everyone in other ways, and visited when I could. My grandmother, she was always so supportive of that.”
She shrugged a familiar shrug, the one that communicated the exact opposite of carelessness. Guilt and sadness and doubt, instead.
“I guess I always had two lives, in a way. Maybe I picked the wrong one, back then. Maybe I should’ve come back sooner.”
“Nora,” he cautioned gently. “Don’t do that.”
Even as he said it, he didn’t feel all that gentle. He thought about that dark home office, that tiny space she was allowing herself. He thought about going back to her place and shoving everything that wasn’t Nora’s into one tight, stacked-up corner, so she could see how much room she really had.
But even that was looking ahead, and he’d resolved not to do that tonight.
She sent him a wan smile. “I know.” She took a breath, her posture lengthening. “I’m glad I came back when I did. I’m glad I get to be here now.”
It was a good reminder, that now, and for the next few minutes—while he and Nora and the few remaining patrons made their way around the paths that would take them toward the exit—they only talked about what they saw around them, Nora snapping photos and once asking Will to take one while she stood beneath a gigantic palm, her arms stretched out wide, her mouth opened in an exaggerated O. When he handed the phone back, he joked about how she’d need to make a slideshow of all the photos she’d taken, and instead of laughing she set a finger to her chin and said, entirely without irony, that it was a really good idea.
“I could use my projector,” she said. “So I could show everyone at once!”
Don’t think about it, Will, he told himself. Do not think about going to a damned plants slideshow in the backyard of that building. That is not your future.
When an overhead announcement signaled the conservatory’s coming closing time, they made their way up the steps toward the greenhouse’s exit, Nora ahead of him, her phone already raised.
“Let me get one more of this one,” she said, not even really to him, and so he stood where he was, watching her climb a couple more steps to get the angle she wanted. He smiled as she bent close, by now knowing that this was one of the pictures where she was trying to show something to Emily about spores. He thought of Gerald and Sally, hoped their date—Will had given his boss three different ideas—would go as well as this one had.
“They’re gonna kick us out of here,” he said, teasing.
“I’ll get it done faster if you quit talking.”
He chuckled at this familiar ribbing, something they’d practiced during their various feuds early on and perfected during their projects over the last few weeks.
He was looking up at her when it happened—when her brow furrowed, when her lips pulled to one side. When she reached out the hand that wasn’t holding her phone to wave away a fly that buzzed lazily around the very leaves she was trying to photograph. When she clucked her tongue and said quietly, “Get. Get!” with a familiar trace of laughter in her voice.
When his heart hiccupped.
Like he was fifteen all over again.
“This reminds me,” he said, before he could think. Before he could yank himself out of the past he’d lulled himself into thinking was so safe tonight. “Of the first time I ever saw you.”
She straightened, turning to face him, to look down at him, and he almost wanted to check his hands for cherry tomatoes. But no—they were where he’d left them, still in his pockets, still in control.
“You mean the morning I knocked my plant over?”
Unbeknownst to her, she’d given him an out with this, and he could’ve taken it. Of course, it could’ve been that morning. Of course he could’ve said, Yes, when you knocked your plant over. But for some reason, down here like this, Nora above him like that, he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
So instead he said, “No. Not that morning.”
She blinked down at him, something seeking and intense in her eyes, and he knew he was going to tell her. He didn’t have to tell it all, but he knew he should tell her this, on this night they were breaking their routine.
“The day I came with my mom, when I was fifteen. I saw you, up on your balcony.”