“Tell me, what is it you love so much again? Is it the lying to nuns or being humiliated by the people who pay you?”
My tone was light, but I was defensive of that truth, of that stark difference between us. And she matched me for it, folding her arms across her chest.
“There are moments of joy, or I wouldn’t put up with all the bullshit.”
“Do you love it as much as you did when you first started?” I pressed.
“No. But isn’t that every job? Doesn’t everyone have an illusion of what things could be? And isn’t that illusion always wrong? Nothing is what it seems. Life is never what you think it’s going to be.”
The shift in her meaning didn’t go unnoticed by me. I didn’t think she was referring to our jobs anymore.
“Fair enough,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean you have to accept where you end up without fighting for your own happiness.”
Something tightened her face, a pain she didn’t want me to see. The memory of accepting less than she was worthy of, I hoped. Because I never wanted her to accept anything less than absolute happiness. I wanted her to fight for the things she wanted and abandon what she didn’t.
Even if that meant she abandoned me.
Not wanting to get any closer to that truth, I turned for another wall of the greenhouse where I kept my lilies, grabbing her hand along the way.
“What are these?” she asked as we neared a cluster of lilies between shelves, the plants waist high and branches heavy with flowers. They hung in arches, the petals extending back to the stem, making it look like a paper lantern of white, speckled with deep purple.
“Lilium duchartrei. Exotic, difficult to grow. I’ve had this plant, oh … five years or so. You can see I’ve been breeding it, but I can’t ever seem to get it to hold the shape. It always unfurls when the flowers bloom.”
She must have noted the disappointment in my voice and squeezed my hands gently. “What are you trying to accomplish?”
“Beyond getting it to keep their shape, I’d like the petals to be a different color. I’ve tried my hand at breeding it with dozens of species, but I have yet to do it. This plant is about to bloom though, see?”
I brought her closer to my latest experiment, brushing back the leaves to expose a pod that had begun to form.
“Maybe this one will be it,” she said hopefully. “And Kash, I’m sorry. For pushing you. I just don’t know any other way to be. I mean, look at me. I decided at sixteen that I was going to be a wedding planner, and every single thing I’ve done since then has been to move me in that direction. My goal in life has been to make a living—a good living—working in events. I’m just wired this way, I think. To decide something and chase it with all the tenacity I have. Which is a lot, by the way.”
“Who, you?” I teased.
“Anyway,” she said with a smile, “when you’re that intense about something, it’s hard to understand someone’s lack of intensity, if that makes sense.”
“It does. And there’s nothing to be sorry for. Last I checked, two people could disagree without someone needing to apologize for it.”
“Force of habit. Ivy thinks I show love by arguing, so I feel like I apologize a lot.”
“Well, don’t. Not to me. You can save your apologies for your sister.”
With a soft laugh, she stepped into me, winding her arms around my neck. “So how often do people come up here to bother you?”
“Never,” I said, sliding my hands down her back.
“Good. Because all these pistils and stamens in your sex palace have me all kinds of worked up.” Her thigh rose to hitch on my waist. “So are you gonna pollinate me or what?”
And like the pimp I was, I did just that.
* * *
Hours later, I trotted down the stairs of my childhood home, smiling to myself, just like I’d been all day, the ghost of my memories replaying on a loop. Lila naked in my greenhouse. The smell of wet earth and sunshine. Her words and her way and the ineffable happiness she gave me.
Everything else, particularly anything regarding our permanence, I ignored like it was my duty.
I just rounded the staircase to the second floor when I heard Mom’s voice floating up the stairwell.
“I will not sign for that. I’ve told your kind before, and I’ll do it again—I refuse to accept that sanctimonious scrap of paper, and you can’t make me,” she said, ironically sanctimonious.
I sped up, wondering whose face I needed to turn inside out.
“Ma’am,” the weary voice on the porch said as I hurried into the entryway, “you can’t avoid this, so just do us all a favor and take the damn letter.”
“I won’t!” she said petulantly as I approached. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She started to shut the door, but the courier stuck her boot in the doorjamb.
“Take the letter, Mrs. Bennet, for God’s sake!”
I stepped in front of my mother to open the door, glaring down at the sullen girl who looked just as unhappy as my mother did.
“What’s this all about?” I asked the girl, ignoring my mother, who tugged uselessly at my arm.
“Kassius, it’s nothing. Come, come, it’s almost dinner. Aren’t you hungry? Jett is making a nice—”
I shot her a look over my shoulder. “Mom …”
She flushed. “I’m not taking that letter!” she spouted. “I’m not!”
“What is it, and why won’t you take it?”
“Because,” the courier said, “it’s from Bower Bouquets.”
The blood in my veins went cold at the mention of their name.
“Marcus,” I called into the house. Then, to my mother, I said, “Sign for that letter. Now.”
“B-but—”
“Mother. You cannot run away from whatever this is. So sign the letter, let this poor girl go, and let’s see what’s inside.”
She pursed her lips, shaking her head emphatically as she took a step back.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Marcus said, hands on her shoulders as he steered her toward the door. “Sign it.”
Her unadulterated fury at being handled was matched only by our insistence. But it was her knowledge that there was no way in hell she was getting out of it that finally broke her.
With an illegible sweep of the pen, she practically threw said pen at the courier. “There. Are you quite happy now?”
“Yes, thank you,” the girl said flatly, extending her hand with the letter in it.
Mom reached out to take it, but I snatched it first.
“Give that back, Kassius,” she scolded, jumping to scramble at my arm as I held the letter far out of her reach.
“Oh, now you want it.” I kicked the door closed, my face grim and Marcus’s set to match.
“What have you done, Mom?” he asked, sounding exhausted.
“I’ve … done … nothing …” she said between hops, arms outstretched.
Marcus and I made eye contact, and with the slightest of nods, I grabbed Mom with my free arm and set the other in Marcus’s direction for the handoff.
He snatched the letter as Mom began to screech unintelligibly. I made a few words and phrases, including a variety of uses of don’t, grounded, your father, I didn’t, and don’t you dare. Otherwise, I couldn’t make anything out, just a garbled string of dissent by a seemingly mad woman.