Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
He sent a text and got a reply a few moments later. “Lark and his boyfriend Dylan are going to help me. Lark is very crafty, and Dylan is studying to be a landscape architect and has access to a lot of great stuff.” I had no idea what kind of “great stuff” he could possibly be referring to, but sure. “I’m meeting Lark at a hardware store in an hour. But before I do that, is there anything around here I can use?”
“There are a couple of boxes of ornaments, a few strands of lights, and a Christmas tree stand in the garage. Help yourself to anything you need.”
He seemed concerned. “I don’t want to use anything that’s going to make you sad.”
“Don’t worry. After the divorce, my dad went out and bought some pretty basic ornaments for our tree, since my mother kept the ones we had growing up. They’re not sentimental heirlooms or anything.”
“Okay. Just making sure.”
“I appreciate that.”
He surprised me by throwing his arms around me and exclaiming, “This is going to be so fun! I’ve never gotten to decorate a whole house before. I promise to do my best and not make it super tacky or anything.”
The important thing was that he enjoyed himself and felt more at home here. If it ended up a little tacky, I’d just have to deal with it. Besides, how bad could it be?
Pretty bad, it turned out. That afternoon, Embry and Lark returned from their outing wearing matching Santa hats and lugging some enormous shopping bags. I tried to hide my frown as they unpacked a bunch of stuff onto the living room floor, including several boxes of purple lights. I had to ask, though. “Why purple?”
“Because they were left over from Halloween and on sale for ninety percent off,” Embry explained, “and because they match the dragon.”
“The what?”
Lark pulled a smashed box out of one of the bags and held it up to show me. The words eight-foot inflatable dragon were emblazoned above a picture of a cartoonish purple creature. It had orange flames shooting from its mouth, and it was sitting up on its haunches, like a dog begging for a treat.
I wanted to be open-minded, but what the actual fuck?
There was an orange clearance sticker on the box. It told me it had been marked down to nineteen dollars, but it also said it was damaged. When I pointed that out, Embry produced a roll of duct tape. “One of his horns is torn off, but it’s not a problem,” he assured me. “Once we patch him up, he’ll inflate just fine.” Awesome.
Dusty was circling the bags and sniffing everything, and when Lark pulled the dragon out of the box, the dog growled at it. I agreed with that sentiment.
I had serious misgivings about all of this, but I tried not to freak out about it. So, I had to live with a janky, patched up dragon in my yard for a few weeks. My neighbors would think I’d lost it, but so what? My dad had been friends with almost everyone on the block when I was growing up, but those families had moved away one-by-one. Now I was surrounded by strangers. Their opinions shouldn’t matter to me.
Embry held up a package of plastic clips and said, “I found these for when we go to put the lights up. They slide under the roof shingles to avoid damaging your woodwork. We’re going to use a staple gun around the windows, but we’ll staple the side of the trim, not the front of it, so it won’t show.”
I asked, “Is Dylan going to help?” Dylan was a former firefighter, and I knew he’d put safety first.
Lark nodded. “He’ll be here soon. He’s borrowing some equipment from an arborist friend of his.”
Embry paused and looked up at me. “That reminds me, is it okay if we block the driveway? You probably won’t be able to get your car out until tomorrow.”
“The car was my dad’s, and I only use it once in a while. Block away.” He thanked me and fired off a quick text.
A few minutes later, I heard the beeping sound of a truck backing up, so I went over to the window. As a dump truck tilted its bed and deposited a huge pile of branches in my driveaway, I muttered, “What the hell?”
Embry joined me, and as the truck lowered its bed and drove off, he said, “Oh, good. The greenery is here.”
“So, that was intentional?”
“Yup.”
“I’ve got to be honest,” I said, as I turned to him. “I’m not sure about all of this.” That was an understatement. I was on the verge of panicking.
“Trust me, Bryson. I promise you’re going to love it.”
That was really what this all came down to—trust. Was that something I was capable of? Apparently we were both going to find out.