by Ruby Lang
“In a couple of months, this will be you,” Jenny reminded him.
“Right,” Ty said. He was starting to dislike being reminded of his impending move.
“What’s the rush?”
He tried to sidestep his sister, but there was no room for the maneuver. “Something’s happening at the garden and I need to get there.”
“What, are they paving it over?”
He pushed past her. Jenny called after him, “Hey, I guess we don’t need a bulldozer if we’ve got Ty Yang here to mow everyone down.”
He gave her the finger.
In less than five minutes, hastily dressed and hardly washed, Ty was pounding down the sidewalk toward the garden. He met Mrs. Espinosa near the front. “The owner is here.”
Mrs. E looked nervous. She never looked nervous. She patted her hair. “It’s only that over the years I’ve had thoughts about what I’d say to her. Sometimes I thought I’d yell at her for letting the lot get so bad. Sometimes I wanted to thank her for turning a blind eye and letting us set up here. Sometimes I wanted to shake her. But now she’s here and she’s tiny and I just want to give her a couple of tomatoes.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” Ty said.
Katherine Jenkins-Jones was indeed a scrap of a woman, and Byron was leaning over protectively and seemed to be pointing out various features of the garden—maybe all the cucumbers and string beans she now owned. Ty looked around to find a knot of his friends were gathered around them, muttering uncomfortably as they watched Magda and these strangers stroll down the well-tended paths. It was as if he and his fellow gardeners were locked out of their paradise as Ms. Katherine Jenkins-Jones, Uncle Byron and Magda decided their fate.
But he stood, surrounded by his friends—yes, friends—in their floppy hats, and he gazed out at the mass of morning glories tangled around the border, and past at the rows and rows of vines and curling leaves, the stout low trellises holding hidden fruit—all of this he’d helped nurture, all of this he’d brought to life, all of this potential. Who would ever give this up without a fight, without staying to see what could happen?
His gaze went to Magda again and he found her gazing right back at him.
He was planning on abandoning this. But he’d never really leave, would he? The grief would still follow him, as he’d told Byron, and the happiness he’d felt here, he’d leave behind.
But before he could really let that thought settle in, the trio came out and halted.
There was a moment of silence.
Magda broke it by saying, “Ms. Jenkins-Jones, I want to introduce you to the 136th Street Garden Collective. Mrs. Espinosa here has been the driving force behind rehabilitating the lot. She headed up the fundraising campaign that brought their offer to the table.”
Mrs. Freeman nudged Mrs. E forward.
Two tiny women faced each other, Katherine Jenkins-Jones, compact but commanding, with her silver hair pulled back in a bun, and glasses behind which glinted a pair of sharp eyes, and Mrs. Espinosa, diminutive herself, dark skin gleaming with vigor from many hours spent outside.
Mrs. E barked a sudden laugh. “Can I try to sweeten the deal with some homegrown vegetables?”
Another pause. Then Ms. Jenkins-Jones put her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to pay me with crops grown on my land?”
Everyone sucked in a breath and the woman turned her gaze on all of them. Her voice softened. “I looked at your offer. It has been—it has been difficult to come back to that burned down, empty lot where my family’s home once was.”
Byron reached out and held Ms. Jenkins-Jones’s shoulder.
After a minute, the woman continued. “I wanted to forget it for a long time. And I did that. I buried it. I think this year was the year I was finally ready to face it again. But when I did, I found I couldn’t hang on to the land anymore. It didn’t make any sense.”
Around her, it was quiet. Even traffic seemed to have stopped for one moment as they all waited for Ms. Jenkins-Jones to continue. The only noise was the steady hum of the bees and insects hovering over flowers and leaves, disregarding all the tension of human activity.
Ms. Jenkins-Jones said, “Imagine my surprise to find something really different here, something beautiful and something that honors this neighborhood. It’s as if all the things buried here rose up again, thrived. They always wanted to live and they created a new life for themselves. What I’m trying to say is, I love this. My mother would have loved this. And I am happy to accept this 136th Street Garden’s offer. I think we have a deal.”
There was another silence, then a roar came up from the crowd. Mrs. E was hugging Ms. Jenkins-Jones and sobbing. Ty had his arms around Mrs. Freeman and they were both crying. But Ty looked up and his gaze locked with Magda’s. “You did it,” she mouthed.
“You did it,” he mouthed back.
Then there was another wave of hugs and tears. It seemed like another party was about to start up when a white man in a suit came barreling up to Magda and Ms. Jenkins-Jones.
* * *
Keith did not look happy.
For once, Magda was glad her boss lost his ability to navigate when he crossed 125th Street, because if he’d been a few minutes earlier, he might have utterly ruined the moment instead of merely causing it to lose some of its shine. He paused only to glare at Magda before greeting Katherine Jenkins-Jones with a panicked heartiness. “Katherine, what are you even doing here?”
“I was visiting my daughter in New Jersey when I got the email from your associate Magda here, and my old friend Byron Jackson. So I called them up early this morning and said I’d come down. And then I accepted the offer for the garden from the 136th Street Collective,” Katherine said calmly.
“You can’t do that,” Keith said.
Katherine Jenkins-Jones raised one perfect eyebrow. “Oh. Can’t I?”
Keith seemed to remember himself. For a minute. “Listen, I want you to think about this. You haven’t signed anything”—he gave a sharp look to Magda—“have you?”
“I have thought about this, Kent—”
“Keith.”
“Keith. I’ve given a lot of thought to this over the years, as a matter of fact, and this is better than anything I could’ve come up with by myself.”
“But this land is so beautiful. It’s on an up and coming street. It could go for a lot more!”
Katherine seemed amused. “It’s gorgeous because these gardeners made it so. No matter if it could go for a lot more, it’s still a lot of money. I’m not some poor gullible widow who can be easily bilked.”
Keith threw up his hands. “This is only the first offer! This is not how we make sound decisions.”
“It seems a sound decision, me having enough while also ensuring future generations have something to grow.”
With that, Katherine dismissed Keith and waded into the exuberant crowd.
Keith stood for a moment. Then he turned to Magda and hissed, “We need to have a chat.”
Ty had already stepped up to Magda’s side at that point. So had Byron.
“Well now,” Byron said, “Magda here has gone above and beyond to sell my townhouse. In fact, I’m so pleased with this latest offer she fielded that I’ve accepted it. I interrupted my lawyer at dinner last night—she was pretty surprised to hear from me—and told her we’re starting the process of getting the place sold. I hope,” Byron said, fixing Keith’s face with a stare, “that there won’t be any hitches. You might want to know, Kent—”
“Keith.”
“Keith, I specifically wanted Magda to broker this sale because she was instrumental in convincing me it was finally time. And now that I know it’s time, I want to get it done.”
Magda stared at Byron. She hadn’t known this was coming. Not last night, not through all of this morning when he’d called her early to meet him and
Katherine at Penn Station. But from the way his eyes gleamed, she knew he meant every word of it.
She wasn’t going to pass out, but she needed to hold on to something and there was Ty. She turned to Ty, whose face had lit up. Wordlessly, she went into his outstretched arms and they held each other for a moment—not long enough. Reluctantly, she turned back to Byron and Keith.
Poor Keith. He had gone through a range of extreme emotions in the last five minutes. His face was almost like a study in ombré, with traces of his red-faced anger fading into glowing wonder at the knowledge Magda had sold the impossible Strivers’ Row townhouse, and then paling at Byron’s implied threat to take the triumph away if Keith did anything to her.
Thankfully, Keith also knew a done deal when he saw one. He took a deep breath and gave Magda a beaming, if insincere, grin. “I guess you sold it. I wasn’t sure you had it in you, kid. But—but we sold both of these properties.” He shook his head. “And in record time, too.”
Magda thought of all the instances when Keith had told her she wasn’t aggressive enough, that she was too naive, and she didn’t have enough experience. And she reminded herself of how this business was built on relationships—clear-eyed relationships.
She smiled and inclined her head. “I did have it in me. And yes, I did it. I’ll have the paperwork on your desk on Monday morning.”
Keith shook his head. And because he wasn’t a complete idiot, he’d taken out his business cards and started introducing himself to the crowd of gardeners and onlookers who were laughing and chatting in the garden.
Magda turned to her uncle again. “Uncle Byron. Thank you. I know this hasn’t been easy—”
“I said yes, but we’ve still got at least a month or two before closing, so you’re going to be seeing a lot of me and hearing a lot of my complaints.”
“So I shouldn’t thank you until the check’s in my hands?”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek and laughed when he turned red.
“Ariana always told me you were the smart one in that family.” His eyes had softened. “But thank you, Magda. Thank you for being patient with me.”
Byron touched her gently on the shoulder, then went up to talk to his old friend, Katherine Jenkins-Jones.
Ty nudged her. He eyed the two older people speculatively. “Think something’s going to happen there?”
“Might be. At least on Byron’s side. But right now, I think we need to talk.”
“You don’t have to take care of business?” Ty asked, quirking his eyebrows at Keith.
“I’ve been taking care of business for enough time. I want this. I want you.”
In a strangled voice, Ty said, “My apartment—Jenny’s there right now—”
“The townhouse, then?”
He nodded. Then he turned to face her deliberately. He put out his hand and she took it. For a moment, they stood, palms together, eyes locked, in the middle of the hubbub that had taken over the garden. She pulled him toward her and kissed him.
It was brief, a touch of their lips, one shared, inhaled breath. But it was intimate because it was so public. “Let’s get out of here,” Ty whispered.
“In a minute.”
They started to make their way out, reluctant to let go of their hands, but by the time they were on the sidewalk, they were running, flying along 136th Street and laughing like children.
They arrived at the steps of the townhouse disheveled and breathless and Ty kissed her sweaty face and tangled his fingers through her hair. “It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do this,” he said, before taking her lips once more.
“Let me get the door. Let’s go inside,” she muttered into his mouth.
They stumbled to unlock the door and tap in the code and struggle and swear, and then they’d grabbed each other again.
“You said”—Ty kissed her again—“we have to”—a nibble on her lip—“talk. We’re going to do that”—his hand traced down her spine and up again, to a magical place between her shoulder blades and up her to her neck, to her cheek, even as he kissed her greedily again—“in a minute. Just another minute.”
A couple of minutes passed, maybe hours, before they pushed away from each other, panting.
Magda said, “We do have to talk. You’re going away and I need to say some things. I can’t apologize for trying to do a job I needed to do. For trying to save myself. But I also couldn’t live with myself knowing”—she took a breath—“knowing you would have resented me if things had turned out differently with the garden. That you’d leave angry with me.”
She tried to laugh as she backed herself against the wall of the foyer, holding her hands out in front of her as if to push him away—or hold him. She didn’t know.
She couldn’t do this. Because despite how relieved she was, how happy she was she’d managed to get this work done, there was still the fact that Ty wasn’t going to be there at the end of it all.
She closed her eyes. “There I am again, wanting it both ways—wanting...feelings from you, but also wanting them a certain way. Maybe I am spoiled. Maybe I’m never satisfied, demanding my sisters to speak to me with respect even though I don’t know that I’ve earned it, wanting you to give me more, but only if it’s given freely and without strings. Not that it matters. Never mind. I’m spoiling the moment.”
Ty shook his head. He’d stepped back, too.
Magda curled her fingers. They had been so close—so close—and then she’d had to speak up again.
Ty said slowly, “What if I said I wanted more from you, but I’d been afraid to ask. Because of course, I have feelings for you. I could—I’m half in love with you. But I also want things my way and I’m afraid to ask for more from you because you’ve already said you can’t give me much. You don’t have time, and you shouldn’t have to spend energy worrying about how I feel. I don’t want to take more from you, but I’ve spent so much of my life giving my all to people I love—only for them to withdraw, or go away, and I can’t do that again.”
Magda’s heart started beating faster. “That scares me, too. I keep thinking, what if I’d helped sell the garden to someone else? Because I know I could fall in love with you. But I can’t do it knowing if I screwed something up, then it would change how you feel.”
“The point is you didn’t. You didn’t want to. That’s why I admire you and respect you, and why I stop in the middle of the day when I should be absorbed in my work, and think of you with awe, and remember how serious you get when you’re listening to someone, when you’re trying to figure out a solution, the way you brush your hair out of your eyes like you’re impatient with it for trying to distract you, the way you never look away until someone has stopped talking to you. That’s beautiful to me. Even your suit is beautiful to me.”
She blinked. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? Her hands needed something to do, someone to hold. She clasped them in front of her. “We can do long distance,” Magda blurted. “I know it’s across the country and it’s expensive but—”
“I won’t leave.”
Magda stared at him.
“But—but you quit your job.”
“I can get another. What happened to, Stay and be my financial planner?”
Seeing her stricken expression, he added quickly, “I’m kidding. My boss would probably be relieved if I begged for my job back. But this summer has taught me I’m looking for more, too. Which is why I thought I wanted to leave. But I’ve also learned I don’t have to find everything in my job, or in my family. Maybe I’ll put more of myself in the garden. We’re going to have to form a board and write a charter, among other things. But also, I want to start something with you. We don’t have to figure it out now, but I need to be here, by your side, not that you need me. But I want to be here. I want to see the garden into another summer, years and years of summers. I want to see
things grow between us. So I’m staying, because it’s right for me and it could be right for us. You might not always have time, but I have patience.”
Magda wanted to laugh. And cry. Again. Then she had to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit in the empty foyer, so she slid to the floor and Ty did the same. Their feet met in the middle.
“Ty,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Do you know what my plan was for today as I went to meet my uncle and Katherine? I was going to get fired. I was going to break my lease on my apartment. And I was going to see how you’d feel if I moved to the same place as you—how you’d feel if I started over, beside you, this broken, debt-ridden person that I am. That was my whole plan.”
“But you were never broken. Not if you were willing to risk that much. And none of it happened that way.”
“Yes, I am glad it didn’t go according to my plan. It—it turned out better than I could have imagined. So, new plan. I’m still going to be debt-ridden. After Keith takes his chunk, I won’t be in the clear. But it’s a start.”
“What happened to putting things off until you’re in a better place?”
“That doesn’t mean I have to sacrifice every part of my life. I want to choose at least one path that will make me happy right now. And that one leads to you if you’ll let me follow it.”
Ty kissed her again. Then he pulled her up to her feet and into his arms. “I absolutely want to choose the path that will make me happy right now. So let’s go up to the bed.”
She groaned. “The show bed.”
“Not for show anymore,” he said impressively, then added, “unless you mind.”
“As long as you help me with the laundry and to make it up again.”
“I will even iron the sheets.”
They scrambled up the stairs, kissing on the landings. When they reached the bed, Ty made a show of sweeping the many cushions off with one arm and looked so pleased with himself that Magda ended up laughing so hard she doubled over.
He took the opportunity to tear the duvet off, too.
He set her on the bed, which was firmer and higher than she expected, but she was past caring. Slowly, he tugged off his T-shirt. She remembered his chest in the light under the streetlamps. But now she was allowed to look at the way his wrists corded as he undid his belt, the flop of his hair filtered in the sunlight. She caught the first real glimpse she had of his bare hips as he twisted to toe off his shoes and pull off the rest of his clothing.