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Linnie nods solemnly. “I started it. Actually, Cade at preschool started it. He puked on my coloring book, then I came home and puked on Daddy. Then Daddy puked in the toilet, but it still got Mommy puking. Now my baby Theo’s puking”—she leans in, big pale blue eyes widened dramatically—“everywhere.”
Ren sets a fist in front of his mouth. He looks a little green. “Linnie, can we maybe not talk about puking anymore? It’s making my stomach feel weird.”
“Sure,” she says brightly, resting a cheek on her open hand, blinking at us owlishly. “What else do you wanna talk about?”
I snort a laugh. This kid is so damn funny.
“Well…” Ren frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe how many spells you’ve cast today?”
“Ten!” she hollers, both hands up to show us, which means she drops the phone. We get a shot of her ceiling, which is covered in glow-in-the-dark stars, before the screen jostles around, then settles on Linnie again. “The no-puke spell didn’t work. Theo puked all over the wall. It looked like runny vanilla ice cream.”
Ren dry heaves.
I take the phone as he bends over, hands on his knees, and takes a deep breath. “How do you cast spells?” I ask.
“I’m a witch.” She frowns at me with clear concern that I even had to ask.
“Ahhh, a witch.”
Ren stands and takes a slow, deep breath, nodding. He takes the phone back from me and mouths, Thank you.
“How’d you become a witch?” I ask her.
“Easy. I just am. Like Aunt Frankie.” She reaches off screen, then returns with a Linnie-size version of Frankie’s cane. “She showed me how to cast spells to get rid of scary things.”
Ren smiles in that way he does whenever you talk about Frankie. It used to annoy the shit out of me, when I was moody and pissed about life, but now I just feel an odd kinship to that total-fucking-goner look.
Which…I shouldn’t. I’m the asshole with so much baggage, so many fears, I’m too chickenshit to ask for more than friendship from the woman I’m so gone over, I can’t do a damn thing in a day and not think about her.
It feels like a band’s squeezing my ribs since I took Ziggy to the bookstore last week, since I dumped my emotional mess all over her and she was so damn good to me, since we kissed and touched like that.
I’ve been pretty twisted up.
One moment I want to fucking run to her apartment and bang on her door and tell her I want everything she’ll give me. The next, that bone-deep fear of all the ways I’m still so much of a disaster will sabotage anything good I might have with her, takes over and makes me freeze up.
I have to be patient with myself. I keep reminding myself what Ren said about moving out of the shitty place I got myself into, when this whole thing started—when I crashed that car, then Ziggy crashed into my life:
It’s going to take time. Good things, healing things, that lead to growth, are often like that. Victories are won with patience, endurance, and tiny, incremental steps.
Those moments when I’m weak, lying in bed at night reading, thinking about Ziggy with those cookie crumbs spilling onto her book; cooking meals with all the ingredients she helped me buy; doing yoga with Lars and the team, wishing I was doing angry yoga with Ziggy instead, I think about there being a day when I feel like I’ve cleaned up my shit and gotten myself in order enough to be worthy of asking Ziggy for more.
And then I think about how I’d lose her entirely if I got lucky enough to have her as more than a friend, then blew it all to hell. If one bad day or choice could obliterate the richest, healthiest relationship I’ve ever had.
“You look like you’re a little scared, Trouble.” Linnie leans in, until she’s just pale-blue eyeballs and a brown-black curl of hair on her forehead. “You need a spell to help you out?”
I swallow, then clear my throat. “Sure, Linnie. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Ren grins as Linnie props her phone up, clutches her tiny cane, and leans on it, like Frankie does, saying some kind of incantation that sounds remarkably like the Swedish I’ve heard Ziggy mutter under her breath when I’m on her last nerve. I smile, too.
“There ya go!” She claps her hands together, as the cane clatters off screen. “All set.”
“You’re the best.”
“Good luck, Trouble. Good luck, Uncle Ren. Score me a goal. No, two. No, three!”
“We’ll do our best!” Ren tells her. “Bye, Linnie. Love you.”
She leans in and presses her lips to the screen, turning the picture to a pink blur on a loud smacking sound. “Love you, byeeeeee.”
