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“You’re ready for this, right?” Willow gives Hunter’s hand an encouraging squeeze. “Gloves not too sweaty?”
He flashes the spare pair in his jacket pocket. Even as their months together turn into years, he still reddens when Willow shows concern for him.
“Am I ready to make a good impression on my future father-in-laws— fathers-in-law?” he asks through the conflagration on his face. “When the relationships with older men in my life have just started to be anything other than iffy?”
That forms the bulk of his resistance to meeting Willow’s dads, even though he’s learned so much about them. It’s easy enough to find excuses to be busy when cleanup of the Isles seems interminable.
“Whoa. Slow down there, liger. We’re dating, not engaged.”
“Yet?” Hunter’s eyebrow quirks automatically. He holds up a gloved pinky.
“Yet.” Willow winks and closes a pinky around his. This is the ritual, a long game of chicken with an inevitable end. They’ve already built intermingled futures and linked lives, but formalizing it feels distant and large, a moon with psychological swells as its tide.
“Okay no, my hands are swimming in here.” Hunter’s gloves catch and swell and narrow like a finger trap, so he peels them off and slips into the spares. He sucks air through the gap in his teeth. “Haha yep, it’s gonna go great!”
“You know how much they love you. And I might have helped them love you more.” Willow gives her cheek a coy touch.
“Oh Titan.” Hunter reaches for Willow’s hand and squeezes it to the tempo of his heartbeat. “You did not show them the O’Bailey photoshoot.”
“Never,” Willow says with feigned scandal, as if her scroll’s lock screen isn’t Hunter and Flapjack in matching Cosmic Frontier cosplays, Flapjack’s cyborg eye cracked to match the scar beneath it. “But actually no. We met our lifetime quota of gross couple photos on our trip to the Gland Canyon.” The eroded layers of bile and glandstone there were prettier than any painting. “I showed them the highlights and guard the rest jealously.”
“We can exceed the quota though, right? It’s just a minimum?” Hunter touches behind Willow’s ear, like he knows she likes.
She places her hand over his, careful not to touch bare wrist.
“I think I have at least another scrapbook or two in me this year alone, but not if we keep standing on my dads’ porch forever. Although that would give me time to water the plants.” With a circle of her finger, she irrigates a particularly parched fairytrap until its tongues drool again. “They always forget.”
“We should go in, but I have a feeling I’m going to mess this up. I have to read facial expressions, pay attention to tone, and make eye contact— but not too much eye contact.” Hunter’s pitch escalates with each item. “My head’s already buzzing like a hive of fire bees.”
“Listen to me. I love you when you don’t do those things and I love you when you make mistakes. Nothing you do could make me love you less.” She holds up a finger as Hunter opens his mouth to object. “Nope, I know this game. Anything you come up with now is something you wouldn’t do.”
“Okay.” Hunter frowns and puffs out his chest, faking it in the hopes of making it. “I’m ready to give it my all. An early dinner with Willow’s dads. Here goes nothing.”
He pokes the doorbell straight in the pupil of its rainbow-irised eyeball. Its brassy screams resound inside, a self-harmonizing high-low-high.
Gilbert and Harvey open the door almost instantly, overeager expressions not yet schooled from their faces.
“Hunter!” Harvey’s arms spread wide in welcome.
“No hugs.” Hunter winces. “Please.”
Gilbert guides Harvey’s hands down. “It was in Willow’s messages, dear. Not until he knows us better. We have to earn it, or you at least have to like us first, is that something close to right?”
Hunter shrugs a more or less.
“Sorry about that, I know better.” Harvey offers a fist bump, which Hunter returns. “I’m a compulsive hugger. An addictive embracer. Either you’ll get used to us or I’ll get used to this.” He taps his knuckles together.
“I’ll save you, Hunter!” Willow shields him. “Compulsively hug me, papa!”
Willow gets what she asks for. Harvey hugs her and rubs his beard against her forehead. She giggles. Hunter’s chest warms.
“We still need to cut the meat so the scarbecue cauterizes nice and crispy,” Gilbert says as Willow and Hunter take off their coats and arrange their shoes in the entryway. “So if you two want to, uh, vibe or chillax, that’s all groovy.”
Harvey snorts. “No one has ever used all those words in the same sentence before.”
Gilbert winks and blows him a kiss. “That’s why I used to do R&D for the Construction Coven.” He touches the empty area on his wrist where the sigil used to sit. “And I’m still an innovator!”
The walls are dense with photos, some replaced with mind tweezers: Gilbert and Harvey cut a slice from the top tier of their wedding cake. Willow’s hair brims with floral pins on her first day at Hexside. Willow and Gus pose like action movie stars, sunglasses on, finger guns at the ready in their Grom best. Willow speechmakes into the winged microphone she swipes from Perry Porter.
Hunter looks at all of them, pacing slowly through, noting the hand-written or camera-added dates. Willow’s life before he knew her gains layers, more shades and depth to the watercolor daubs of her past. She doesn’t talk much about who she was before, maybe to save him from awkward conversations about who he used to be, but his curiosity is ever present.
“Wondering about that last one?” Willow asks.
“I was looking at your Grom dress,” Hunter admits.
“Cute, right? But so scratchy.”
“What is happening in the last one?” Hunter points. “I know those walls. That’s the Conformatorium.”
“Gus’s dad was not happy when we first put it up. Papa was also pretty mad, but dad said I stood up for what I believed in and should be proud of it. And— what happened on Petrification Day, or I guess non-Petrification Day, is public record, digitally discoverable forever. I might as well own it, right?”
“Sounds reasonable.” Hunter’s face floods with color. That day, Belos had sent him to the La Sclera Tar Pits to retrieve stonesleeper fossils. He remembers hearing the historic petrification was interrupted and then called off, but didn’t get to watch the stream. He didn’t know it was her. Willow just got even cooler.
“Let’s put another picture up and see how long it takes them to notice.” Willow plots. She circles a spell and hangs a dark wood frame. “This one’s also a personal favorite.”
Hunter knows what it’s going to be. He would rather have shown them the O’Bailey photo from Willow’s summer scrapbook.
In the picture frame, they wear animal onesies, an axolotl for Willow and a droopy-eared lamb with a big pink bow for Hunter. Willow had judged his cardinal “too precious to share.” Lamb hoof-hand bent, Hunter jealously side-eyes the camera as he plants a kiss on Willow’s smile-puffed cheek.
Harvey peeks into the hallway, sneaking a glance at the new addition to the decor. “Does Hunter know about the roof?”
“No, he doesn’t. I mean, I don’t.” Hunter says. “What’s special about it?”
“What isn’t special, more like.” Harvey chuckles.
“I’ll show you.” Willow takes Hunter’s hand and leads him up the stairs. More photos meet them with each step: Young Willow sticks her fingers into a purple smudge, labeled “my first abomination goo.” Gilbert looks at a painbow through inside-out-proofed binoculars. Harvey gasps incredulously at a giant ice cream sundae, spoon in hand.
“When my dads were in college, they built a flyer derby workout room on the roof. Something about getting buff and tan at the same time? But once they had an only daughter in the plant track to spoil, it became my greenhouse too.”
Willow opens the door to a glass enclosure flooded with bright afternoon light on the cusp of turning thick and gold. Waffles and Clover zoom out before them, fluttering hummingbird-pace around every kind of plant Hunter could and couldn’t imagine. Flora of all shapes and sizes fills pots on wall shelves and under umbrellas, in strange jars or perpetually aflame. He didn’t know there were this many kinds of plants on the Titan, and he took a botany survey course to meet the Emperor’s Coven graduation requirements. His slack-jawed face carries his awe.
“My dads don't know how to do things halfway. I wasn’t kidding when I said they spoil me— dad and one of his Construction Coven buddies did everything here but the plants, and this was after they learned a bunch of Plant Coven stuff when I switched tracks.”
“Your dads are so cool.” Hunter sighs. “I want a parent who cares about what I want to learn.”
“They had this restored before they fixed their own bathroom. I think you’re about to get twice what you wished for.” Willow holds his hand.
“That sounds awesome.”
“It will be an adjustment. Camila made sure we didn’t want for anything, but my dads will just smother you with good intentions.” Willow drags her hand illustratively over her face, movement runny like a cracked griffin egg.
Hunter considers Harvey’s well-meaning attempts at a hug. “So if I told them I was interested in wild magic—”
“You’ll end up with a stack of stuff almost your height, thrifted from Half Price Spooks. You might have read half of them already.”
“But the other half will be new, you promise?” Hunter imagines the future she threatens, eyes aglitter.
“Promise. If they don’t get you a book, uh,” she spins her wrist, looking for the right word, “a book column, then I will.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
Hunter scrutinizes the patterns in the glass of the greenhouse walls. Spread branches and slender leaves repeat in every pane. He traces one to the pointed end. “Are these— green beans?”
“It’s a willow, silly.”
“Oh. Right.” Hunter blinks. “You were named after a tree.” Hunter says. The words wrestle with themselves over whether they want to be a statement or a question.
“I’m named after a pretty cool tree. Wild witches used it to make healing potions. And aphrodisiacs,” Willow winks.
Hunter blushes. “That would explain things I’ve been feeling.”
Willow blushes harder. “I was joking.”
Oh.” Hunter says into a bitten lip. “I wasn’t.”
“But anyway,” Willow regards him fondly. “The healing part was true! So, let me show you what we have here.” She takes his hand again.
“Everything on this side is edible, or at least won’t kill you if you swallow it, and everything on this side is poisonous, hazardous, flammable, or has lactose in it. Like this! It’s called dragon’s eye.”
Milky white and the size of a large grape, it has a hard black pupil on either end. She places it in the center of his palm. He rolls it over in his fingers.
“This is from a baby dragon? Did it kill your other dad or something?” Hunter claws the hand that doesn’t hold the dragon’s eye. “What drove you to be so cruel?”
“It’s not really a dragon’s eye, it’s just called that.” Willow calms her laugh as Hunter’s face blazes with embarrassment. “I’ll put killing baby animals in my things to do in my villain arc folder.”
Hunter squints. “You’re being awfully grim— I know I’m a nervous mess, but are you?” He wants to touch her, feel her pulse and her breath. It would answer his questions. Not all wants should be acted on.
Willow purses her lips and nods.
Hunter purses his lips back. “Want to kiss me and make it better?”
“You’re sweet, and you know I do, but we both know that if you can’t handle a hug right now, a kiss will make you miserable.” Willow takes a long breath in and out.
“You’re right. But I’d do it because you’re worth it.” Hunter pulls off one glove finger by finger. “I think I know what I can handle.”
“Hey! No self-sacrifice today.” Willow pulls at her braids. “Gosh, who needs coffee bean blood when you have screaming nerves? My body makes its own caffeine and it’s called adrenaline.”
Hunter squints. “Are you supposed to be this cheery about that?”
“Yes! We have the botanical technology! Have you heard of worrywort? It feeds on stress. It’s cute. Looks a lot like honeyberry to the untrained eye. It’s blue, like Waffles.”
Hunter frowns. “Doesn’t a plant that feeds on worry set you up to want to worry to take care of it? Feels like a bad incentive system to put in place.”
“The funny thing about anxiety is that it comes from nowhere that thinks about things like that. It’s an infinite power source for sweaty palms and heart palpitations. Let me show you the plant.”
Willow is sidetracked when a pot shatters, then another. Chirps and buzzing accompany the noise.
“Waffles!” Hunter yells. After seeing that his palisman isn’t hurt, then watching her nudge a cactus from a shelf, he scolds, “Behave yourself right now!”
“Clover, I’m not mad, just disappointed. I know you know better than this!” Willow makes a net out of vines. Clover flies into it, then bounces the other way.
Hunter paws at his face. “This is so embarrassing. I can’t believe it’s happening already, but it was just a matter of time.”
“You know why they’re doing this?”
Many more pots slide to their shattered ends as Clover knocks a shelf off its support. Willow’s eyes glow green. The plants sweep up the shards of their housing.
“So, okay, if your dads come across Passion and Palismen in the wild magic section of Half Price Spooks, they don’t need to buy it for me. I’ve read it. Turns out that, sometimes, the palismen of witches in love also exhibit, uh, courtship behaviors.”
More shelves fall. More pots break.
Willow clenches her teeth. “Waffles is going to survive this, right? Mating is rough for bees. As in, it kills half the participants,” she squeaks. “But birds should have it okay. At least Clover’s not a mantis?”
They look at each other and shiver.
“Honestly, I think they know more about, uh, the bird and the bee than I do,” Hunter admits. “Is that what it’s called?”
“Wait, look.” Willow nods.
Waffles’ wings are spread, one around Clover, the other guarding a pile of seeds, pillaged from various plants around the greenhouse. Her song is shrill but sweet, full-throated and full-hearted.
Hunter holds Willow’s hand, noting the feel of skin against skin, their fingerprints meeting. “Waffles can be stubborn and spunky at times, but it all comes from a place of love.”
“Hm, I think you have a type,” Willow teases.
”As I was saying.” Hunter’s cheeks riot red. “Our palismen will be fine. I don’t know if the greenhouse will be, though. All the plants are mixed up.”
The door clicks open. “Dinner’s ready,” Gilbert calls. He surveys the damage. “Oh, wow. Think the plants will survive until after dinner?”
“Nothing is burning or freezing and everything else is stable, so— yeah.” Willow nods.
Hunter squeezes her hand. “Worrywort or no, you’ll do great. They’re your dads after all. They already love you.”
He picks a deep blue fruit from a honeyberry plant sticking up in the dirt and pops it in his mouth. As he leads her down the stairs, the juicy mush of berry flesh whirls on his tongue. It’s unexpectedly sour for a plant whose name is so sweet.
*
“Willow grew the herbs, of course,” Harvey brags. “All straight from the greenhouse. That’s all the deliciousness you taste.”
“Papa, I’m going to blush.”
“No wonder it’s so good.” Hunter looks at her cheeks to verify. She does. “I’m sure your cooking helped bring out the flavor too!” Gilbert and Harvey nod their approval.
Hunter barely has time to impale several eyes of a rosemary-roasted potato with his fork before his prospective dads throw down the gauntlet:
Gilbert sets down his utensils with intention. “So Hunter, crazy hypothetical, but if you married Willow, would anyone change their last name?”
“Not you too.” Willow palms her face. “Here I was hoping you’d at least wait until dessert to ask the awkward questions. We’re not even engaged.”
“Yet,” Hunter and Harvey say in unison. They lock widened eyes. “He knows!” Again their voices match each other syllable for syllable.
“Don’t make me reanimate the rosemary!” Willow rasps.
“I yield.” Harvey looks at his plate. “Never too early to test the waters.”
“How he approaches the response is more important than what he says. It’s like coven interviews were.” Gilbert winks.
“And we are genuinely curious,” Harvey adds.
“Could you actually reanimate the rosemary if you wanted to?” Hunter whispers.
“Dunno.” Willow’s shrugs. “I’ve never tried.”
Hunter swallows his bite of potato. “The thing about last names is— I don’t really have one. I mean, there’s Deamonne, but Darius has this whole my lineage ends with me! thing that I want to honor, even if it’s,” he pauses to find a diplomatic descriptor, “dramatic. Besides that, there’s one I could inherit, but it’s not really mine.”
“What is it?” Harvey asks.
Hunter bares his teeth as if picking out greens caught at the gumline. “Wittebane. But I’m not Hunter Wittebane. Never ever. And Willow Wittebane? Not happening, no way.” He slams the table. Dishes rattle. The silverware sings its soft echo. “We’re not going to share a last name with the man who ruined my childhood and almost ended the world.”
Gilbert and Harvey glance dumbstruck at each other. For a moment, the only sound is the metronomic heartbeat of the wall clock.
“I’m sorry.” Harvey offers both palms up in reconciliation. “It’s alright son, we really were interested in your answer. We won’t ask again.”
Gilbert mumbles, “And I said between this and how many kids do you want? this was the less controversial option.”
Hunter’s attention snagged earlier. “Son?” He looks to Willow, then looks into his lap. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but Hunter Park has a nice ring to—”
His throat wraps tight on itself. His breaths go shallow, his gaze glassy. He falls out of his chair and grabs at his stomach. A wave of vertigo breaks over him, seafoam and confusion.
Willow helps him up, gradual as a sunrise. Leaning on her shoulder, he walks in stuttering steps to the living room couch and lies down armrest to armrest. Gilbert grabs a pillow depicting the members of the Park family as teeth and tucks it under Hunter’s head.
Above the couch, more family photos watch him with cheery expressions frozen in time. He makes eye contact with baby Willow, who lies on a ladybug blanket and stares with dilated pupils at a new and exciting world.
“What’s happening?” Hunter asks baby Willow. He shares her curiosity, but only he has a nervous system gilded with panic.
“Breathe!” Harvey and Gilbert urge in unison.
Willow presses the back of her hand to Hunter’s forehead. “He’s feverish.”
“Even though we made up, Amity doesn’t really want to be my friend again.” Hunter announces in a voice that isn’t his. He folds his arms and shivers. “Why did I say that?”
Willow drapes a weighted blanket over him. The Latissa Furies mascot, a violently grinning, big-haired woman with too many snakes on her person, falls across his body, as does fifteen pounds of beads.
“Hunter, did you eat anything in the greenhouse?”
“It was just a honeyberry. It didn’t taste anything like I expected, but since you grew it, I thought it was supposed to taste like— oh no.” Hunter winces and swallows acid. “The grudgby team will make fun of my bangs.” He clamps his hands over his mouth.
Willow’s eyes widen. “Sweet Titan, Hunter! That wasn’t honeyberry. You were eating my worrywort!”
“Oh bother,” Hunter croaks.
“What can we do?” Gilbert asks.
“Um, okay.” Willow flaps her hands to ventilate her thoughts. “Worrywort side effects, let’s see. If you don’t soothe the worry, it gets worse and worse until you have an indefinitely long panic attack, spiraling unrealistic fantasies that become nightmares.”
“Titan.” Hunter and Harvey mutter, again eerily synced.
Willow drags her knuckles across her forehead. “There's an antidote to this, but— shoot shoot, I just took the serumseed back to Hexside after the kindergartners got into the plant homeroom and got attacked by all the brutabagas.”
“Luz will go back to the human realm and I won’t be able to—” Hunter bites his lip, tries to gulp the words down as his whole body tightens. He squeezes his eyes shut. Light through the windows plays on his eyelids.
Willow leans over him, kissing distance. “You need to say whatever the worrywort makes you say. Holding it in will only prolong this.”
Hunter squeaks like air through a pricked balloon. “—talk to her again and we won’t be friends anymore.” He takes off his other glove and touches Willow’s neck. “This isn’t fair. All of your worries are coming out of my mouth and everyone has to listen to them.”
“Fair, schmair. It’s okay, really. These are all settled stories, and I tell my dads everything. I think they’ve heard anything that could come out of my— your mouth.”
“We don’t need to be here if we’re just going to get in the way,” Harvey says.
The next worry seeps into Hunter’s mind. He bites his lip, but does what Willow told him to do. Words gush out in a slurry like water through a broken dam. “My relationship with my dads will get worse after I switch to the plant track because they’re in abominations and construction and won’t know how to support me.”
Willow and Hunter make panicked eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths.
“You tell us everything, Willow?” Harvey takes a breath and holds it in, lips pressed in a line contorting with inscrutable emotion. “Gil, I’m going to cool off.” Harvey pats Willow’s shoulder on the way out. “You got this, Acorn. Hang in there, Hunter.”
“Acorn?” Hunter whispers, a thin grin growing as his eyes water.
“It’s— ask me later,” Willow tries to frown away the heat in her cheeks. “I resolved most of these, or they blew over, so if I tell you how they turned out, the worst of the symptoms should go away.”
Hunter nods, relieved to have a plan. “I’ll never stand up to Boscha,” his mouth says.
“Boscha, your friend from spellementary school?” Gilbert asks.
“Friend? More like the biggest bully who made my life miserable for years.”
“She what? Willow, why didn’t you tell us? We could have done something!”
“Now’s not the time, dad.”
“How dare she!” Hunter reaches for his staff, confused when it doesn’t materialize right away. Trailed by Clover, Waffles flies down the hallway and stiffens, dropping the rod into the curl of his fingers. “If only I had been at Hexside earlier, I could have done something about it.”
“Hey.” Willow holds him down against the couch with just a fingertip to his chest. “No!” Her eyes glow green, then cool to normal. “Phew, um, I still have some feelings there, but spinning scenarios about the past is a bad use of our brains right now. She does not get to live in our heads rent-free. Besides, I’m glad I met you when I did.”
Hunter starts to smile, then spasms. “What if Clover gets termites! Ack!” His hands shake. He drops the staff on his face.
Waffles alights softly on his forehead and moves sweat-pasted strands of hair from Hunter’s brow.
“Hi,” Hunter whispers between Waffles’ concerned squawks. “I’m not having a great time right now.”
Willow smooths feathers on Waffles’ crest. “That one was easy. Anti-mite varnish, once a year application. We still have half a spray can, if you want some.” She points upstairs.
Clover hums approval. Waffles warbles.
“Will the Magenta Mucosa file for club registration with Hermonculus?” A sour taste slides down Hunter’s throat. “Who are the Magenta Mucosa? They sound— familiar.”
“One of Boscha’s ploys. She tried to get Skara and Viney to start a new flyer derby team, with her as the captain.” Willow scrunches her face in disgust. “Not only did she try to take my teammates from me, she couldn’t even come up with a different theme and had to steal yours.”
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but instead of being flattered, I really want to beat her up.”
“Hey, if I’m not killing baby dragons, you’re not beating up insecure jocks.” Willow sighs. “You could have scared the snot out of her. But that’s not who you are anymore.”
“You know, I would have done it for you, back then, if you had asked me to.”
Willow pauses. “I don’t know how I feel about you saying that. I’ll deal with it later.”
Hunter cups a hand over a mouthful of silence and saliva. “Oh Titan toes, this one feels big.” He swallows air, seasick while still.
“Keep your breathing steady,” Willow urges. “It’s unpleasant, but it has an end. I think I know what this one is.”
Hunter gulps like he’s going to throw up. In his throat grumble-mumbles a whine-moan. Waffles sits on his stomach. Hunter focuses on how she rises and falls to steady his breathing.
He opens his mouth to gag but only words come out.
“What will I do if Hunter doesn’t love me back?”
Willow’s stance immediately shifts. “Hey.” She holds his shoulders and scrutinizes his face. “You’re lying to me, Hunter Park.”
Hunter squeaks, a foolish smile working its way to his cheeks. A double burn warms his face, from being caught, from being named into her family.
“You like that?” Willow winks. “I thought I’d try it out. But look, I know what worries I put into the plant, and I can tell you I was never worried about how you felt about me. I know where your heart is.”
With fingers in a vee she traces parallel lines between her eyes and his chest. Hunter finds his heartbeat with his palm, as if he could scoop it out and offer it to her.
“Yes, there, but also here.” Willow gestures to his face. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it. You with your big heart are trying to save me from my past self. It already happened. I can take it.”
Hunter shakes his head. His mouth squiggles.
“Don’t lie to me. Even if it makes your face all blushy and irresistible, it’s bad for you.”
“Okay,” Hunter mouths. Passing the words feels like a ghost walking through him: “I won’t be able to protect Hunter from Belos.” He shivers and holds Waffles close, thinking of Flapjack. She nibbles at the tattoo on Hunter’s wrist. She can always tell when Flapjack is on his mind.
Willow sits on the edge of the couch cushion. “Oh Titan. That’s something we haven’t talked about yet.”
Hunter closes his eyes and shakes his head. “It’s okay, we know how that ended.”
“Yeah, badly! I felt so guilty and inadequate. You bet I felt like a — mean fraction word.” Willow whispers their euphemism, knowing in their brains its space fills with the real thing. “I mean, we’re here now, but.” She knuckles her orbital bone beneath her eyebrows. “This is not how I wanted to have this conversation.”
“Hey,” Hunter strains, one hand finding her cheek. “I can’t tell you that you can’t feel guilty if you really want to, but look. If I don’t have to save you, then you don’t have to save me. You’re my girlfriend, not my bodyguard. Do you need to hear me say that I forgive you? Because I do. It’s nothing any of us could have controlled.”
“Forget Belos, I can’t even save you from a plant, and plants are kind of my thing!” Willow pulls at her braids. “This afternoon, you were nervous about dinner, I showed you the garden, and in the end that’s what led to this mess happening.”
“No no no, I won’t hear it.” Hunter sticks fingers in his ears. “First of all, your papa suggested we go look at the roof and I wanted to see it. If we do blame like that, back and back to some beginning, it’s really the Titan’s fault for slumping into the sea and setting all this into motion.”
Willow concedes with a laugh.
“You were nervous about dinner too. Come here. It’s okay.” He puts his fingers at the base of her braids and guides their faces closer. “We did our best, even though it was hard.”
“I’m going to decide to believe you, even though I don’t.” Willow forces a smile. If her face feels contentment, maybe her brain will fall for it.
“Try not believing me. Nothing you do could make me love you less. Anything you come up with now is something you wouldn’t do.” Hunter sticks out his tongue and bunches his eyebrows to say try me. “So there.”
Willow sits down. Hunter sits up, dragging the blanket with him. They lean against each other, sagging in the sallow wake of adrenaline.
The worries get easier. Hunter rattles them off. My succulents are going to die because I overwatered them. I flubbed my abominations homework and I already have a C minus. Gus will be sad when I tell him I lost his eraser. Can I tell him my plant ate it? The flyer’s license test is impossible. I hate pentagrammic parking.
Hunter’s stomach settles. His head clears. Beyond the window, the lowering sun sets everything aglow, illuminating jagged clouds with torn edges that all look like silver linings. “I think that’s it.”
Willow slouches with relief.
“Wait. One more.” Hunter touches her shoulder. “Your brilliant face is gold and limned with light and it’s not even the most beautiful part of you.”
“What the— woodcarver and wordsmith? Where have those words been hiding?”
“I don’t really know. I’ve never said limned before.” Hunter searches himself, glancing down for chewed remnants of a dictionary or thesaurus. “Would you believe me if I said they were from the worrywort? Because they really came from nowhere. They were good words, and I agree with them, but they weren’t mine.”
“Wherever they came from, I think that if you dropped lines like that every time you ate worrywort, we’d have to worry about bad incentives like you said.”
“Yeah no, I’ve learned my lesson.” Hunter shakes his head vigorously against the pillow. “Wait. Ohoho Willow Park, I know what happened. You wrote me a love poem, or a love letter, whatever, a love document. You got nervous. You fed it to the plant, and just now I said it!”
“What can I say? I can’t hide from my past.”
“That’s strange. Your love didn’t feel like nerves, it felt— full and satisfied. Why did you feed it to the plant?”
“So anyway,” Willow starts, “the story behind Acorn. You see, when I was younger, there was a song about being a little acorn on the ground. It was my favorite song for six months.” She points to a smaller photo on the wall, arranged around the baby picture like holes in lotus root. “And as a consequence, my Cryptmas costume for two years.”
“Are you trying to change the subject on me?” Hunter squints. He’s listened attentively anyway, immersing himself in the new information.
“I was, but it’s not working.” Willow purses her lips. “You’re right. I wrote it, agonized about it for months, and decided not to show you. Sometimes, plant magic is easy and words are hard.”
“It was nice,” Hunter sniffles, on the edge of tears. “I’ve never said anything like that to anyone before. No one’s ever said anything like that about me either. But let’s say we skip a couple steps and have you read it to me next time?” He finds her hand.
“Okay. Yes!” Willow doesn’t disguise her eagerness. “I might have a whole drawerful upstairs ready to go.”
Gilbert clears his throat. “Pardon the interruption. I couldn’t help but overhear. Should we get the guest room ready, or will your old room be enough? The bed is sort of small.” He narrows his eyes knowingly.
“It’s okay— dad,” Hunter says, deliberate with his words. “We should actually get going soon. It’s rare animals week at the palisman carvers’ and the Emerald Entrails are playing at Sinister Fields—”
“Yes!” Gilbert startles. “Which we’re going to! She must have altitude training to get ready for the series. Ah, memories. Back in my day, we only had the Knee. But anyway, the offer still stands, whenever you want to visit. It’s nice seeing you kids happy.”
“Yeah.” Hunter and Willow trade small smiles.
“By the way, you weren’t the only ones nervous about today. Did you know we argued for three hours about what recipe to make?”
Harvey walks in from the kitchen. “Argued? It was a spirited discussion, I’ll grant. We didn’t know if Hunter liked the taste of cilantro, and we still don’t!”
“Spirited discussion? Okay, amendment accepted.” Gilbert flashes thumbs up. “Point is, we were also worried about making a good impression. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay to want to be liked.”
“Speaking of which, next time the kids come over, I’ll be sure to tell Hunter about the time I made an abomination likeness of you.” Harvey’s grin is shit-eating.
“It’s a great story, if you’re not me,” Gilbert laments.
Harvey hands off glass containers of meat, potatoes, vegetables and gravy. “For what it’s worth, from our perspective, this afternoon went very well. We see how much you love each other.”
Gilbert points at the food container. “When you eat that, thinly slice the tentacles the long way thin, spread some snorseradish and just a hint of fire bee honey— delicious.” He kisses his fingers with a smack of his lips. “Park family recipe.”
“It’s from Penstagram.” Harvey smirks.
“Wait, what about the plants? The greenhouse?” Hunter panics.
“The plants.” Willow says, scheming. “Well, if it’s okay with them, I think my dads could use some practice with plant magic.”
“Okay with your dads or okay with the plants?” Harvey and Hunter ask at the same time.
“I need to stop doing that,” Hunter mumbles.
“I for one would love to practice plant magic with Harvey,” Gilbert says. “And if you get frustrated, I can give you feel-better kisses.” Harvey blows a kiss back.
“Dad!” Willow groans.
Harvey pretends to notice the new frame in the hallway for the first time. “This is a great picture. We should display it more prominently. Hey Gil! Look at this! I bet Hunter could carve palismen of these mighty beasts.”
“Papa—!” Hunter buries his face in Willow’s shoulder. “Actually, I got it. We were being innovators. Yeah, that’s it.” he adds with unpracticed nonchalance.
“I’m so proud.” Gilbert wipes a tear from his eye.
“We won’t be strangers.” Hunter shakes Gilbert’s hand, then Harvey’s. “Try the hug again next time, papa. I have a good feeling about it.”