“I used those pots of yours. It’s only been a day but...the plants don’t look so sick.”
She nodded. “Okay.” As she said it, she glanced over her shoulder at me and—
Wait, were her eyes wet?
I put down my guitar, vaulted the railing and jumped down to where she was standing, landing right in front of her. She spun around in alarm and... yeah, her eyes were wet. Wet and red. Someone had made her cry.
Out of nowhere, I felt my chest tighten. Rage sparked and then flared inside me, growing and spreading. Its heat was familiar, but its shape wasn’t.
I knew all about anger. I just wasn’t used to feeling it on behalf of someone else. My hand itched for my hammer. I was going to find the guy responsible and break his skull, not stopping until I’d ground him into powder—
And then I remembered I was no white knight. I was the guy white knights are meant to save you from.
She looked deep into my eyes. Damn, when she did that, it became more than just raw lust. It became something else altogether.
I met her gaze, asking the question with a tilt of my head. But after a second, she shook her head and turned away. She didn’t want to talk about it. At least, not to me. But she didn’t head for the door to the stairs. She went over to the edge of the roof and looked out across the city.
She didn’t want to be alone, either.
I followed her, suddenly aware that she’d been listening to me strangle a guitar. She must think I’m a freak.
Wait. Since when did I care what anyone else thought of me?
My steps got slower and slower as I approached her. What the hell was the matter with me? If this had been some woman in a bar, I’d have just gone straight over there: hell, I’d barely have acknowledged her, just got myself a beer, and let her throw herself at me. But with Louise, I felt like a kid on his first date. And the closer I got, the more I felt it—a deep, inexorable pull towards her, dragging me in. And I finally realized what it was.
I wasn’t going to be able to control myself with this girl. I was like a boat next to a whirlpool, just barely holding its position. If I got any closer, I was going to spin inwards to my doom. To both of our dooms.
But what else could I do? Leave her like that?
“You alright?” I asked tightly.
She swallowed, and I thought she was going to start crying. That pressure in my chest again, like it was me who was in pain. Then she said, “You ever feel like the future’s just...bearing down on you and there’s nothing you can do to change it?”
I thought about it. It was rare enough that I spoke to anyone, let alone have someone ask me something deep. Eventually, I said, “No.”
It can’t have been the answer she was expecting, because she snapped her head around to look at me. Ah, fuck. In the moonlight, her skin was so pale it almost glowed and with those lush green eyes looking up at me...she was just the prettiest fucking thing I’d ever seen.
I turned and nodded towards where my hammer was leaning against a wall. “Most of the stuff I have to deal with gets out of the way,” I told her. “Or I smash it out of the way.” I paused. “I get the feeling your shit’s more complicated.”
She swallowed again and nodded a couple of times, then turned to the city and sniffed back a tear. She took a deep breath and what I normally would have been doing was watching that fantastic chest rise and swell under her t-shirt. Instead, all I could think was, she’s about to tell me. She’s about to tell me what’s going on with her. We were connecting. I reached out to put a hand on her back to comfort her—slowly, so as not to spook her—
“I wish I was more like you,” she said.
And reality slammed up to meet me. My hand froze an inch from her back.
The last thing she needed was to be around someone like me. Everything I touched turned to shit. I knew that. Why had I forgotten it?
“You don’t want to be like me,” I told her. And I turned and marched away. I didn’t even stop to retrieve my guitar or amp before I hit the stairs. All I grabbed was my hammer. That was all I needed in my life.
Just before the stairwell door closed behind me, I heard her intake of breath—she’d turned around and realized I’d gone. She was probably amazed at what an asshole I was. She didn’t realize she’d just had a lucky escape.
Whatever problems she had, they were nothing compared to the shit she’d get into if she came near my world. For her sake, I had to stay as far away from her as possible.
I had no idea that our lives were already on a collision course.
Louise
Early the next morning, I called Stacey. I didn’t know what else to do.
Stacey is the anti-me. Confident. Successful. Smartly-dressed. We were at college together: she majored in business while I did botany...except she actually graduated. Even if my folks hadn’t died, I don’t think we would have been on remotely similar paths. I was heading for a quiet lab where I could be around plants, not people; Stacey was born to be in business.
That’s why I’d called her. She was the only person in my life who I could even imagine using the phrase “half a million dollars.”
I hadn’t told her on the phone why I needed to see her, so she arrived all smiles, carrying two takeout coffees. I knew what she was thinking: I’d finally changed my mind and wanted to take her up on her offer of a job at the cupcake store. She was one of the franchise’s star achievers: in the short time since graduating, she’d already made manager. I gave it five years before she was running the company.
Her smile faltered when she saw my face. I sat her down and laid it out for her: Kayley, the hospital, the Swiss treatment. Her tears made little dark spots on her perfect gray skirt. Hearing myself tell the story made it all real again and, when Stacey looked up at me with her face pale, I very nearly lost it myself. I was relying on her. If she didn’t know what to do, who would?
After a few agonizing minutes, though, Stacey sniffed back her tears. “Right,” she said, half to herself. She fixed her hair and smoothed down her blouse. “Okay,” she said, still sounding shaken. She adjusted her skirt, stood up and took a deep breath. “Don’t panic,” she said in a steadier voice. “We’re going to fight this.”
And I knew I’d called the right person.
“First of all, you know that I’ll give you all the money I can—you know that, right?” she asked urgently.
I nodded.
“But that’s not going to be nearly enough. Let’s attack this thing.” And she pulled a notebook and pen from her briefcase and wrote “$500,000” at the top. “We’re going to add up everything we can lay our hands on,” she told me. “Let’s start with the apartment.” She held her pen poised.
“Rented.”
“Your car?”
“Are you kidding? We’d have to pay someone to take it away.”
“Savings? Stocks? Anything your parents left you?”
I let out a long, despairing sigh. There had been savings. But Kayley’s unexpected arrival had changed everything. My parents had suddenly found themselves with a second child to care for and that had meant radically changing their outlook. They’d gone from comfortably prepared to scrambling for Kayley’s college fund and that had meant taking risks they otherwise wouldn’t have. Not all of them had paid off. Long-term, we probably would have been just fine. But when they died, they’d left very little behind. I still had college loans to pay off and my job barely covered the rent and bills. “We’ve got a few thousand. That’s it.”
“Could you run up debt? I mean, even if it takes the rest of your life to pay it off….”
“I’m going to have to do that anyway. Even with insurance, there’ll still be hospital bills. And my credit’s nowhere near good enough to borrow half a million—not even close.”
“And the Swiss clinic needs the money in advance? They won’t let you pay it off in installments?”
“I called them. They won’t. Why would they? They’re for the rich. You pay up
front or they don’t want to know.”
We both stared at the notepad and its vast, empty white space.
Stacey flipped over the page. “Okay,” she said. “You’ll just have to earn the money.”
“You’re nuts. I mean, I love you, but you’re nuts. Half a million in six months? You think someone’s going to take me on at a million dollars a year?”
“You could start your own business,” she said, undeterred. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re smart.”
I sighed again. I knew she was just trying to help and being an entrepreneur was what she was all about: of course she’d suggest that. But it was ridiculous. What was I going to do: jewelry making? Kids’ parties?
“Let’s make a list of your skills,” said Stacey.
I shook my head. “The only thing I’ve ever been good at is growing stuff.”
“Well,” said Stacey, “what can you grow in six months that’ll make you half a million dollars?”
Sometimes, you just have to hear the right question. I blinked at her as my brain lit up.
No, that’s insane. I couldn’t.
Could I?
Louise
I politely but hurriedly got rid of Stacey, telling her I’d had an idea involving importing rare flowers from Africa, or something and needed to think. She looked doubtful, but she had to get to her store so she hugged me and ran.
I sat down at my aging laptop and, in a testament to my naivety, typed “How to grow marijuana” into Google. It didn’t occur to me until later that doing that from my own computer might not be a good idea.
For the next seven hours, I didn’t move. I fumbled for my phone, dialed the garden store, and called in sick without my eyes once leaving the screen. For the first hour, I was hesitant and tentative. I was so afraid of getting my hopes up, I was like a scientist trying to disprove a theory. I tried every way to destroy the idea that I could. Maybe I couldn’t grow a crop in time. Maybe it wouldn’t be worth enough. Maybe the startup costs are too high.
One by one, I eliminated those questions. It began to look viable, in terms of money. That left the botany.
I immersed myself in science. I read up on the plant itself, on gene lines and fertilizers and pest control. There was a huge amount to research, but the internet had all the information I needed. As I read more and more, I started to get excited. Growing weed, I learned, is complicated and tricky...if you’re a civilian. But for a botany student and gardener like me it was actually relatively simple. Hell, I’d actually specialized in this stuff at college. I could even see a few ways I could improve on the methods people were posting about online. I could be good at this. The skill I’d thought was so useless might actually be able to save us.
It was possible.
That left: could I actually go through with it?
I sat back from the screen. I never broke the law. I never even broke the rules. This was so far outside anything I’d normally consider, it was absurd. Me? Grow drugs?
I hesitantly clicked a few more Google links and read about raids on local grow houses, about the farmers being sentenced not to three months in county jail, but to 20 years in a federal penitentiary. Weed may be effectively legalized, especially in liberal California, but growing your own large-scale crop of it certainly wasn’t. I saw pictures of hollow-eyed men—and even a few women—in orange jumpsuits. Some of them weren’t much older than me.
It wasn’t just that I’d go to jail: it was that Kayley’s only chance would evaporate. Worse, I’d miss the remaining time we had together.
I can’t do this.
But if I didn’t, she was going to die.
I clicked more links, unable to stop. Reports of shootings and arson attacks. Paid hits. I’d been thinking of it as a business, but I’d been glossing over the fact that the business took place in that shadow world of crime most of us only see when it spills over into the headlines. If I was going to do this, I’d have to join that world.
That was the part I definitely couldn’t do. I knew how to grow things; I had no idea how to be a criminal. I’d last a week.
Unless I had help.
Louise
I stood in front of his door and tried to control my racing heart.
It’s because I’m excited. I’m excited by the plan.
Yeah, that’s absolutely what it is.
It still stung that he’d walked away from me like that on the roof. But that was all irrelevant, now. No more time for stupid fantasies. I needed his help.
I rapped three times on the door, feeling my breathing quicken. The paint was chipped and the wood was cracked in one place. Someone had tried to break in, at some point in the past. They’d found out where he lived and come for him.
I suspected it hadn’t ended well for them.
No response from inside. Was he out? I put my ear to the door. Holding my breath, I could just pick out a sound: a faint, rhythmic creaking. I knocked again, louder, and the creaking paused...then continued.
“Sean?” I called out. My voice sounded awkward in the silent hallway. “It’s me.”
The creaking stopped. I thought I heard footsteps and waited, but the door stayed closed. “Sean?”
Nothing.
I thought of Kayley. I was due to visit that afternoon and I needed some shred of hope to carry with me or I was going to lose it and break down in front of her. That gave me the courage to knock again, hard. “Sean?”
The door suddenly swung open. He must have been standing right up against it, watching me through the door viewer. “What?” he growled, exasperated.
I swallowed. He was stripped to the waist and his whole upper body glistened with sweat. His chest and biceps were pumped and rock hard, even larger and more intimidating than normal. He looked...primed, loaded with adrenaline and ready to pounce. He’d been working out, I realized. That’s what the creaking had been. He was glaring at me, those postcard-blue eyes harder than diamond, and I took an instinctive half-step back. “Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Stop saying you’re sorry!” That Irish accent again, like a silver blade flashing. Then his tone softened a little. “What is it?”
He’d braced one arm against the wall and I couldn’t drag my eyes away from it-the veins standing out hard, the solid thickness of it, like a tree branch big enough to climb on. “I need your help,” I said. “I’ll pay you.”
He was breathing hard. He ran a hand over his forehead and I saw the little jewels of sweat fall. His hair was damp with it. “Help with what?”
I swallowed and then raised my chin bravely. “I want to grow dope.”
For a second, he just stared at me. Then his hand shot forward and grabbed the front of my t-shirt, bunching it. Just like in my fantasy.
I felt my whole body go weak.
He tugged me forward, almost lifting me off my feet, and hauled me inside his apartment, kicking the door shut behind me. For a second, I thought he was going to push me up against the wall. I grabbed for his hand with both of mine, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do: break his grip or pull myself in tighter. Desperate fear and heady arousal slammed together in my chest—
He spun us around and pushed me away from him, sending me staggering into the middle of the room. “What?!” he spat.
I almost ran. His eyes were so brutally hard, so angry...but then I saw the flicker in his expression. Just for an instant, there’d been something else there. Concern.
It was almost as if he was trying to be angry with me.
I glanced around. The place was so masculine, all gray and silver and white, with nothing but hard edges. He’d torn down the walls and made it one big room, except for a door that I assumed led to the bathroom. I saw a weights bench, the iron plates chipped and worn from use. His guitar and amp rested up against a wall, his hammer next to them. I could smell the heady tang of leather and saw a black jacket thrown across the back of a chair.
There wasn’t a single living thing in the apartment apart from us
. No pets, no plants.
I swallowed and looked him in the eye, trying to ignore the gleaming nakedness of his chest. “I want to grow weed,” I said. “I mean...a lot of weed. A crop.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You?”
For a second, it felt as if he’d punched me in the stomach. I mean, I knew I didn’t amount to much, a college dropout with a job going nowhere and close to zero in the bank. But I hadn’t expected him to put me down like that.
And then I saw the way he was looking at me. He wasn’t sneering at me. He was shocked, but he looked more...horrified. As if he thought I was better than that. The pain disappeared and was replaced by a warm flush, radiating outward.
“It’s not crazy,” I said. “At least...not as crazy as it sounds. I know this stuff. I have a degree in botany—well, nearly. I know about indoor, intensive growing—that was my specialty. I read up on marijuana this morning—compared to a lot of plants it’s really not that hard.” I took a deep breath. “One crop—one big crop—that’s all we’d need. It’s April now. We could have it grown by September, sell it, and net half a million in profit.”
“Half a million dollars?” His face turned stern. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
It had been hard with Stacey. It should have been even harder with Sean because I barely knew him. But when I closed my eyes and started to speak, it felt...right. I didn’t feel as if I was in a stranger’s apartment. I felt a warm, dark, comforting presence, as if was really listening instead of just hearing me.
“My sister is sick,” I said. “Really sick. Half a million is how much money I need to save her. I’ve got six months to raise it.” I swallowed. “Her name’s Kayley. She’s only fourteen. She doesn’t deserve—”
“I know.”
I opened my eyes, surprised.
“I’ve seen her around the building with you,” he said. “The blonde kid.”
I blinked. He’d been watching us? Watching me? Why would he—
He looked away, as if embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s...it’s fuckin’ awful. But you need to find another way.”
Growing and Kissing Page 5