The back of Chloe’s hand whacks me in the stomach as her face turns the most beautiful shade of pink, deeper than the petals in question.
Yeah, she knows exactly what those delicate folds remind me of.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you.” Her head darts around as she checks to see if anyone is paying any attention to us.
News flash: they weren’t until she backhanded me.
“I like it. I think we need to get some.”
“No.”
“Why not? They’re actually really pretty,” I say, picking up two more pots.
She said something earlier about clusters of threes.
Chloe takes the poppy plants out of my hands and sets them back with the others. “Because you ruined it.” She laughs. “I’ll never be able to look at poppies again without thinking about…” She waves her hands around in the air, her cheeks getting redder.
She takes charge of our full cart and steers it away from the flowers I desperately want to get now, toward the front of the garden center, Jake and I falling into line behind her again.
“Oh, hang on. There’s one more thing I need to grab. You guys get in line. I’ll be right back.” She ducks down an aisle and disappears from sight.
“Did you have a garden at your old house?” It’s not often that I bring up their old house with Jake. They moved here to get on with life and leave the past behind.
“Yeah, but alls we had to do was plant new things and then pick them. My dad did all the hard stuff when I was little.”
Jake was young when he lost his dad, probably doesn’t have a ton of strong memories of him, but he doesn’t shy away from talking about Dallas. I swear Chloe has a harder time with it than Jake.
Before long, we’re at the front of the line, the cashier scanning each plastic pot with her gun, and finally, Chloe’s black curls bob up the side of the line.
“What the hell?” I laugh. “Why didn’t you let me lug the tree up here while you waited in line?”
She leans back, stopping her flatbed next to the one Jake and I babysat while Chloe was wrestling an entire tree onto her cart. “Did you already get the dirt and?—”
“It’s on there. We just need to swing around the back of the store and load it.” I flip the tag from the tree for the cashier to scan and reach for my wallet.
“What are you doing? You’re not paying for my garden.” Chloe bats at my hand and reaches inside the top of her shirt.
I would totally pay for her garden—our garden?I definitely feel invested.
She pulls out a credit card, wiping it on her yoga pants. “What?” she asks. “I wiped it off, no boob sweat.”
“Yeah, there’s still boob sweat,” I say, reaching for my wallet again. “We’ll just use mine.”
Chloe reaches past me and pumps a glob of hand sanitizer onto the tips of her fingers. With a dark brow cocked above theframe of her sunglasses, she rubs the gel onto her hands and then over the plastic card, wiping it on the bottom of her shirt this time.
“There. It’s clean.” She slides it into the slot of the card reader and signs on the kiosk. She smiles, takes the receipt, and wheels her cart out to the truck.
At least she allows me to hoist the ornamental cherry tree into the bed of the truck. “You know this thing isn’t going to produce fruit, right? Nothing edible anyway.”
Chloe blows at a stray curl that escaped from the mass on her head and unloads the other cart with Jake. “That’s fine, Superman. I know. You do the heavy lifting, dig the hole, and let me have my dreams of my farm. There are things I miss from New York, and the orchard down the road is one of them. Don’t you crush my dreams.”
NINETEEN
Chloe
With dinner over, the dishes done, and Jake finally tucked away in bed for the night, I look for the finishing touches for my pretty garden.
“What do you think of this?” I spin my laptop, so Miles can see the handmade garden bench.
