Alice was overcome by a wave of self-doubt. ‘Unless, um, you think that’s not the most likely outcome. And I’m just being stupid.’
Briar gave her a look. ‘You’re never stupid, Ally.’
She hadn’t called Alice by her old nickname the whole summer. That, and the glint in Briar’s eye, gave Alice the confidence to press on.
‘So, how do you want to handle this?’
Briar cocked her head, considering the question for far longer than Alice had anticipated. ‘I don’t want anyone to know.’
It wasn’t the first thing Alice had expected to hear from her, and it stung. ‘Oh. Yeah. Of course.’
‘It would complicate things with Noah. And we’re co-directors. It looks… messy.’
Alice knew that Briar wanted to be perceived as a competent camp director more than anything, so she tried not to take it personally. But it still left her with a familiar pain – of not being capable of earning the pride she was sure she should be worthy of from at least one person in the world.
‘But it’s not messy. Right?’
‘Right,’ Briar said. ‘I mean, it’s just friendship and sex. Neither of us wants anything else from this.’
‘And no one gets hurt,’ Alice said slowly.
Briar nodded slowly, holding her gaze. ‘No one gets hurt.’
It shouldn’t have been hard to agree to. Alice hadn’t given anyone the power to hurt her in a long time. Still, it took her a moment. ‘Are we shaking on it?’
‘I’d rather kiss on it,’ Briar said, her hands coming back up to rest on Alice’s waist.
‘That can be arranged,’ Alice said, and leaned in.
When Alice checked her inbox for the first time that session, she found fifty unread emails. She groaned, cradling her head in her hands. It was the longest she’d gone without checking her email since the beginning of the summer.
Feeling a pit in her stomach, she scrolled past a few from Jeremy pointing her to different grants and instead started with the ones from her flatmate. Each was shorter and even more direct than the previous. The final one just read:Alive??? Your plant isn’t. –AHR. He had attached a picture of her fiddle leaf fig, dead.
Scrolling back to the top of her inbox, one of the emails from Jeremy caught her eye, this one titled:FW: something to think about…
He’d sent an email chain with one of his colleagues at the Royal Botanical Society.
Wouldn’t want to take her away from you…Ken from their research department had written, to which Jeremy had responded,Alice has been ready for a role like this since I met her.
Her eyes scanned the page in disbelief. She was up for a job – a fully funded job – starting in the fall.
She’d known it was something she’d have to think about soon, but school had seemed endless. This felt real, like a permanent decision. A commitment to her life in London.
Well, she had already committed. She’d committed ten years before, when she hadn’t come home for the holidays, telling her mom she’d see her the next time she was in Europe.
The interview was two days after camp ended, and Alice had no idea how she was going to be ready in time. She’d never felt less like the person she’d left in London, who would have ruthlessly carved out time in her diary to prepare. Instead, the Alice at camp wanted to savor her final moments in her favorite place in the world.
‘Yo, you good?’
Alice’s head snapped to where Sierra was leaning against the door jamb. ‘Yes, fine. What’s up?’
Sierra squinted at her, then shrugged. ‘Kylie had a family emergency. Think you can cover art?’
Alice nodded, relieved for the distraction. She could put off replying to Jeremy until tomorrow.
Her turn subbing in for the art counselor went considerably better than her stint teaching theater. As her class on flower pressing drew to a close and the campers filed out of the cabin, Robin beckoned her over to the table he was sharing with his new friend, Sam. They had bonded in her decomposition lab and had taken to foraging in the woods together in their free time. Alice’s heart swelled whenever they asked her to come look at an interesting mushroom.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
