Super Bloom by Megan Tady

Author:Megan Tady [Tady, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Snow Globe

When Evian enters her apartment, she smells oregano, thyme, and homemade tomato sauce bubbling up in its pot, speckling the counter with red dots. In the kitchen, Cord is unsleeving a package of spaghetti, and her heart whacks itself against her rib cage as if someone stopped short in front of it.

She could get used to this.

Evian and Cord have begun shopping together, eating every meal together, and she is learning about him the way she ravenously devoured her anatomy books, absorbing every detail. While Cord had come across as reserved at the diner, he is chatty with strangers, engaging fellow hikers or a couple ordering coffee. He’d twisted around at the movie theater to ask a woman wearing a Cape Cod sweatshirt, “Where on the Cape?” As the previews started, Evian had elbowed him. “Have you ever been to the Cape?”

He’d smirked. “Nope.”

He had odd grooming habits, casual about showering but obsessed with flossing. He pressed Evian to floss, too, which only made her reject it more. Every night, he came to bed with a quarter-sized wet patch on his boxers just to the left of his penis. “Can’t you just spend a few extra seconds shaking it off?” Evian implored. He said he’d try, but there it was, as inevitable as the moon.

Evian was a few degrees more selfish than he was. Cord would take the scratchy blanket, the burnt piece of toast, the gross booth seat at the diner, and Evian sometimes woke in the night with a sinking fear that she would never be as giving a partner as he was.

“What do you even like about me?” Evian asked once, propped up on her elbow in bed, steering clear of the pee spot. It was a question she’d never thought to ask anyone before.

“I’m a fan of your entire catalog.” He gestured to the whole of her.

Last night, Evian had finally convinced Cord to show her some YouTube videos of him competing in rodeos. Turns out he was a big deal, had huge corporate sponsors, throngs of fans waiting for him after each competition, waving their cowboy hats for autographs. Watching the videos cracked Cord open, and he’d shared how learning to ride horses and competing in rodeos had saved his life. He’d grown up in foster care, rotating through more foster families than he did blue jeans.

“A lot of foster kids end up in jail. Or on drugs.” That was almost him.

His dream, he said, had been to open a rodeo training school for other foster kids, but getting badly injured was causing him to waver. “It can be a dangerous business,” Cord told her. “What if I’m just putting those kids in harm’s way?”

Evian listened, but she didn’t answer. Encouraging him to follow this dream would be encouraging him to leave. And she wasn’t ready for that yet.

She crosses the kitchen now, whistling at him. “Hey, cowboy.”

His eyes flick up at her, a wooden spoon in his hand. “You’re going to love me,” he says, bringing the spoon to her lips.

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