Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“Yeah, I think I’m getting that. Do you know that guy?”
“Yup, we went to high school together. He…uh…means well?”
“Clearly,” Truman murmured.
***
That night, Truman was working on a spread in his bullet journal and listening to ShadowCast, which made him miss Horse. He’d given up on having a notebook for Ash. Ash didn’t write anything down, just seemed to remember everything. But Truman liked a clear accounting of everything, so he’d been keeping it in his own journal.
Now, when he finished the day’s entry for Thorn, though, he found himself jotting down ideas for a new section of his bullet journal on some scrap paper.
It started with doodles of flowers. Since he’d been spending so much time at Thorn, he’d begun appreciating them more. Especially since Ash kept sending him home with little bouquets. He sniffed the one Ash had made him today. It was a purple flower he always forgot the name of and some delicate Queen Anne’s lace.
He was sketching a border around the page, made of stems with the flowers exploding in the corners. Truman wasn’t the best artist, but his lines were minimal and clean, and he felt he captured the essence of whatever he was drawing. Once he’d created the floral border, he wrote: Stickers, dividers, bookmarks, printables, lists.
He stared at the list he’d just made and at the bouquet in front of him, then around Greta’s house, filled with carnivorous plants in all their strange glory.
He pulled out his phone and messaged Charlotte and Germaine.
What if I started my bullet journal Instagram with the goal of designing my own line of planner stuff?
Charlotte wrote back immediately: Yes, do it.
“Well, that was startlingly positive,” Truman muttered.
Germaine’s response didn’t disappoint: Hellllll yes you should you’d be brilliant!!!
Truman flipped back through the last eleven months of his bullet journal. There was a lot of material there. A lot of things that he could turn into pages people might like to buy and use.
He didn’t hate his job. It had a lot of advantages for him, which was great, and the work itself was okay. But the idea of doing it forever was depressing. What if this could be a way out? A way of creating a different cash flow that might eventually allow him to leave it?
He drew a bath and slid into the hot, herb-scented water. This time, it wasn’t a bath of sadness and wine but one of possibility, and he texted Ash: You should carry floral bath salts ;)
***
The invitation to dinner had been hand-delivered, slid under the front door when Truman woke up.
MAISEY AND DON OSGOOD INVITE YOU! A HOLIDAY DINNER, TONIGHT, 7:00 P.M. FESTIVE DRESS ENCOURAGED; GIFTS DISCOURAGED. WE’D LOVE TO SEE YOU THERE!
Tonight had been written in over the scratched-out date, so clearly most of the invitations had gone out earlier.
Ash was attending the dinner as well, he found out when he texted What does “festive dress” mean?, so they walked over together.
When they got to Maisey and Don’s house, it became clear that “festive dress” meant everything from Christmas sweaters to puffy-painted and bejeweled red turtlenecks, from spangled green dresses to somber tweed jackets paired with maroon ties.
Ash was wearing jeans and the pastel blue sweater that made him look utterly huggable. (“It said festive dress was ‘encouraged,’ not mandatory,” he’d explained when Truman asked what was festive about it.)
Truman himself had borrowed a red sweater that he’d found in Greta’s closet. He didn’t think she’d mind, but it was rather snug under the arms and a bit short in the sleeves, so he tugged them up to the elbow as if he was warm, though he wasn’t.
“Truman, I’m so glad you made it,” Maisey greeted them. “Sorry for the last-minute invite, but you weren’t even here when they went out.”
“Thanks so much for having me. Is this an annual tradition?”
“It is. We’ve been having these dinners since we got married. Is that Greta’s sweater?”
“How can you tell?” he said, startled.
“Greta wears it to this dinner every year. Even though the Russakoffs are Jewish, Greta always said she didn’t have any blue sweaters for Chanukah so she went with this one.”
Truman smiled at the idea that he and Greta had the same impulse, and as soon as they’d made their way inside, he took a selfie and texted it to her.
are you taking over my life!? she wrote back with a GIF from a movie he didn’t recognize that said SWF.
“So you see,” Ash said, “I’m wearing festive clothes because I’m wearing a Chanukah sweater.”
Truman smiled. “Did you know Greta wore this sweater here every year?”
“No. I haven’t been in years, actually.”
“Oh. Did you not get invited? How do people get invited?”
“Nah. I was gone for a long time, and then since I’ve gotten back…I guess I haven’t felt much like doing this kind of thing.”