Cece bounces back to their room midway through brushing their teeth, catching me red-handed making their bed. He don't even roll his eyes at it, though, and beelines to their window. 'I have to show you summat now that it's daylight,' he gurgles through the toothpaste in their mouth and pulls the blind to the side.

I round our beds to get to it, standing beside them so that the kennel comes into sight from the left.

Its roof is covered entirely by a mural and though it's different from the harshness I'm used to, it's instantly recognizable as their work. The style is similar to the portrait they gave me, still bold and brave but full of colour. A turquoise stuffy and a dalmatian with a tennis ball in its mouth stand out against violet ferns on the end that's visible from here, the plant motif carrying on out of sight.

'Cece, that's incredible.'

Toothbrush jutting out of their mouth, they dig out their phone. 'Bobbi let me do it. Obviously, no one can see it since it's on the roof but it were mint. And I got some good pictures of it for my portfolio with a drone Quinn let me borrow.'

They hand me the phone to look through the photos while they return to the toilet at the other end of the corridor. I slide through the drone photos, zooming in on some of the details. When I finish, I move on to the drawings on their desk.

These ones aren't bloody either but they are dreary. They're of a character with green twists and a face painted in a sugar skull style though the mask is a moth's closed wings. They've got actual moths circling their head too. Below the character designs, I find a page with a comic book panel of the same figure fighting some sort of shadow monster, I assume, with vines that emerge from their hair and jacket sleeves–

'No, don't look at those!' Cece shoves me out of the table's way, hurriedly flipping the pages over so that some of the corners fold. 'This is just summat stupid I've been doing, it's no good.'

'I didn't know you liked comics.'

'I don't.'

Despite my curiosity, I move on to the orchid on their windowsill. It has flourished since I gave it to them a year ago. Flowers bud in my ribcage too.

My mood wilts no more than seven minutes later when Cece hugs himself halfway down the last flight of stairs. They root to the step, attention nailed to the open kitchen doorway. I nudge them with my elbow, a faint touch that he can recede from if he wants, but they look up at me instead, fear infesting their irises.

'You're alright. I'm here with you.'

I'm not sure what comfort that's supposed to provide, but Cece sticks so close to me that our arms brush all the way to the kitchen.

The dining room table has four other teens sitting separately as they eat their breakfast. Yan is alone at the round table crammed into the kitchen. Cece sits there too with the bowl of granola he pours for himself with a shaking hand, and so I do too.

Yan is elated by this. She offers me a sly smile as she leans forward to caress my forearm. 'My room is bigger than theirs, by the way. You're always welcome to–'

'Yan,' Bobbi interrupts as she steps in, 'don't sexually harass our guests.'

'I'm just having fun.'

Bobbi hums. She manages to be gentle but firm in a way I suppose only comes from three decades of experience with fostering. Just as I assume her ability to pay attention to everything in a room without seemingly looking anywhere comes from experience. Just now, her eyes flick to Cece spooning up musli and slopping it back into their bowl so quickly that I'm not sure it happens at all.

'Well, have fun in more appropriate ways.'

Yan snatches her plate of toast, jolting up with a scrape of her chair legs, and marches out of the kitchen to join the others at the dining table. 'You're such a fucking dictator.'

Bobbi turns to Cece. 'I blame you for teaching them all that word.'

He smiles faintly into his granola. 'Can't say I never accomplished nowt.'

            After the hour it takes for Cece to eat his musli, we climb up a hill along the perimeter of farmland. A few horses sniff at the spring grass, unimpressed by nature's offerings. Cece has Esther clipped to a thirty-foot lead, the other end fastened to their belt loop, and she sprints back and forth so much that I'm tempted to buy a pedometer for her harness. She must be getting at least five times as many steps as we are.

Cece runs with her at times and I realise that I've not seen him run for joy since he were five and I'd take him to the "park" across the street from the foster home he were in at the time.

The wind has mellowed from last night but still pellets regular gusts through the alders and I keep my hands in my coat pockets as we climb. I watch the grin blossom on their face each time Esther picks up a twig and throws it for herself or runs back to us with even her cropped ears flopping.

'I'm glad you like it here.'

'Like is a bit of an exaggeration,' Cece rebuts, not with snide but with their neutral blandness. 'But I don't hate it.' The next current of wind whips their head to face me. 'What happened with your– um– Joe?'

'I told ya. I ended it–'

'Before you ended it.'

They say nowt more to specify or prompt. We've stopped climbing and Cece's imploring stare burrows into me. What exactly are they asking? What's the right answer? Do I even have the answer? Because maybe it's not that I'm incapable of loving people, I'm just incapable of trusting them—ostracize myself and all that. But what's the difference? Either way, I'm faulty.

'I can't do it. I... I don't deserve it.'

I don't expect Cece to be able to untangle my words from the wind but the way their face hardens shows otherwise. 'Say that again and I'll shave your head. I only know what love is cause of you.'

I shake my head, swallow the mould from my tongue. 'But I should've been there for ya. Tried to visit more often. Phoned, not like that's hard.'

'Give your head wobble! In case ya weren't aware, genio, I intentionally never showed up when ya tried to visit. Definitely didn't answer the phone. Don't take credit for my accomplishments.'

Narrowed eyes rake up and down my body. 'This is about those careculos, innit?' they say, presumably referring to Mamá and Papá. 'They left cause they're shit. Nowt to do with us. That's what you said.'

I want to say it's different because he was four and I was eleven which is old enough to have been a disappointment.

'With me, don't reckon there's an option that ain't somehow wrong. Things could've gone different, but they wouldn't've gone any better. So quit feeling guilty about it.'

We stare at each other and though we've never looked that alike, at this moment, we might as well be facing mirrors. "You don't trust people not to ostracise you so you do it yourself." It's like a reverse game of hot potato; we will wrestle the explosive from each other to the end of time instead of tossing it and running for cover in the opposite direction.

It's so stupid now that I think about it and the next thing I know, laughter is bubbling out. Cece's brows pinch and the expression only feeds my hysterics, to say nowt about when he scowls.

'What's so funny?'

I have to bend over, abdomen aching and lungs empty. Cece kicks my shin.

'Quit laughing.'

I try to apologise through my gasped breathing, heaving air into my lungs to speak. 'Bobbi tells me that I have to trust you if I expect you to trust yourself. If I can't trust you, you'll never see yourself as a trustworthy person, and then you won't trust that you can be better, that things can get better. And Caleb has always told me that my problem is that I don't trust people not to fuck off, that I pick people who I know will leave so I can say I saw it coming. And Joe says I don't trust people not to think I'm awful if I tell them about myself.

'And I've never accepted that it could all be summat so small and cliché as "trust issues" that's the cause of all my fucking problems but I think they're right. And it's just– it's not funny. I'm not laughing at it, but like, it's so silly. It's so silly to think that we'll both live our lives like they'll all be swept from under our feet at any second because our parents are a bit shit.

'I'm not doing it anymore. I've just decided. Out of spite, if nowt else.'

Cece receives my spewed nonsense with an increasing look of worry over my well-being. 'You've nicked some of Yan's Ritalin, haven't ya?'

'No. But I love you.' I grab his head and kiss the space between their eyebrows.

Cece jolts back with disgust. 'What are you on? I'm supposed to be the screwy one, not you.'

'I love you.'

Their breaths are sharp. Esther still gallops up and down the hill and Cece is torn this way and that each time the leash ends and she spins around but his glare never unshackles from my gaze. Until they bridge our distance with a single stride and tackle me in a hug. He hugs me so hard that his muscles tremble.

'I love you, Nicolás.'

Lithops are a genus of succulents that mimic the appearance and texture of rocks to avoid being eaten by animals that graze in their proximity. Maybe we've both been like that. But we're allowed to bloom, to soak in the sun, to provide rest for pollinators, always giving and receiving love.

The soil has always been rich, the fruit always sweet. Our parents just wanted something else.

We separate only when Esther jogs over and jumps against us so that my knees buckle. My heart skips. I expect her to bite. But instead, she skips around until I consent to petting her. Cece drops to their knees to attack her with cuddles, giggling with such pure joy that the rush of orchids in my chest makes me want to cry.

They squint up at me, the sunlight brighter for the overcast where it multiplies.

'She seems sound,' Cece says and I don't have to ask to know they mean Joe. 'You should give it a go, proper—give her the agency to ostracize you herself, innit. What, you don't believe women can make their own decisions? Look at you maintaining the patriarchy.'

'Google says–'

'Who the fuck asked? Just tell her about your disgusting soppy feelings, you twat.'

Notes

Careculo: (lit.' assface') Spanish insult.

Ritalin: British brand name for methylphenidate a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant used medically to treat ADHD.

Lithops: Living stones. Succulents native to South Africa and Namibia.