Chapter 5: One Strike

Nobody had ever said a true thing to me that fast.

It didn't make it hurt less.

It made it easier to see.

"Did you mean it?" I asked. "The bet."

"I meant to hurt her. I didn't think about you at all." He winced. "That's not better. I know that's not better."

"No. It's not."

Jess made a noise.

I stood up off the curb and brushed the gravel off my dress.

Every part of me wanted to rip the rulebook in half on his hood.

Then I'd walk back to my room and the garden would be a glass building by spring.

I had three hundred and twelve dollars in the restoration fund before he came along.

I had fourteen hundred and fifty-two now.

His name got me into rooms I'd never get into alone.

"Turn around," I said.

"What?"

"Turn around. I need a desk."

He turned, slowly, and I put my notebook flat against his back.

I wrote under rule eight, pressing hard enough that he flinched.

Rule nine. You don't lie to me. One strike.

"Sign," I said, and handed him the pen over his shoulder.

He signed it against the roof of his car.

"One strike," he said. "And then what?"

"Then I end it. Rule eight. And I tell everybody why."

"That's fair."

"I wasn't asking."

Jess walked me home with her arm through mine.

"You're keeping him."

"I'm keeping the money and the name. He comes with them."

"Frannie."

"He told the truth when he didn't have to. That's one thing."

"It's a pretty low bar."

"It's a bar," I said. "Most of them don't clear it."

He came to the greenhouse at six on Monday in brand-new rubber boots.

They still had the tag on.

He didn't complain once all hour.

That was almost worse.

On Saturday we held the fall plant sale on the quad.

Jess and I had been potting since August.

Basil, mums, garlic bulbs, a hundred little rosemary bushes, and forty heirloom tomato starts from seed I'd saved off the north beds.

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