrong?”
“Because you keep standing next to it,” Daphne said.
Gus nodded once. “Fair.”
Inside the shed, the air held the dim heat of old wood, metal, and damp soil. Daphne set the kneeling pad on the shelf and pulled off her gloves. Her fingers were pink where the seams had pressed into her skin.
I took the clipboard from the hook.
She stepped beside me, close enough that the shed got smaller. It was the same workbench, the same hours sheet, and the same court-ordered line I’d been careful with since the first morning. Only now I knew what Daphne tasted like when she stopped joking. I knew the sound she made when she forgot to be careful.
I wrote the date, start time, end time, and four hours.
The pen moved cleanly.
My hand stayed steady.
Daphne watched the numbers go down.
“Four left after today,” she said.
“Four left.”
“That sounds almost manageable.”
“It’s manageable.”
Her fingers rested on the edge of the workbench. “Are you always this confident about math?”
“Only small numbers.”
“That’s wise.”
I handed her the pen.
She took it. This time, her fingers brushed mine because the shed was small and neither of us moved fast enough to avoid it.
Daphne initialed the sheet. Her handwriting was tidy, a little tighter today than it had been before.
I watched the pen instead of her mouth.
She set the pen down. “So that’s it?”
“For today.”
“Right.” She looked at the shelf, then at the open shed door. Outside, Tyler said, “I’m developing a compost strategy,” and Birdie had the patient expression of a woman considering murder with garden shears. “For today.”
I should’ve stepped back.
I didn’t.
Daphne lifted her gaze to mine.
The heat between us didn’t need touching to work. It had the shed, the clipboard, the dust moving through the sunlight, the memory of lake water under a dock, and the small scrape of her breath when I leaned one inch closer before I caught myself.
My phone rang on the workbench.
