Sweetpea Novels & Stories

She’s not Lorna, he reminded himself repeatedly. He frowned deeper, and his voice came out sharper than he intended. “What are you doing?” Vespera’s smile didn’t leave her lips. “I wanted to thank you for letting me crash here, so I decided to make breakfast. I didn’t find much ingredients, but I thought I could whip up something decent with the little I found.” Ezekiel wasn’t having it. The whole gesture felt too personal, too invasive. “Did I ask you to make breakfast for me?”

Mr. Osei planted the sweet peas on a Saturday in April. She watched from the library window. He was in the south bed with the specific, focused attention of someone doing something that mattered and knew it. The back left corner. The same corner. The same variety. The same patient work of establishing what would take until June to bloom and would come back stronger every year thereafter. She went outside. He was kneeling in the soil. He did not look up. "Same variety?" she said.

she whispered, smiling. “Yeah. Don’t forget to take it along with you when you leave,” I said, setting the carton on the floor. I opened it and pulled out one of the sachets. “I tasted this with fries the other day, and trust me, it was soooo nice. Probably it’ll be good with these chips too.” “You sure about that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah, let’s just try it.” I tore open the sachet and poured a generous amount of the bright red sauce onto the chip she was holding, then did the same to my own.