A Wall Between

Chapter 39

Abra nodded as he leant his arms on the other side of the counter. "It makes sense. Between everything you're doing in the neighbourhood and helping with deliveries, I think having the temp work as well was just pulling you in too many different directions and burning you out. Honestly, I've been thinking about dropping it as well. I was just waiting for you to do it first so that we wouldn't both be cutting that out of our weekly income at the same time."

"Oh," Cooper said. "Sorry, I didn't realise you were waiting on me. Why didn't you say anything?"

"I think sometimes when someone's on their way out of something, they can be the last one to realise. I wanted you to be able to come to the realisation that you were done with it on your own terms in your own time."

"Thanks. I've been thinking about it for a while, but I don't think I really realised just how much I'd come to dread getting thrown into random jobs that I may or may not be very good at or in the right frame of mind to focus on. I mean, that's the whole thing I signed up for and it's worked better for me than a real job would have, but man is it so much less stressful to walk a dog or mow a lawn or deliver food to charming old people who love to gush over what a great cook you are."

"And I'd say that's working out pretty well for us so far," Abra said. "There's enough work here for us to get by, and when you're in your element, you can get a lot done."

Cooper took a deep breath in and let it out. "Yeah. I mean, I know, I guess, or I wouldn't have left. I just don't want to mess anything up for us right now. Everything's going so well."

"We're not teetering on the edge of any kind of collapse. We've got money saved up and landlords who really don't want to kick us out. Sasha's parents are pretty invested in this working out for him, too."

Cooper nodded. "So am I. He seems so much happier now."

"He's in the backyard with Ellie, planting some things. Why don't you go join them?"

"We got plants?" Cooper asked, already hopping off his seat. He heard Abra laugh as he headed for the sliding glass door that led outside.

Cooper found Sasha and Ellie out in the backyard, sitting alongside one of the garden beds with a bunch of punnets scattered next to them, some empty and some with plants still in them.

"Cooper!" Sasha called out. "We're making a herb garden for Abra. It's way cheaper to just grow your own fresh herbs than to keep buying them, you know."

Cooper picked up a mint plant that was still in its punnet and inhaled its scent. "And they smell so nice."

"Mmhm," Sasha said. "We're digging slowly because there are lots of worms and we don't want to hurt them."

"I now understand why my parents just lied and told me that worms become two worms when they get cut in half," Ellie said as she carefully drove the trowel into the soil and scooped some out to make a hole.

Sasha carefully extracted one of the herb plants from its punnet and passed it to her.

"Thank you," she murmured as she took it from him and snuggled it down into its new hole.

Cooper picked up one of the empty punnets to fiddle with. "I quit temp work."

"Finally," Ellie commented.

"That obvious, huh?" Cooper asked. "Abra said he knew it was coming."

Ellie shrugged. "It was pretty obvious, yeah. Abra's cut his hours way down, too, but I'm going to stay for now. Make sure we have some stability just in case so that Abra can go all in on this meal prep thing. It's nice to see him so excited about something. Not even just as a way to make money. He's genuinely so into just... making sure people have tasty, nutritious food."