“Yikes,” I said. “So, it’s just us today?”
Devi walked over to the arranging station where she was putting the final touches on the bouquets for a wedding tomorrow. Normally it’d be all hands on-deck for wedding prep, but this was a small one, intimate. No lavish garlands or dozens of centerpieces filled with baby’s breath and carnations for the reception. Just a few small gatherings of blooms for the bride and her bridesmaids. Devi chose an anemone from the spread in front of her and slipped it carefully into the nearest bundle.
“Not just us,” she said. “You really think Mr. Green Thumb would let his babies go untended for the day?”
Speaking of godforsaken crushes. I glanced to the small, locked door at the back of the store that read EMPLOYEES ONLY and led to the on-site greenhouse: Owen’s domain.
Melanie’s twin brother had always loved flowers. Although “love” felt like too small a word for the innate connection he had to them. Mr. Green Thumb, indeed. He and I had had our own little garden, just the two of us, when we were young, but Owen was always the visionary. I would have been happy planting tomatoes or sweet peas or tulips all willy-nilly. Owen persuaded me to have patience. Even as a child, he didn’t merely plant a garden, he curated one and invited me into the process.
The seasonal cycles within that small, bounded bit of land were as much temporal touchstones for me as holidays or birthdays. When I think about Melanie, nine years old and reckless, crashing her bike and dislocating her shoulder, I see the carpet of geraniums that had just begun to open. The afternoon of a near-miss tornado one spring is, in my memory, colored forsythia gold against a gunmetal sky. I’ve caught only glimpses of the garden over the past year, though, ever since Owen and I stopped speaking. I don’t look when I pass by. I don’t want to know what he’s growing now. But maybe that’s why time has felt so slippery lately; I’ve lost my sun-warmed tether.
I situated myself at the register, determined not to think about him back there, his sleeves rolled up his forearms, dirt-streaked apron tied at his waist. He abandoned me. It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t feel for him. He made his own feelings explicitly clear on my last birthday. I stared out the shop’s large display windows. Behind the vases of pink camellias, sweet alyssum, winter honeysuckle, and snowdrops, actual snow fell steadily in the dim afternoon light.
“I hope it lets up before I have to leave,” Devi said, following my gaze. “These boots are suede.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, this is supposed to be the worst of it.”
Three hours later, the snow was halfway to the windowsill and still coming down.
“Jesus, look at this,” Devi said, handing me her phone.
Helicopter footage taken over I-75, then I-85, then I-285 showed all the major highways in Atlanta were at a complete standstill. Hundreds of cars in each successive shot were parked on the interstate, snow piling up around them as their drivers hunkered down, trapped.
“They’re gonna be out there all night at this rate,” I said, handing Devi’s phone back. I glanced at my own phone. No calls from Mom yet, but service was always spotty on construction sites. Dad had checked in an hour ago to say he was waiting at the office until the storm cleared to come get me. I had a feeling he’d be waiting quite a while. Which meant I would be, too. I tried to shrug away my irritation at being stuck here. It would do me no good to turn into Old Man Shakes Fist at Clouds. Although it did occur to me that if I had an accessible van and could actually drive myself, I’d have gone home hours ago. Teen Crip Shakes Fist at Capitalism, then.
“The local roads are even worse,” Devi said, turning her screen to me again. “It’s all ice. Completely impassable.”
“Oh god, look at the buses,” I said. A handful of school buses idled in the middle of the road, one of them having fishtailed, although it didn’t appear to have hit anything. Small, shadowed bodies were visible through the dark windows. Middle schoolers, I’d guess.
Shit, had Melanie made it home? She had Latin Club after school on Wednesdays, so she probably wouldn’t have headed home until the ice was starting to build. I grabbed my phone and texted her: you okay? you make it home?
I’m fine! she texted back seconds later. Still at school.
Couldn’t even get out of the parking lot without my car sliding all over
at school by yourself??
No, worrywart! most of us stayed, including Mrs. Pritchett. We might end up having to spend the night here??
whoa!
you know, i think “teens locked in school overnight” is how 80% of slasher movies start
wowwwww super helpful!
I was texting Melanie about my own snowed-in situation when Devi stood so abruptly her chair nearly tipped over. She stared at her phone in something like horror and something like anger. “Damn it! This is why you should never hire high schoolers. No offense.”
“None taken.”
She started gathering her things, shoving her phone and water bottle into her purse, searching around for something or other she must have misplaced. “My husband is stuck at work because half the night shift nurses couldn’t make it in, which, fine. But now our babysitter’s parents are demanding she come home ‘right this minute’ and our neighbors are stuck god knows where. Which means I have to somehow make it over a mile home on foot in a legitimate blizzard. In my suede shoes. Jesus fu— Wait.”
She turned to me, almost in slow motion. I could practically hear her brain churning as she stared.
“What now?” I asked, wary.
“I can’t just leave you, Eleanor! What if you . . .” she trailed off, eyes roving over me, as if the words she wanted were written somewhere on my person. “Need something? I can’t just leave someone like you alone. What kind of monster—”
Someone cleared their throat. “Disabled.”
“What?” Devi asked, turning again, this time so sharply I thought she’d break her heel.
Owen leaned against the arranging counter, arms lightly crossed at his chest, legs crossed at the ankle, like he hadn’t just magically appeared out of nowhere. “You don’t wanna leave someone disabled alone,” he corrected her. “But in any case, she’s not alone.”
His eyes found mine and held. The room felt suddenly small and too warm for a snowstorm to be raging outside. He smiled lightly, little more than a twitch of his lips, but the expression was so familiar it hurt. I looked away.
“Right,” Devi said. “Right, yes. Okay, and your mom would be cool with you looking after her?”
I sighed, but before I could tell her that I did not need a babysitter and I was sitting right here, Owen said, “You cool with staying with me, Nori?”
I flinched at the nickname. He gave it to me when we were six years old, during my brief seaweed obsession. I plowed through nori so fast Mrs. Otsuki started stocking my own dedicated container of the salty sheets in their pantry. He thought he was so clever. Eleanor, Eleanori, Nori. I hadn’t heard the name in so long it felt like it belonged to some other girl.
“Sorry,” he said, softly, seeing the change in my expression. “Eleanor.”
I was not cool staying with him. Definitely not. Every time I was around him my stomach got all knotted up and my face got heated and I was still just so angry with him. Who does that? Who stands up one of their best friends on their birthday? Birthdays were our thing. Melanie never understood our rabid need to one-up the other. To her, birthdays were for cake and a few presents and maybe a funky hat or something. But to us, birthdays weren’t a celebration. They were a competition to prove who was the better friend. We took the game seriously. Each year, a more outrageous gift, a more extravagant surprise. So, at first, I thought maybe his lateness was part of a plan. I waited. And waited. But there was no text. No call. Not even a message relayed via Melanie. Just me, telling everyone else to go get popcorn and seats, I’ll come in when Owen gets here, no don’t worry, at most we’ll miss the trailers.
Half an hour after showtime, Melanie came out and found me still in the lobby, staring at my phone as if he might step right out of the screen and explain. He’s been so distant lately, I said to her. Is he mad at me? She shrugged helplessly. Come on, she said, Becca’s wondering where you are. I followed Melanie into the dark theater where I sat next to my maybe-girlfriend (we hadn’t made anything official) and ignored the silent tears running down my face.
He never bothered explaining and I never bothered asking. I shouldn’t have had to ask. It was the principle of the thing. When he passed me in the hall the next day at school, he didn’t say a word. Just tipped his chin at me as if he hadn’t broken our tradition without warning or even acknowledgment. The message wasn’t hard to decipher. He didn’t want to be friends anymore? Fine. We weren’t friends.
Now, with his eyes steadily on me, waiting to hear if I was indeed “cool” with this development, I pushed away that familiar pain in my chest and gestured out the window. “Where else am I gonna go?”
“Oh, thank god,” Devi said. “Okay. You kids be safe, call someone if you need anything. Not me, obviously, but your parents or whatever.” She made for the door. Before she pushed it open, she took a long, steadying breath and whispered, “I’m so sorry, boots.”
And then there were two.
A heavy dusting of snow blew in as Devi blew out. Enough to leave a sheen on the pale pink tile once it melted.
“We should probably mop that up,” I said. “So no one slips.”
As soon as the words were out, I felt ridiculous. No one was going to slip because no one else was coming in for the rest of the day. Or rather, the rest of the night. The sky was fully dark already, the sun having gone to bed early as was its custom in January.
Oh god, bed. If we were stuck here all night (which seemed unavoidable at this point), where the hell was I going to sleep?
“Okay,” Owen said, then turned and made for the supply closet.
“I didn’t mean right now!” I did mean right now, of course, but that was before I realized mopping didn’t need doing at all.
He pushed the bucket over to the door. “But what if somebody slips?” he said, barely tamping down a teasing smile.
I stuck my tongue out before I could stop myself. Like perennials, old habits die hard.
He mopped methodically, moving from left to right, tile by tile. Every so often he’d dunk the mop into the warm, soapy water as carefully as you might dip a quill in ink. It’d been so long since I’d watched him work, I’d almost forgotten how magnetizing his focus was. Even something as rote as mopping a floor merited concentration, care. Soon, he was squeegeeing the last of the soapy residue away and the floor was dry once more.
“Crisis averted,” he said, beaming.
I smiled despite myself, then realized this was the longest conversation we’d had in over a year. My chest clenched and I grabbed my phone, pretending to text or tweet or whatever one does when one is pretending to be busy on their phone. I didn’t look up when the bucket’s wheels squeaked away toward the closet, or when the greenhouse door quietly opened and closed.
I didn’t look up until I was sure he wasn’t coming back.
Mom finally called a while later. The ringing startled me after an hour where the only sounds were the heater periodically turning on, and the low, steady buzz of the refrigerators along the far wall.
“’Bout time,” I said by way of greeting.
“What?” Mom shouted. Her end of the call was pure noise, all loud voices, clinking glasses, and blaring country music.
“Are you in a bar?” I asked, raising my voice to match her volume.
“No, I’m not in the car! Couldn’t even get off-site! We’re next door at a bar!”
“Oh, my god, with the yelling!” I yelled back.
“Hang on!” she said.
More shuffle and bustle as she presumably moved through the crowd before the noise blessedly dimmed.
“Sorry, I’m outside now,” she said. “God, it’s freezing out here.”
“Well, we are in the middle of an unprecedented snowstorm.”
“Dad said you’re at the shop? Is Mrs. Otsuki with you? Did you eat? How are you on bathroom? What are you gonna do about sleep?”
At the back of the store, the door to the greenhouse opened. Owen stopped suddenly when I looked up.
Sorry, he mouthed, pointing to my phone. I stared at him, my ears burning and faintly ringing.
“Did you hear me?” Mom asked. “Are you with Carol? Eleanor, CAN you HEAR me?”
“Yeah, no, she was sick today,” I heard myself saying.
I’m honestly surprised I managed to get that much out, because, for reasons only God herself could fathom, Owen was standing there in the doorway.
Completely shirtless.
His apron was still around his waist, but he’d undone the tie behind his neck, so the top half hung down over his khakis. Inexplicably, he wore his gardening gloves, too, thick leather affairs that looked more suited to swinging an axe than pruning some roses. Pants and apron and gloves, and nothing else.
I focused hard on the gloves. Willed myself not to look away, but my mind superimposed the other view over the top, like stubborn ink ghosting through a page. It didn’t matter that I was being good and holding my gaze steady, all I could see was skin and hard planes. And all I could think was: How did gardening give you abs?
“You’re there alone?!” Mom said, shouting again. Screeching, more like.
“What?” I pulled the phone slightly away from my ear. “No, I’m not alone.” Quite against my wishes, my eyes moved: up his forearm, bicep, shoulder, from the smooth curve of his neck to his disgustingly perfect jawline, until, finally, I met his eyes.
“Owen’s with me.”
I could see his throat move when he swallowed, all the way from the front of the store. And was that . . . was he blushing? He grabbed a tiny pot of gardenias from the shelf nearest him and studied the petals.
I turned my attention back to Mom.
“Oh, thank god,” she said. “You’re in good hands then.”
Great, now I was blushing. I did not want to think about Owen’s hands. His beautiful hands.
“What was that, honey?”
I froze. “What? I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re mumbling. Something about beautiful lands?”
Oh, my actual god, I had to get off this phone. “Mom, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Okay. Love you!”
I hung up so fast that the phone slipped and clattered to the floor.
Owen rushed over, still holding the gardenias, and knelt. He handed me the small terracotta pot and pulled his gloves off.
“Here,” he said, holding my phone out to me. With him kneeling like this, I was the slightest bit taller than him. It was nice not to have to crane my neck to look at him.
Carefully, I took my phone from him. “Thanks.”
He shrugged and leaned back on his heels. “Of course.”
“Why are you naked?” I blurted.
Surprise and horror and, weirdly, delight all ran across his face at once, until he seemed to settle on bemusement. “I’m not naked.”
I rolled my eyes. “Half naked. Whatever. You are partially disrobed.”
“Disrobed?” he asked, mouth twitching.
“Partially. Isn’t this still a place of business?”
Owen raised a brow, the laughter obvious in his eyes. I’d meant to sound harsh, but he clearly wasn’t intimidated. “I think it’s safe to say we’re closed for the night. Although, for your information, I was working. It gets hot back there with the heat lamps and humidity.”
That was . . . annoyingly reasonable. “Okay, fine, but why are you half naked out here?”
“I heard yelling,” he said. Then, softly, “I had to make sure you were okay.”
Heat rushed to my face. Embarrasse
d heat. “Because you’re stuck here being my babysitter for the night, right?” There was more venom in my voice than I expected, the words cutting more surely than shears through dried-out brush. I didn’t like how satisfying that felt.
But neither did I like how Owen looked as if he’d been slapped. “Is that . . .” He trailed off, shook his head slightly, then looked at me. “Do you really think so little of me?”
I didn’t answer. My silence said plenty.
He reached for the gardenias I’d forgotten I was still holding in my lap. His fingers slipped gently under mine, and I shivered. He didn’t look at me as he pulled the flowers away and stood.
“I keep a stash of ramen in the back. Do you want some?”
I nodded, but his back was turned entirely away now. “Please.”
“Still prefer beef over chicken?”
“Are you suggesting I might have lost my ‘refried’ palate?” I asked, exaggerating the final words.
He didn’t notice the old inside joke, one of our mainstays. Or if he did, he didn’t react. We’d been watching a Food Network marathon one summer afternoon and the chef suggested using beef broth instead of chicken for those with a more refined palate. Naturally, we rejected all chicken-based meals for weeks, citing our “refried palates.” Our mispronunciation was too cute to correct, but we were made to eat the chicken regardless.
“Beef would be great,” I said.
I ate my ramen alone. I’m sorry to say that it was delicious. Owen simmered it with some perfectly wilted bok choy and fresh scallions and topped the brothy noodles with a few thin slices of raw ginger, all from the little vegetable garden Mrs. Otsuki let him maintain for the store. Prim Roses & Daffy Dills wasn’t in the produce business, but fresh veggies did help get customers to the farmers’ market booth. From there, it was nothing to sell a bouquet or two of flowers to go along with the carrots and peppers and beets.
since when does your brother know how to cook?? I texted Melanie, mostly out of boredom.
Eleven o’clock and the snow was still falling, though gently now, more like the passing flurries we were used to. Even if it had stopped hours ago, though, there was no hope for making it home. The roads would be frozen at least until early tomorrow afternoon, the news said. We were well and truly snowed in.
Up All Night Page 5