“Object of affections,” I growl.
“Your OOA,” he continues, insisting on pronouncing the acronymooo-ah, “over and over, so that they can only think of you. Yellow hyacinth wards off jealousy when your OOA might share their heart with another. Mock orange declares that you know someone is trying to deceive you.” A loaded pause. “Interesting!”
“I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”
“I am.” He stretches out on the couch, holding my notebook over his face. “Quiz time! What do variegated tulips communicate?”
“I’m not playing this game.”
He makes a buzzingEhhh!noise. “Come on, Romina, you should know this one.” He flashes a grin. “It declares to your OOA that you find their eyes beautifully bewitching. Okay, next question. What’s viscaria for?”
“I hope it’s for you shutting up.”
The group chat on my phone is going wild without me.
Zelda:LOOK AT THE PHOTO OF THIS SNACK. Kristin posted him on Facebook
Luna:You’re not allowed to call our sister’s ex-bf a snack
Luna:We’re still mad at him, remember!
Zelda:I know, but he’s hot. I remember when he was twee. He is twee no longer
I turn my phone on silent, climbing into bed. I roll onto my side facing the fan, drawing the quilt up to my chin, and switch off the overhead light.
Alex automatically turns on a lamp beside the couch, continuing to read. I huff loudly. He huffs back.
Even with the loud whir of the fan close by, riffling pages of a shopping list magnetized to the fridge, and the faraway chirrup of crickets, all I hear is Alex’s breathing. I sit up on my elbows, watching his eyes quickly scanning the contents of my notebook. I hate that his memory is so strong that he’ll be able to instantly recall everything he’s reading. Nearly three years as a flora fortunist, and I still regularly have to look up meanings.
Trevor’s snores rip through the air.
“Dear god,” Alex mutters. I cover my smile with one hand.
“Regretting staying the night with us yet?” I ask.
“Not at all. It’s been quite enlightening. Out of curiosity, how can you be so confident that the people who came up with the language of flowers knew what they were talking about?”
“How can I know they didn’t?” I get up and unplug his lamp from the wall.
He taps the flashlight function on his phone, aiming it at my face. I shield my eyes from the harsh blue-white star. “That’s your argument?”
“I’m not arguing.”
“I am.”
“Then argue with yourself.”
He returns to his reading. I can see, by the glow of his phone, a furrow between his eyebrows. Alex is all about facts and reason, which travel downstream while the supernatural tends to flow upriver. I can hear his mental processor hissing like water droplets on a hot stove.
“Hm,” he says quietly. “Fine, I will.”
I know I won’t be getting any sleep tonight. Burned into my eyelids is that picture Zelda was ogling. Alex sent it to his mom directly after we took it, posing in front of the Moonville tunnel with his arm draped casually around my shoulders. My body unconsciously turned in toward his like Ash’s pair of cuddling stuffed monkeys with magnets in their arms. I wince thinking about it.
I pull my phone back out just to study the picture again, staring until Alex’s eyes become two shadowy pinpoints, features distorted into unrecognizability. I can’t get over how different he’s become, yet how familiar, and way more beautiful than he has any right to be. I frown at my appearance on the screen, upper arms squishier now.
Well, of course you’re going to look different now,I tell myself.You were a teenager. I refuse to feel self-conscious about aging, metabolism slowing down. Change is movement, as my therapist tells me, and the inverse is stasis. I’m evolving because I’m alive.
I save the picture to my phone, knowing I’ll hate myself for it tomorrow. I try to quiet my breathing so that Alex won’t hear it, so that he’ll think I’m asleep, while I stare wide-eyed at nothing and grip my blanket so tight that my fingers lose sensation. When I close my eyes, I rewind back to that moment in the woods: Alex’s tense shoulders, his wolfish gleam. Greed andwant and an ache pounding deep within me. Rain sliding over skin.We’d be a lot further ahead right now if you’d just been honest.
