Chapter 4
Two days before Halloween, Wes came home from campus with a surprise hidden in his bag. It wasn’t the most graceful, but he’d tried, and he thought it was at least functional, and a friend over in the Fine Arts department had been helpful as far as materials and space.
He hoped it would work. He hoped it wouldn’t be overstepping. He hoped Finn would smile.
He came in and set everything down, keys and bookbag and laptop. The rain had stopped, but the skies remained misty pewter, enchanted and luminous. Multihued leaves and vibrant orange pumpkin-spills and wheat-stalks bloomed from improbable corners, a bookshelf, a tall vase. They shone in shades of crimson and earth-brown and sunflower, joyous against the dark wood and light grey of Wes’s original preference for their hous
