The next night, he tried to, in a roundabout way.
Jack:By the way, I tried to fix your lemon tree.
This time, the answer came right away.
Blair:What?
Jack:I wondered if it would bounce back after the sting operation, once Mrs. Afonso stopped actively harming it. I thought I might help it along. I read up on how to fix woody fruit and did some tinkering.
Blair:What do you mean tinkering? Like pesticides?
Jack:I pruned it in the way the internet told me to—and the trees around it, too, so it could get more light. Then I applied a phosphorus and potassium fertilizer. I do realize that perhaps fertilizer wasn’t the answer since surely some of the fertilizer popsicles would have landed under the tree, but I figured it was worth a try. I don’t know anything about fruit trees, but maybe enough time has passed that you have new fruit?
Blair:I’m kind of speechless.
Jack:I didn’t say anything because I wanted to see if it would work. I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I shouldhave told you before I left, though. I don’t know why I didn’t.
Blair:Maybe because we had a fight, then made out, and then I ghosted you?
Jack:Right. But I was the one who…
Why was he trailing off like that? Well, he knew why: because he didn’t know the right words to use. He didn’t like that—the not knowing the right words, but also the imprecision of thought suggested by the use of sentence fragments.
Jack:I was the one who left.
Blair:Because I told you to.
Blair:For the record, I meant more like… fuck off back to the pool house, not all the way to Minnesota. But still, you did what I told you I wanted you to do.
Jack:I guess I just thought it was time to go.
Blair:You were right. Also for the record: I missed you. It was hard not to call you, or text you. But I thought I needed to get my act together on my own, you know?
Jack:Well, regardless, I should have told you about the tree.
Blair:Nah, “I hate you but I fixed your lemon tree” would have sounded too weird.
He barked a laugh. He had forgotten how funny she was.
No, he hadn’t. He hadn’t forgotten at all. It was more that he’d forgotten what it felt like to laugh into an empty room over something Blair Kellermoon texted.
Jack:I don’t hate you. I never hated you.
Blair:I never hated you, either.
The next day, she texted him a picture of a lemon pie. Or at least he assumed it was a lemon pie. It had one of those lattice tops, a perfect golden brown, with a yellow filling peeking through.
Jack:I was expecting meringue.
Blair:Nope, just lemon filling with a pastry crust—all butter with a little cornmeal. Perhaps nontraditional as it relates to lemon pies, except in my family it’s traditional.
Jack:Mimi’s lemon pie.
Blair:Yep. She used eggs from her own chickens.
Blair:Who, by the way, she let me name when I was eleven, so they were called Meg, Jo, and Beth.
He laughed out loud. Again.
