by Heron, Farah
Someone yelled my name. Samaya was standing on the other side of the ride, waving her hands frantically to get my attention.
I mouthed, “What?”
“They’re announcing the winners soon!” she yelled. She pointed at the ride. “Grab those two and meet us at the stage.”
What two? I looked at the ride.
And sure enough, Juniper and Leanne were sitting on the tulip seat of the spinning-flowers ride. June was holding a bunch of deep-red tulips. And her and Leanne’s lips were locked in a kiss.
I smiled, feeding Rowan the last doughnut from the box before standing. It was time to go see if we’d won the Bloom.
EPILOGUE
BACK IN THE GARDEN
Two months later
We didn’t win the Bloom. Neither did Addison and her squad, much to Mrs. McLaughlin’s disappointment. The team with the rabbit sculpture made out of a chair won, which made me think that, yeah, Agnes Chiu was a bit biased, but not in a direction that helped us. Also, I kind of side-eyed Rowan and Leanne’s second-place win last year.
I was disappointed for Rowan, though. He was about a month and a half into the landscape architecture program now, and the win would have meant a lot to him. But he said that realistically, he couldn’t take time off school for a trip to New York. He’d known the architecture program would be a lot of work but hadn’t realized just how ridiculously intense it would be.
And as for me, without Christopher Chan judging, there was no benefit to entering the Grand Floral Cup, anyway. Plus, it turned out I was also incredibly busy with my final semester of high school and with a new job in Toronto. I was taking a full course load at school plus one credit in online school so I could still graduate a semester early, and I was working twice a week at Nilusha’s studio, helping her with a new line she was developing. I’d sent her a picture of me next to our finished Bloom sculpture, and I had to admit, it made me laugh that it wasn’t the stunning garden-party gown made of flowers and greenery that I’d designed that inspired her new line, but instead the T-shirt I was wearing, the one Leanne and Juniper had made at Staples in the middle of the night using stock images and totally the wrong font.
Basically, Nilusha’s new BHATT line was T-shirts, sweatshirts, joggers, and loose dresses with modern lines and busy floral prints. She said no one but me could help her with it, and she wanted me as a full-time intern from when I finished school in February until I went to university in September. She said together, we were going to make serious waves in the Toronto fashion scene. She was even helping me with a fun little side gig.
Gia had called Shar to tell her she wasn’t coming back to Bakewell after the Dasha Payne photo shoot. She apparently dumped Cameron by text. I still saw her around school, and we weren’t exactly enemies or anything, but we weren’t really friends, either. We said hi in the hallways, and we had an awkward conversation when I dropped off the few things she’d left behind in the tiny house. She messaged me on Instagram a few times, but once she found out I wasn’t designing or doing photo shoots of my own stuff anymore, and that Nilusha used real fit models instead of random friends for her fashion shoots, she stopped contacting me. I had no idea how or what Matteo was doing, since I didn’t follow his Instagram. As for Dasha Payne, another hot new influencer had taken her throne as the one everyone sucked up to the most, but I wasn’t interested in that game anymore.
I was still planning to apply to FIT in New York but had also researched, and was planning to apply to, Ryerson University and Ontario College of Art and Design, both in Toronto, and LaSalle College in Montreal. After a recent campus tour, my top choice was OCAD. But I was leaving my options open.
Juniper and Leanne were officially dating, and very happy, much to Samaya’s and my utter delight. June was keeping Strawberry the rabbit in Rowan’s greenhouse, which, to be honest, I thought was a pretty big commitment so early in their relationship. June had recently asked Leanne to come back to town for prom in the spring. I was planning to make June’s dress. Not the yellow one she’d wanted as a child, but a deep-purple gown that was a similar shape to our Bloom sculpture. I’d also been assigned to make, or at least to help source a tailor for, Leanne’s outfit—a tailored suit in a floral fabric I’d designed that had little white bunnies popping up between flowers. Last I’d heard, they were reading each other chapters of fantasy books over FaceTime, and June was holding her phone up to Strawberry’s hutch so Leanne could say good night to him.
And June’s brother? He and I were still dating, too. Rowan had settled in well in Toronto, like I knew he would. He proudly wore his plant shirts on campus, and it took him only three tries to take the subway to meet me in Scarborough without getting lost. I tried to visit him whenever I was working at Nilusha’s studio downtown, since his dorm wasn’t far from there, but sometimes he was working late in the architecture lab. We did manage to get together most weekends, though. We went to museums, galleries, and movies and shopped together. We talked about school, our families, our futures, and everything else. I’d honestly never been so close to another person. Ever. Rowan fast became the best friend I’d ever had—as well as the best boyfriend, of course.
Mid-October, I got my parents to agree to let me go to Bakewell with Rowan to have dinner with the Johnstons for the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday. We weren’t really a turkey family, anyway—Mom had tried to make a tandoori turkey once, but it was so dry she said we’d go back to kuku paka the next year.
I wanted to stay in the tiny house while there. Both Shar and the Johnstons insisted I could stay in their warm indoor guest rooms, but I needed to be as close to the garden as possible.
And yes, even though it was October, and probably too cold for it, Rowan and I met in the garden at eleven on Friday evening after we drove up from Toronto in his car. He had a blanket under his arm, and I brought my camera with the new fifty-millimeter lens I’d bought specifically for taking pictures at night, and a tote bag that held a surprise for him.
He grinned huge when he saw me. “You and your camera. Isn’t this how we met?”
I put my camera and tote down and put my arms around his neck so I could kiss him. I could never get enough of kissing him. I still couldn’t believe that this guy, this brilliant, sensitive, wickedly talented flower-loving guy, was mine. Not to mention he was hot as all hell.
After Rowan helped me get some night shots of the garden, we lay back on the blanket in our heavy sweaters under the stars. The stars didn’t overwhelm me anymore. But I still held his hand. Things were just better that way.
“Rowan?” I asked.
“Mmm?”
“When we first met, did you ever imagine we’d be back here for Thanksgiving together?”
He chuckled. “When we met, all I could think was, This beautiful girl is covered with manure. I wasn’t exactly thinking about Thanksgiving.”
“And all I could think about was that your face was wasted on those clothes.”
Rowan leaned over me and tickled my side. “The nerve!” he said. “And you won’t even give me that Stormtrooper shirt back!”
Of course I wouldn’t. It was my favorite now.
We play-fought for a bit, which evolved to making out for a bit more. I finally pulled away, grinning. “Speaking of shirts, I have a surprise for you.” I got up, turned the light in front of the greenhouse on, and grabbed the tote bag. I handed it to him. “This is for you,” I said.
He grinned as he opened it. It was a gray T-shirt with an art image printed on it of mostly stylized flowers in lots of muted colors, with a brown-skinned couple in the foreground gardening and tall buildings in the background. I’d drawn the image myself, and Nilusha had helped set me up with a supplier to get it printed onto shirts.
“You made me a T-shirt?”
“No. Well, yes, you can have this one, but look.” I handed him my phone so he could see my first-ever e-commerce site. “House of Tahira has officially opened for business,” I said. “So far only one collection—a line of T-s
hirts with prints inspired by urban gardening. Some proceeds from their sale will go to a collective that teaches gardening to kids in at-risk neighborhoods in Toronto.”
His face was full of awe. “That is so cool, Tahira.”
“Read the name of the collection.”
“Rowan Tree Collection.” He beamed. “I have my own T-shirt line!”
“You do! You can even help me pick some pithy sayings to put on some of them.”
He admired the T-shirt again. “You’re amazing. I have tons of ideas.” He reached over to kiss me, pulling me down so we were lying on the blanket, his arms around me, and my head on his shoulder. I nuzzled into his University of Toronto sweatshirt.
He sighed happily. “You know I love you, right?”
He said it often, but I liked to hear it as much as possible.
I squeezed him. “Yeah, and I love you, too.”
He held me tight. “I know.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For me, some books grow like wildflowers . . . where just the hint of a seed is all that’s needed for a beautiful, miraculous story to emerge. Others need a spark of inspiration and then care, cultivation, and nurturing to bloom. Those books can grow into something more complex than I thought was even possible, maybe because of the extra tending they needed to grow. This book definitely needed that extra care. Maybe because it was such a departure for me.
I’d always seen myself as an adult romance writer. But I have a reader in my house who craves love stories with swoony happily ever afters even more than I do. Problem is, that reader is my thirteen-year-old daughter, and I’m not okay giving her my adult romances yet, despite the fact that my adult books are not explicit and are probably PG-13. Also, despite me reading adult romances by the time I was thirteen. And those were not PG-13. (Shhh . . . don’t tell my mom.)
But anyway, my daughter wanted a book about kids like her—third-generation Canadian brown kids with immigrant grandparents instead of immigrant parents. Kids who aren’t struggling with culture clashes or dealing with conservative families, but who are still finding out where they fit in the world. She wanted their warm, happy love stories. So thank you to Anissa for being the spark of inspiration for this book.
Thank you to my agent, Rachel Brooks, who was incredibly excited and supportive when I came to her with the wild idea of writing something in a new age category. Her editorial feedback on my submission was invaluable. Thank you to my editor at Skyscape, Carmen Johnson, for her unwavering passion and commitment to this project from day one. To Susan Hughes for her detailed and thorough edit, and to Bill Siever for the copyedit. And thank you to the rest of the team at Skyscape, from the art team, to publicity, to sales and marketing—it was comforting to know I was in such good hands for this book. Thank you to my friends who beta read, Roselle Lim and Laura Heffernan, for being there for me when I needed feedback. I couldn’t have done this without you. And a special thank-you to my desi writing crew: Namrata, Mona, Nisha, Falguni, Suleikha, Sophia, Sonali, Kishan, Suleena, Sona, and Annika—we are changing the landscape in romance . . . and I am proud to be a part of it.
Thank you to my parents; to my kids, Khalil and Anissa (who, yes, I thanked above, too, but she’s going to be thrilled to be mentioned twice); and most of all, to Tony. He’s my partner, my brainstorming buddy, my coparent, my everything. Behind this author is a husband holding her up and making sure she’s getting enough sleep.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2021 J. Heron
After a childhood filled with Bollywood, Monty Python, and Jane Austen, Farah Heron constantly wove uplifting happily ever afters in her head while pursuing careers in human resources and psychology. She started writing her stories down a few years ago and is thrilled to see her daydreams become books. The author of Accidentally Engaged and The Chai Factor, Farah writes romantic comedies for adults and teens full of huge South Asian families, delectable food, and most importantly, brown people falling stupidly in love. Farah lives in Toronto with her husband and two teens, a rabbit named Strawberry, and two cats who rule the house. She has way too many hobbies, but her thumb is more brown than green. For more information visit www.farahheron.com.