“Not so good,” I said. “I’m pretty bummed about it being over between me and Kro.”
“Why does it have to be over?” She set her trowel down and straightened her back. “Is that what you want?”
“No!” My voice broke. Fresh tears wet my cheeks. “I feel like I really love him. I mean, yeah, I have other attractions—but he’s the one I wanna be with.”
She tucked a hank of hair behind her ear and nodded sympathetically. “The problem I see in your relationship with Kro is that you don’t get help from anyone close in who’s made a relationship work. You talk to these other guys who are just as lost as you are. The blind leading the blind, you know? They don’t know how to do it either!”
Leaning forward again, she gouged out a snarl of bindweed and periwinkle. “I’d be willing to help you guys with your relationship,” she said, tossing the weeds on her waste pile, “if you wanna try again.”
My tears slowed. I noticed the persimmon trees across the path, glowing with new growth. Breathing deeply for the first time in days, I drank in the moist fertility of the world budding around me. Snapdragons fluttered like tiny flags in the heart’s army.
“I do! I want to!”
“Is Kro around? Why don’t you go get him and we’ll see if he’s into it?”
I dashed up to Kro’s space, on the second floor of the Farmhouse. He was stretched on his bed, eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, ears cased in headphones. How does he get away with lying around, listening to music, when it’s not even dark out? Oh, yes—that threatening gaze.
Alerted by the creak of floorboards under my feet, he opened his eyes and removed an earpiece, raising an eyebrow in inquiry.
“Arol wants to talk to you,” I said, knowing that invoking her name was the quickest way to set my beloved ox in motion.
Outside, I resumed my post at the rail. Kro stood a few yards away. Stealing glances at him as he listened to Arol repeat her take on our failure, I thought I saw his shoulders drop, his spine straighten.
Arol jabbed the ground at the edge of a clump of spiky grass, tugging it with her free hand. I saw a band of matted root, still clutching subsoil. The clump wasn’t ready to come out yet. She let it drop. She looked from Kro to me and back to Kro. “You guys could be the model Zendik couple,” she said, her eyes steady on his. “You just have to communicate. You have to commit to asking me for help when you hit a rough spot. You wanna try it?”
His jaw loosened. His brow lifted. A grin budded from his lips and bloomed to fill his face. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
In a trice I was at his side. He crooked his arm around my shoulder; I curled mine around his waist and looked up at him, mirroring his grin.
Arol stood and traded her trowel for a spading fork. She stamped the tines in to the hilt, along a fresh edge of the stubborn clump. Yanking the fork back, she pulled it up, then kicked it into its rut, upside down, so it would die for lack of light. Still snug against Kro, I caught her eye.
“Thank you, Arol,” I said.
A few days later, the lingering trouble of my crush on Mason drove me to the Addition to ask Arol’s help.
That morning, to boost my courage, I’d donned my most flattering shirt—mint green, with pearly snaps—and my best pair of jeans. I’d dabbed rose oil on my wrists, neck, armpits. I’d washed my hair and combed it into a long ponytail. My nails—thanks to an hour spent scrubbing lunch dishes—were clean.
On the steps to the front entrance, I paused to listen. All I heard was the kids’ clamor, mixed with Swan’s murmur, coming from the Treehouse. That relieved me. If Arol was in her kitchen, she didn’t have company.
I stopped again on the top step, hand on the knob. Could I do this? Did I dare? I reminded myself that Arol had ordered me to come around when Kro and I floundered. Hanging back posed the greater risk.
I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Closing it behind me, I caught the plunk of teacup against tabletop. Still no voices. Blood rushed to my cheeks. I turned down the hall, hot with fear and excitement.
The kitchen door stood ajar. I knocked—not too softly, not too hard.
“Come in!”
Arol sat at her table, facing me, a finger curled through the grip of her cup. Behind her, linden branches nuzzled the window screen. Above the window, a half-dozen wide-mouthed jars, filled with beans and grains, lined a smooth pine shelf.
“I came because I need help with Kro.”
She waved me to take a seat. Sliding into one of her four matching chairs, I felt my heartbeat slow almost to normal. The hardest part—the approach—was over.
“It’s great being back together with Kro, but I just can’t get this new guy, Mason, off my mind. I feel like I have to know what it’s like to touch him. Like I’ll be missing something big if I don’t.” Beneath the certainty I thought I’d found lurked doubt I couldn’t think about: What if my “out” hadn’t shown me to my mate? What if Kro wasn’t the one?
As I blurted, Arol nodded, looking both girlish and maternal with her hair in two braids, streaked white and gray. I trusted her to tame the snarl between Kro and me, weave it into neat plaits.
She rested her chin in her palm and pressed a fingertip against the whale’s tail. Shifting forward, she gazed at me, eyes narrowed, as if divining her reply from signs in my irises. Steam wafted up from her teacup. Lavender scent seeped in from the terrace. The refrigerator purred. Set against the main kitchen’s cavernous walk-in, with its bank of roaring fans, this fridge—spotless, white, single family–size—struck me as a small miracle of calm. Even as my mind raced to guess what Arol might say, I basked in the closeness of our moment alone.
She lifted her chin from her palm and tugged at the tuft of one braid. “Kro wants to have dates with other people, right? He likes to make it with Shure, Rayel, Riven every now and then.”
I nodded.
The flat of her hand hit the tabletop with a soft thwack. “If he wants to ball around, it has to work both ways. He can’t get pissed at you for doing it, too.”
I nodded again, pleased I’d won tacit permission to hit on Mason.
“And on your end, you’ve gotta communicate with Kro. He’s your top priority. You wanna make it with someone else, you tell him first. Some other guy might drive your box wild, but he’s the one you’re with.”
On my date with Mason, the earth did not shake. So I homed back to Kro, still certain on the surface, to lift his brow with forgive-me kisses.
We both knew he had to take me back, since I’d strayed with Arol’s leave.
I was hunting fresh events for the summer selling calendar, at one of the Addition computers, when Arol’s question floated down from above:
“Wouldn’t it be great to have little mulatto babies running around?”
The word “mulatto” caught my ear—a word I’d read in books but wasn’t used to hearing. What’s she talking about? Is she talking to me?
I looked up. Arol was leaning over the rail of the staircase spiraling down to the main office from the loft, where Kro, in headphones, was working at his desk. She fixed me with an impish grin.