did it go?” his grandmother asked, sliding a cup of tea toward him on the counter. The smell of lavender perfume and chamomile tea would forever remind him of her.
“As well as can be expected?” Simon hedged, sipping the hot tea too quickly. She raised an eyebrow and he sighed. “He was fine. I just... Whatever. You know.” Simon raked a hand through his hair.
His grandmother knew better than anyone how hard it was for him and how angry he got at himself for the hardship. She’d been the one he came to, red-faced and sweaty, when he’d nailed varsity soccer tryouts his sophomore year and then fled the field, never to return, when the coach noticed he hadn’t shouted the team shout with the other boys and forced him to stand on his own and yell it with everyone looking.
She’d been the one who found him in the basement he now lived in, tear-streaked and reeking of vomit after his eleventh-grade history teacher had forced him to give his presentation in front of the rest of the class despite his promise to do any amount of extra credit instead.
Simon swallowed, overcome with affection for her.
“The dogs are great, though. There’s this really big St. Bernard who’s a cuddly baby and throws himself around even though he’s probably two hundred pounds. And he has cats too, and one of them comes on the walks. Her name’s Pirate—she’s a calico with a black spot over one eye—and she leads the group like a little cat tour guide.”
Simon’s grandmother squeezed his hand.
“It’s so good to see you happy,” she said wistfully. Simon ducked his head, but a nice, comfortable kind of warmth accompanied his grandmother’s touches. She didn’t rush him the way his father did, didn’t try and finish his sentences the way his mother did, didn’t try and convince him to just try and be social the way his sister, Kylie, did. The way his teachers and school counselors had.
“Yeah,” he said. He gulped the last of the tea and put his cup in the dishwasher. “I’m gonna go get started on work. You need anything before I do?”
“I’m fine, dear. I’ll be in the garden, I think.”
Simon hesitated. His grandfather’s rose garden was the place Simon still felt his presence most strongly, and it was where his grandmother went when she wanted to think of him.
“Is it bad today?” he asked softly. He wasn’t sure if bad was the right word, precisely. After all, it wasn’t bad to miss the man you’d spent your life with, was it? It was merely...inevitable. But it was the shorthand he’d used the first time he’d asked, when he’d found her at the fence, one swollen-knuckled hand pressed flat to the wood and the other clutching the locket with her late husband’s picture in it, and it had stuck.
She smiled gently at him. “Medium.” With a pat to his arm, she left him to make his way down to the basement.
After a year, the graphic design business that Simon ran from home had become sustainable. The ability to make a living had been a relief, but the bigger relief had been the opportunity to quit his job working for the company where he’d dreaded going every morning and the cubicle that had left him open to social incursion from all directions.
Now, he conducted all his communications via email. He made his own schedule, which meant he could take long lunches to spend time with his grandmother—or, more recently, take time to walk Jack’s dogs. He didn’t mind working on the weekends to make up for it if necessary. It wasn’t as if he had anywhere he wanted to go. In the quiet of his basement office, without the anxiety of the company work environment, Simon could lose himself in color, shape, font, and balance.
Today, however, Simon was distracted. He’d get to see the animals again tonight and already his skin tingled with the promise of contact. After the third time he found himself staring off into space, he pinched his arm, hard.
“Stop it.”
He told himself that it was pathetic to be this excited about getting to hug some dogs or cuddle a cat. He told himself that he was an adult and taking a walk should not be the highlight of his day.
He told himself a lot of things, but it still took him longer than usual to finish his work.
* * *
That evening, back in the clothes he’d worn to walk the dogs