Chapter 48: Yaron

We spent most of Saturday morning working together, in silence, broken only by instructions and the occasional sailor’s curse from Vee, who tripped over branches.

I laughed at her, but it didn’t bother her; she just rolled her eyes and worked harder.

When we cleared a path to the backyard, we looked at each other and smiled in satisfaction.

She was breathing rapidly from the effort. Her hair, always perfectly straight in the images I saw of her, was wavy from the sweat under her cap. Her lips were shiny. She was still gorgeous, even with that Raven Black look I hadn’t gotten used to yet.

However, at that moment, she was just Vee; there was no trace of the celebrity who made the covers. And I liked spending time with my friend again, more than I wanted to admit.

“What would you do with the house if it were yours, Yaron?”

I had daydreamed about it many times. “I would build a room back here for my practice with an independent entrance. You could see the trees and flowers through the windows. The backyard is huge, quiet and private, the perfect place for my patients to relax and open up.”

Vee smiled. I guess she remembered all the fantasies that had filled her head when we were just two kids.

“I’d put lanterns here. I’d make a path of light that reaches all the way to the entrance and always shows us the way home.”

She brushed her chest with her fingers.

“Here, I’d sit every afternoon after work, listening to the birds, while you read adventure stories. Pirates, cowboys, space monsters, mutant bears. Whatever you prefer. And if those stories don’t exist, you’d make them up for us.”

Somehow, before I could realize what I was doing, Vee had become part of my daydream.

Vee looked at me, her eyes sparkling with a life I hadn’t seen in her since she came back.

“Then, when it gets dark, we could watch the stars with a telescope or just lie on a blanket, holding each other and whispering soft words in our ears,” I said in a soft murmur.

She had a dreamy expression on her face.

“What do you think?”

Vee smiled widely and looked at me in a way that made me shiver. “It’s a lovely dream, Yaron,” she said, her voice almost breaking at the end.

Then, whatever I saw in her disappeared.

“Do you want a cup of tea? I bought several boxes with different flavors for you.”

“Sure. Thank you.”

We went into the house, sat across from each other, and drank in silence.

Being away involved many losses that I had to adapt to. One of the worst was missing the small things, the things that normally go unnoticed, like the moment we were just having.

I took a deep breath, and said, “I like the smell.”

“The smell of tea?” she asked, puzzled.

“No, the smell of the house,” I replied.

Vee wrinkled her nose. “Really?”

“It smells like you, Vee. It smells like our childhood. Brings back lots of memories. If the house were mine, I would renovate it, of course, I would open the kitchen to the dining room, for example, but I’d try to keep it as close to the original as possible.”