Green Toes

by Avery Flinders

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Green Toes

  About the Author

  Green

  TOES

  AVERY FLINDERS

  Laura left her boyfriend in their rural town to move to the city in the hope that her bisexuality wouldn't be so invisible. She's found the queer scene but is finding it difficult to connect to anyone there, and there are things she misses about her home. The only thing that feels right is her magic hiking boots, which make plants grow wherever she walks. It helps her recreate a tiny version of her parents' organic vegetable farm in her front yard.

  The tomatoes from her garden draw in Terri, a genderqueer person from down the road who stops to admire them. The two quickly form a bond, and Laura feels she's finally found someone to whom she really connects and with whom she could grow even closer—until a misunderstanding threatens to ruin everything.

  Green Toes

  By Avery Flinders

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Michelle Kelley

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition August 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Avery Flinders

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 978162004828

  Green Toes

  There's a throbbing bass, bodies in the dark all around her, and a cute girl slowly growing impatient as Laura struggles to find anything interesting to say.

  "I'm so glad summer's coming," she shouted desperately over the noise.

  "Yeah, right," said the girl, with a slight look of interest. "There's so much good shit coming up, can't wait for the big summer dance parties."

  This was what Laura hated about clubs. It wasn't the drinking, which was nothing new to her, and at least it was a change of setting from the pub in Warragul. She didn't mind dancing, even if the dancing here was different to the country balls she used to go to. It was trying to make conversation with people she had nothing in common with other than being queer.

  Maybe Laura could convince the girl to forget about waiting to get through the crush at the bar and just drag her back onto the dance floor. The only things on her mind about summer were planting vegetables and backyard barbecues.

  Before she could think of a cooler answer, though, another woman was at her dance partner's elbow, and they were squealing about how long it had been since they'd seen each other.

  "Come and dance," the newcomer pleaded.

  The woman looked back at Laura. She didn't ask if it was okay if she left, but the question was clear. Laura took one more look at her—the ragged asymmetrical haircut, the baseball cap set at just the right angle and the singlet emblazoned with a joke she didn't get—then smiled and waved her away. Both women smiled back and then disappeared into the crush.

  Of course, this was when Laura finally managed to get to the bar and grab her drink.

  "Butches, huh?" the bartender said, sympathetically. "Sometimes they're as bad as men."

  Laura didn't think so, but she was nowhere near ready for that debate. She just paid, smiled, and slipped out to the courtyard where she could drink and people-watch in relative quiet.

  "Hey, it's the country girl!"

  Laura cringed at the nickname, but it wasn't said unkindly. She wasn't surprised to suddenly find Tash's long, tanned arms around her neck. They'd met a few weeks earlier at an event at the local queer bookshop. Laura had gone in the hopes of meeting some interesting people, soaking up some queer culture or something, and wound up standing in the corner nursing a coffee until Tash had struck up a conversation.

  "Striking out again, eh?" Tash pulled Laura to her side in a hug, looking after the other girl.

  "We had nothing to talk about."

  "You don't start with talking." Tash sighed, rolling her eyes. "At least not until you're both drunk enough to think everything's interesting.”

  Tash was the kind of glamorous girl that Laura had always imagined finding at city nightclubs. Laura was sure she'd be able to go home with any woman she wanted any night of the week—she seemed to rule this scene. She was so gorgeous that Laura was too intimidated to even be attracted to her. Though there had been a moment of confusion when Tash gave Laura her number that day in the bookshop, and Laura thought she was picking her up.

  "Oh! No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you confused, although that's sweet," she'd said, when Laura shyly asked if that was what was happening. "You're a cutie, alright, but I don't really date femmes."

  Laura had looked down at her long skirt and ballet flats. "I'm a femme?"

  "Definitely feminine of centre," Tash agreed, patting her shoulder. "I'm just saying, we should swap numbers so I can take you out some evening and show you around, help you find some nice girls your style."

  "Because I'm hopeless, huh?"

  "Laura, I like you, but if you get down on yourself I'm going to have to smack you," Tash had said, dryly. "You're not hopeless, you're just new around here. I've never moved, but it must be hard, and I know dating's hard. You need someone in your corner. I just want to be your wingman, that's all."

  Which was how she'd wound up at the Glasshouse for the third Saturday night in a row, alternately dancing, drinking, and clinging to Tash when it got too hard to navigate the complex social layers of Melbourne lesbian culture without a guide. She was more confident these days, at least, mostly because after three weeks the club was less intimidating and more familiar. Yet it wasn't even midnight and she was thinking of just going home to bed.

  "You can't!" Tash exclaimed, horrified. "You can't just give up like that, Laura, there are so many girls here you haven't met yet!"

  "I'm not giving up, I'm just not feeling it tonight." Laura poked at the ice in her glass with her straw. She didn't even really want to finish her drink.

  "Come on, there must be one girl in here you'd like to go home with. What's your type?"

  "That's the trouble. I don't know." It wasn't like there was a scarcity of different 'types' to meet. Just in the small beer garden out the back there were women of every hairstyle, outfit, and gender presentation she could have imagined back when she lived in the country, and quite a few she'd only just heard about. "Not that I don't like anyone here, I just don't know who I like. The only person I've ever dated was a guy from my hometown."

  "Boys." Tash wrinkled her nose. "Well, we all make mistakes."

  "He wasn't a mistake, I loved him," Laura snapped. She rubbed a hand over her eyes. "Sorry. I think I must be tired."

  "No, I'm sorry." Tash really did look it, too. "I shouldn't have said that—I don't know anything about him."

  Laura sighed. "It's okay. I mean... well, I don't know. Whatever. I'm not mad at you, I'm just not feeling it tonight. I'll see you next time?"

  "I'm still sorry, that was a jerk thing to say. I don't know that many bi girls but I shouldn't assume." Tash chewed her lip. "Well, travel safe. Maybe we could get hangover brunch tomorrow? I'll text you."

  "Sure thing."

  Laura hugged Tash, something she hadn't done before, and then dove through the crush of the club's interior to escape again into the cool quiet of the night. She sighed as she strolled out into the black, the noise of the party retreat behind her. This was what you wanted, she reminded herself. This is why you left your hometown and a man you loved. It wasn't bad, exactly. She liked dancing and drinking an
d she had Tash. But it wasn't anything like what she'd expected.

  *~*~*

  Laura had moved to the city because she felt invisible. She hadn't been unhappy in the country; she didn't mind farming or the small town or being a long way from big events in the city. She was just tired of living in a community of straight people, and tired of everyone thinking that she was straight, too.

  It had been hard to explain to her parents, to her friends, and the ex-boyfriend she left behind. After four months in Melbourne, she still sometimes looked around her and wondered if she'd made a mistake. She'd been happy in Warragul, and come to the city to just... try to be bisexual. To live a bi life. She didn't know what a bisexual life looked like, exactly. She didn't have any idea how the queer community worked, and half the lesbians she met couldn't get their heads around her being bi, either. At least now she was being honest.

  And yet, there were times when she left a club early and came home to her flat, with its cramped fences and its miniscule front yard, when she wondered what the hell she was doing. She'd come to the city trying to find other people who were queer, and she had, but she was quickly realizing that it meant nothing if she and these other queer girls didn't have anything else in common. After another awkward night out where she couldn't seem to find anyone to connect to, it made her miss a town full of people whom she could talk to for hours, people who already knew everything about her.

  Sometimes the whole idea seemed absurd, too. She'd barely finished crying over the breakup—there were boxes she hadn't unpacked because she still couldn't bear to look at things Ryan gave her—and she was going out at night trying to pick up girls. She was in her late twenties, for goodness' sake—if she was going to move to the city for the sake of 'being queer', shouldn't she have got on with that earlier? She'd managed to live a perfectly good life with a boyfriend up until a few months ago, so why wasn't it good enough anymore? She'd been good at living in Warragul. She knew everyone and she fit right in.

  Except that she didn't. As accepting as her parents were, as many times as she told her friends she was queer, her tiny rural hometown was only ever going to see her as a straight girl, and she wanted to have at least one other person in her life who was queer, too.

  So far, she didn't fit in with the lesbians she'd met around the city. She had no idea how to date girls or the rules of the new community she found herself in or how any of this worked, but it was good. Even if she hadn't really clicked with anyone except Tash, they all saw her as queer and never questioned it.

  This wasn't everything she'd dreamed of. It wasn't even close to everything she wanted, and maybe she'd been closer to content in the country. But she hadn't been content there, and she was never going to get any closer to it if she stayed.

  *~*~*

  The hiking boots had come from Ryan, which was why they were in the box that Laura didn't unpack. They'd always said they were going to hike Hanging Rock the next time they could both get a holiday. When the hospital wasn't understaffed and working Ryan for double shifts. When the parents didn't need her help on the farm. Except the hospital never did hire any more nurses, and Laura started to realise that her help on the farm was more an excuse than a need, and she could leave whenever she was ready. Which, as it turned out, was for good.

  The boots were snug around Laura's feet and ankles, a perfect fit. A pair of shoes from her ex-boyfriend's aunt that she'd never tried on shouldn't be so comfortable. Yet when she stepped out onto the driveway in her T-shirt, shorts, thick socks, and boots, they felt as though she'd been wearing them for years.

  Laura had woken at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning, as if she'd never left the farm. It was a habit that had been hard to break even when she stayed out all Friday night. Tash might have just gone to bed, she thought, and here Laura was already waking up. She tried to stay in bed a bit longer, like a city kid was supposed to, but a lifetime of farming wasn't easily broken. After ten minutes of staring at the ceiling, she got up and made herself a cup of tea, then fell into her regular weekly ennui over what the hell she was supposed to do with her Sunday.

  She sat outside her front door as she sipped her tea, and surveyed her barren vegetable garden. It had seemed so promising when she first moved in. Of course, it was a joke compared to her parents' farm, but Laura was grateful to have it all the same. She couldn't afford to rent a house on her own, she had to try for a flat, and she was grateful that she managed to get a unit on a block that had a garden. She'd talked to the landlord and the other residents about growing vegetables there, and they were politely, unanimously indifferent on the subject, so in the early months she'd filled her otherwise empty Sundays by clearing the weeds, carefully sprouting seedlings and then planting them in the soil, including a whole batch of her favourite tomatoes just in time for summer. However, despite the season and her careful work, the garden was all but dead. None of her seedlings had taken and now the only green thing in her dream vegetable plot was the sprig of self-seeded parsley that had been there when she started.

  Gardening had filled in time and made her feel less homesick, though it was getting harder and harder to keep working on it when so far it had been a failure. Sadly, she didn't have much else to do except wait around to see if her one Melbourne friend would call her for hangover brunch.

  Boredom and desperation made her decide to go exploring in the nearby park, and to finally dig out the hiking boots. It wasn't painless, opening the box she was trying to avoid, but today it was better than being at home.

  There were a few people out in the park, especially on the oval closer to the road where she came in. A couple of dogs ran excitedly up to her as she was crossing the lawn, but they couldn't stay still long enough for her to pat them and quickly skittered away, distracted by each other and the rest of the world around them. Laura headed away from the oval, across the bike path, and scrambled down to the creek.

  The local creek was hardly wilderness climbing, of course, and nothing like the creek that ran near her parents' property. It was bigger than the home creek, much deeper and wider in the slow-flowing sections. It was easy enough to get up and down, but the banks were steep—four or five metres down from the path in some places. From the side of the creek, she could look up at the sky and see no sign of buildings or power lines, and she could almost imagine she was far away from the city, if not for the occasional bicycle bell.

  Laura scrambled around the side of the creek for half an hour or so until she eventually found a good spot to rest. The sun was getting higher and she'd been longing to get her feet wet, but most of the space by the side of the river was rotting wood or slippery mud, and it took her a while before she found a solid enough rock to sit on. She stripped off the boots and her thick hiking socks, sitting them beside her in the mud, and dangled her feet in the blissfully cool water.

  The hardest thing about unpacking the boots was that they weren't just a gift, they were a parting gift. Ryan had turned up at her door for the last time as she was packing to leave and insisted that she take them with her.

  “I can't. I'm not going to hike without you."

  "I was always going to give you these, when it got to be time," he'd said, and set them at her feet. "They're meant for you. That doesn't stop just because you're not going to use them with me."

  At the time, she'd just wished he would go. Not because she didn't want him, but because she did. She was breaking up with the guy, but that didn't mean she wasn't sorry about it. She didn't want to let go of the plans they'd had for their future, which was a big part of why she'd left the boots in the bottom of a box for so long and didn't even want to look at them. She was supposed to go hiking with Ryan, and for months, even the thought of putting on the boots without him had seemed wrong.

  Laura had been sitting there long enough for the sun to get overhead and her stomach to start grumbling when Tash, in perfect timing, texted her to come to brunch.

  "Just got up?" Laura texted back, with a smile.


  "STOP IT MY HEAD HURTS"

  Laura laughed, and reached behind her for the boots while she texted Tash again with her other hand, planning to take as many messages as possible to confirm the time and place. She had to put down the phone for a moment when the boots stuck, and when she finally got them out, it was not with the sucking sound of mud but with a tearing as she ripped out tangles of grass and vines.

  She stared at her comfortable pair of second hand boots, covered in fresh green shoots, and then the patch of bare mud where she'd set them down, now overgrown with more of the same green. The higher creek bank had more foliage to begin with, but even so, when Laura looked back she could see the path she'd taken highlighted in a trail of fresh green footprints.

  *~*~*

  "Hello there, you must be the gardener."

  Laura didn't move from her crouching position in the garden bed, but she did look up from under her straw sunhat. There was a cheerful face and a couple of elbows propped up on the brick fence at the front of the block of flats, smiling at the tops of the tomato stakes.

  "Yeah, that's me." Laura stood up, carefully placing her boots between the rows of greens she'd been planting. "You live in the block too?"

  "Nah, just a fan. I walk past here a lot and I like a bit of urban farming. I'm Terri, by the way."

  "I'm Laura." She hesitated. "Is it Terri with an i or a y?"

  "With an i. And I'm a 'ze', not a he or a she," Terri added, looking more guarded.

  Laura blinked. "Oh. Okay." She had a lot of questions, but none of them seemed polite to ask someone who'd turned up out of nowhere and just complimented her garden. "Ze and... zis?"

  "Ze and hir," Terri said with a slow smile, pronouncing it more like 'here' than 'her'. "As in, Terri really loves growing vegetables but ze can't get hir tomato plants to look anything like yours."

  Laura grinned and looked down at her feet. "I got very lucky."

  "Hey, no need to be modest. They're amazing, especially for this early in the season. I'd be telling everyone if I could get mine to grow."