The Rhubarb Patch

by Deanna Wadsworth

  He glanced at Scott. What should I get you for Christmas?

  He answered himself immediately.

  A ring.

  Marriage had never been an option before, but watching Scott, squinting and hunched over his computer, he could easily see marrying him. Every day being just like today. Perfect and in harmony.

  Scott looked up, maybe sensing his gaze on him. He scrunched up his face. “Why are you staring at me?”

  Phin chuckled and put his sticky pot in the sink and filled it with hot water and soap. “Just thinking about how much I love you. How lucky I am.”

  This whole honesty thing Scott and Phin had agreed upon felt good. He liked being comfortable enough to say “thank you,” “I love you,” and “I’m sorry”—the three phrases he’d long ago realized were the hardest things for people to say. But he could say them all with Scott, and Scott did the same. They both wanted honesty so much, pride had been checked at the door.

  Scott grinned and put his glasses on top of his head. Phin liked the way Gary had been cutting his hair. It was a perfect fade, not a stitch of imperfection. “Oh, is that all you were thinking?” Scott asked, a naughty glint of teasing in his face.

  “Yup.” He kept thoughts of wedding bells and matching gold rings to himself.

  “I’ve just been reading a hot sixty-nine scene between S’Jon and Derrek, so you know where my brain is.”

  Phin scrubbed the pot with a dish brush, then stopped midscrub. “You know, I’m a fan of S.D. Howe books. And seeing as I’m sleeping with the author, maybe he would let me get a sneak peek at what happens before anyone else.”

  Scott leaned back his chair onto the back two legs. “I can email it to you.”

  “Nah, I prefer paper books.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “I could go home and print it if you really wanted.”

  “Would you?”

  He laughed. “Sure, but it will take an hour to print. Probably use all my ink.”

  “I can get you new ink,” Phin said excitedly. He really needed something to keep his melancholy mood at bay now that the jelly was finished. And nothing helped him escape like the imaginary world of a book.

  “Okay, lemme finish up these last chapters, and I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks.” Phin was beside himself with excitement. While Scott insisted readers didn’t care what happened after the story ended and they only wanted the excitement up until the happily ever after, Phin wasn’t so sure. After all, he was living in the after the happily ever after, and he couldn’t be, well? Happier.

  As he finished cleaning the kitchen and prepping it for dinner, he was excited—until he felt guilty for feeling happy. His gaze drifted to Katie’s bowl. He hadn’t had the heart to clean it and put it away. He could all but hear Nancy saying to him once more: “You know it’s okay to move on. You can’t punish yourself for happiness.”

  Realizing he was being as stupid as he had been about the glasses Tom bought in Sonoma, Phin walked over and picked up her two bowls. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Scott watching him. Thankfully Scott said nothing as he washed them tenderly for the last time, then dried them with care. Though they didn’t match the crystal displayed in his hutch, he set them inside, next to Aunt Nina’s favorite bud vase.

  Maybe one day there would be another little schnauzer to eat out of the bowls. Until then, they would wait with everything else special to him.

  “I love you, Phin,” Scott whispered.

  Wiping away a tear, he smiled. “I love you too.”

  Scott went back to work on his computer, and Phin went outside to water the garden.

  Watering took a good thirty minutes or more. At this time of year, the harvest and the bounty was incredible. He found a dozen bell peppers—small and paltry because of the extreme heat they’d had in July—six zucchini, four fat black beauty eggplants, and another sixteen large Italian tomatoes. The overabundance of cherry tomatoes required a second colander, completely filling it to the top.

  He glanced over at the little mound at the corner of Scott’s barn, where the sod had dried to an unappealing brown over Katie.

  “Bet you miss these cherries, eh?” he asked her. “Hopefully Aunt Nina is letting you eat your fill in her garden.”

  The image pleased him but made his eyes sting. Wiping his face with his forearm, he continued to gather all the cherry tomatoes. Maybe he would roast them and run them through the strainer to make tomato soup. Scott said he loved Campbell’s.

  Wait till he tastes mine.

  Scott laughed when he brought the two overflowing colanders of produce and set them on the counter.

  Phin waggled a humongous zucchini in front of his jeans. “Check this out.”

  “You’re such a dork. Are you gonna can all that or sell it? You’ve already been canning nonstop ever since Sister—” He cringed. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Mouse,” he assured him, trying to hold on to his smile. “You can talk about her.”

  “I know,” he whispered, then cleared his throat and pointed at Phin’s bounty. “Seriously, babe. You planted a lot of stuff. You started this garden for one person. Granted I’m here now, but still.”

  “Yeah, it’s a lot. I think I’ll put some out at my produce stand.” He’d dragged a sheet of plywood to the end of his driveway last week and laid it across two saw horses with a sign that said Produce. “I already made twenty bucks, and now I don’t have to think of yet another recipe for zucchini.”

  “I still can’t believe people don’t steal your money.” Scott had been thoroughly intrigued that people paid for his vegetables and eggs on the honor system, leaving money inside a coffee can.

  “That’s because this is Gilead, not Detroilet.”

  “I never lived in Detroilet,” Scott countered.

  Phin laughed and began washing his bounty. “You know what I always say. If there’s not a bunch of cornfields or woods in between city limits, it’s all just one town to me.”

  “Did you ever get on Pinterest?” Scott asked. “I bet you’d find new recipes on there to can all that stuff for us this winter instead of selling it.”

  “No, I kinda forgot about it.” The notion of having Scott to cuddle up with this winter pleased him. Scott liked his cooking, and that pleased him to no end too. “Maybe I will check it out. I always wondered if I could can ratatouille.”

  “Isn’t that a Disney movie?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll make it, then you’ll see.” Chuckling, Phin walked over to his laptop on the desk in the corner of the kitchen and fired it up. “What’s the website? Pinterest dot com?”

  Intrigued, Scott came over. “Yeah, it’s really easy. You can search for recipes. If you like them, you ‘pin’ them onto boards you make.”

  Phin found the website no problem and decided to set up an account.

  “While you pop your social media cherry, I’m going back to my house,” Scott announced. “I just emailed the book to Sharon. I’ll print it, and then you can tell me how terrible it is.”

  “Don’t play self-deprecating just to get compliments.”

  “What if it sucks? Every time I feel confident about a book, reviewers hate it. When I think it’s just okay, they love it. You should see the reviews from the last book. Some are horrible.”

  “I believe your editor told you not to read reviews unless she sent them to you.”

  “Yes, well,” Scott said, scooping up his computer, “I like to torture myself sometimes. We writers are a bunch of masochists.”

  “You’re the dork.”

  Scott laughed, then went back to his house while Phin learned Pinterest.

  In a matter of ten minutes, Phin was in love. He knew this could become a serious addiction, especially during the winter when, deprived of gardening, all he could do was think about it. He found recipes, canning tips, and even gardening ideas. While reading a recipe for sofrito—a Puerto Rican cooking base—an alert popped up.

  S.D. Howe started
following him.

  Though silly, he was very excited Scott wanted to follow his boards, so he clicked on Scott’s page and followed him back. After a moment of perusing, he realized Scott only shared photos of half-naked men, geeky stuff, and weird photographs he called “Story Inspirations.”

  Scott’s page also had a link to his Facebook.

  Though Phin didn’t use Facebook, he was not clueless about it. After all, he’d invested in Facebook years ago. Just because he didn’t use social media didn’t mean he dismissed how incredibly profitable it was.

  He clicked on Facebook, and though it prompted him to open his own account, he figured out how to ignore it and look up Scott. His profile picture was a selfie he must’ve taken in Phin’s garden, which made Phin chuckle. He scrolled through Scott’s posts, mostly a bunch of pictures with funny sayings—memes he thought they were called—and occasional links to his books or blog posts.

  Then something caught his eye.

  Country Update #106: It’s a sad day out here in the country. We lost Sister Mary Katherine. Mr. Phineas and I buried her in the rhubarb patch, right where I destroyed his first plant. It’s quite possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever done. #crying #RainbowBridge #awful

  Seeing that Scott posted the loss of his cherished pet on Facebook left Phin feeling confused. He understood Likes meant people had read and acknowledged the post, so part of him was glad to see it had over three hundred cry faces, Likes, and hearts. The picture Scott included in the post was the one where she had stolen the asparagus a few months ago.

  Phin knew people on social media shared personal things, but he didn’t know how it sat with him seeing his baby on Facebook. He scrolled down further through Scott’s Facebook and found more Country Updates. Some of them made him chuckle, but the further he went back, the more he became utterly humiliated.

  Country Update #18: My insane neighbor is on his hands and knees picking violets out of his grass….

  THE WHIR of the printer slowed as Scott entered the dining room. He was either out of paper, or the book had finished printing. The top page of the stack read Chapter One.

  “That took forever,” he muttered, carefully picking up the stack and adding it to the first pile. The printed manuscript was two and a half inches high, so Scott had put a rubber band around it. He’d been smart to use page numbers in case Phin lost his place.

  He gathered up the manuscript, flipped off the house lights, and made sure to lock the door before he headed back home. He stopped in his tracks.

  Back home?

  Sheriff Bentley had said there was no real threat, so Scott could have slept at his own house, but after they lost Sister Mary Katherine, he hadn’t wanted Phin to be alone. And Phin hadn’t seemed in a hurry to push him out. So he stayed. It was a wonderful sensation—even though he owned a house—to walk up the back porch with the feeling of coming home.

  Like it was their home.

  Scott actually had a notion about renting his house and moving in permanently with Phin. Was it too soon? They’d been friends since April, but technically they’d only been a couple for seven weeks—not that Scott was counting. Was it premature to want to be with Phin every waking second of every day? Was he being stupid like his mother and thinking the latest guy was perfect—

  No! Phin was far from perfect. But maybe he was perfect for Scott.

  Unable to hide his happiness as he bounded up to the porch steps, Scott entered their house. “All printed and done,” he announced. “Just promise to go easy on me.”

  The expression on Phin’s face was not one of pleasure.

  Scott hesitated, setting his laptop and manuscript on the table. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was looking at your Facebook page.”

  He let out a chuckle. “Oh, did Pinterest get you so hooked on social media that now you have Facebook too? That’s how it happens. Pretty soon you’ll be on Snapchat.”

  Phin did not laugh. “You know I’m a private person, so how do you explain your Country Updates?”

  Scott hesitated, unsure why Phin had such a cold, stern look on his face. “I’ve been writing those since I moved out here. They were fun, entertaining actually.”

  “So it’s entertaining to mock me for running out in the yard in my underwear?” Phin asked. “Or talking about me gardening drunk? Or putting my dog’s death on your Facebook?”

  The sharp edge in his voice made Scott’s stomach drop. “I’m sorry, Phin. We weren’t a couple when I wrote most of those things. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a way to entertain people so they like my posts and read my stuff. We laugh about it, you running at me in your skivvies all the time.”

  “But that’s private, when it’s just us. It’s not funny to mock me to strangers,” he countered, standing up.

  For the first time since the day they met, Phin’s intimidating size made Scott take a step back. “Seriously, it’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s a big deal to me. I don’t like my life, my humiliations, or my emotions broadcasted across social media.”

  “I’m sorry,” Scott said, startled by the gravity in Phin’s voice. “I didn’t put anything up about us after we became a couple.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “And that’s supposed to make it better?”

  “You’re really this pissed about something so stupid?”

  “It’s not stupid to me.” Phin turned his back on him and put his hands on the island. “I’m so mad that I can’t talk to you right now or I’ll say something I shouldn’t.”

  “Seriously?” Now Scott was starting to get pissed.

  Phin said nothing.

  “Come on, it’s just Facebook.”

  Not meeting his eye, Phin headed into the pantry.

  “Don’t walk away and pout,” Scott said. “This is stupid.”

  When Phin didn’t answer or come back into the kitchen, Scott felt his temper battle with an overwhelming desire to just apologize and beg Phin to forgive him. Brent used to “punish” Scott by not talking to him for days if he was mad. It drove Scott insane until he was literally on his knees begging Brent to forgive him.

  But he and Phin were open and honest with each other. They didn’t play games, did they?

  “Come on,” he tried again. He took one step toward the pantry, then stopped, needing Phin to be the one to come out first.

  Scott would not beg.

  The longer he stood there and the longer Phin stayed hidden in the pantry, the angrier and more determined Scott became. “Oh, so this is the game you’re gonna play? The silent treatment?”

  Again Phin said nothing.

  Scott snatched up his laptop, hesitating a second before deciding to leave the manuscript. He headed to the door. “Phin, I’m sorry I wrote stuff about you on Facebook before I knew you,” he said, well aware it was a backhanded apology. “But I don’t play the silent treatment game anymore. If you’re not gonna talk to me, I’m going home—” You’re supposed to already be home. “—until you’re ready to talk about this like an adult. Good night.”

  He wanted to wait, to see if Phin would come out and tell him to stay and talk it out, but he refused to be the old Scott. With determination, he pushed open the door and walked back to his house.

  Chapter Thirty

  SCOTT’S FEET pounded on the gravel and his breath came short.

  He was pissed.

  Last night he’d gone home upset, but the more he thought about it, the angrier he’d become.

  How dare Phin punish him with the silent treatment for doing something before they were a couple? Yeah, maybe some of the posts about Mr. Phineas in the Country Updates were too personal, but they were also funny.

  Scott didn’t do anything wrong.

  He started this run determined to beat his anger out on the pavement, but when he got to the Stop sign at the end of their street and saw Phin’s Eggs 4 Sale sign and the spot Scott had dug up that rhubarb-lookalike weed, he stopped.

  “Dammit!
”

  Scott was too pissed to even run. He turned around.

  Just because Phin didn’t understand the nuances of social media and the constant need for entertaining material to post didn’t mean Scott had done anything wrong.

  For the love of fuck, Phin ran at Scott in his tighty-whiteys and garden boots! Scott had said more than once: Don’t be the kind of person random strangers tweet about.

  Well, Phin completely fit that mold the day they met.

  Alone in his bedroom, Scott had gone through all the Country Updates last night, trying to see which one had set off Phin and made him angry rather than seeing the humor in it all. As he went through them, he remembered how he felt every time he wrote one. At first, Phin had been this bizarre stranger, but as he read the posts, he could see their friendship developing. He could even identify when the posts started to show Scott falling in love. Maybe Phin was too shocked to see himself on social media to notice that.

  Well, Scott would show him.

  And then the stubborn bastard would owe Scott an apology.

  Pushing harder, he needed to get home as fast as possible. He reached his gravel driveway and ran to the back porch. Gone less than five minutes, he felt more winded than usual because he’d run so hard. After he grabbed his computer, he’d march next door and show that big bald bastard what was what. He would prove to Phin those posts showed how they fell in love.

  If Phin still wanted to hold this against him, well—actually Scott didn’t know what he would do.

  Letting the screen door slam shut, he went inside.