But suddenly Wren stopped mid-bite. She placed the spoon down.
“I don’t think I can,” she said, wincing.
“Brain freeze again?”
“Heartburn. Ow, fuck, it stings like fire! And I’m freezing! This is the weirdest pain ever.”
She gripped his hand and squeezed with enough force to turn his bones into a fine powder.
“Come on. It’s one more scoop and then you can rest. Just one more. You’re almost there. Just breathe.”
“IT BURNS, ARTHUR! I CAN’T DO ONE MORE!”
The bones in his hand were cracking, but he took the pain and channeled it into his chest.
“Yes…you…CAN!” he cried.
She let out a primal yell, worthy of Xena: Warrior Princess, and picked the spoon back up.
They sat there minutes later, both on the same side of the table now, a sweating, exhausted Wren lying on Arthur’s shoulder. They sat there and they stared at it:
The Polaroid. Wren, triumphant, bloated, queasy, victorious.
“You did it,” Arthur said.
“We did it.”
“You did all the work. I just got to do the fun part,” he said, and dipped his finger into the empty bowl, collecting a thin layer of vanilla and chocolate liquid and popping it into his mouth.
Wren looked down at the photo again. Next to them, the defeated timer clock lay on its side. Wren had tipped it on its side like a chess player humbly resigning. “It’s beautiful,” she said of the picture.
“Yes, she is.”
“Arthur?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think I’m gonna fit in my dress for the wedding. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t give a shit.”
They both burst out laughing.
Arthur had just closed Wren into the passenger seat, which was no easy feat. He’d parked her on the curb, sitting her gently on a bench outside the shop, and gone to pull the car around. Loading her into her seat was a feat. She was limp and heavy like a firefighter training dummy. But he’d shoved her in there and managed to buckle her in.
As he walked around to the driver’s side, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He answered quietly.
“Linda?”
“Arthur, sorry for the delay. I was camping with my daughter, no service. I just got your messages. All eleven of them.”
He felt bad about disturbing Linda during her family time, but this was an emergency.
“I’ve been going back and forth about pulling out,” he said. He peeked in through the car window thinking he’d need to come up with some excuse for who he was talking to. But Wren was already completely zonked out in her seat. “And I think, after a lot of thought, the right thing for me to do is to walk away. I’m really sorry about your commission, and for wasting your time. But I think Wren and I need to regroup and rethink our priorities.”
A long pause on the other end. The sound of bad news incoming. Linda had given him a second chance after he’d yanked her chain at the McMansion. She was going to rip him a new one for leading her on again.
“Oh, Arthur. It’s too late. The inspection period is over and it’s…There’s nothing I can do. I didn’t realize you were having second thoughts.”
No, that wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right.
