Vik pushed aside piles of junk on the couch.
“And maybe if you could just?—”
“Mae, I cannottake your plants. Jackson has told me, multiple times, that if I bring a single one more home he’ll divorce me.”
Now Mae sighed.
“I know.”
“You could ask someone else. Ozzy or Ben or?—”
“No one’s as good of a plant parent as you.”
Vik breathed out before reaching their arm across the couch to take Mae’s hand.
“Only you.”
Buying houseplants together was one of Mae’s very favorite parts of her friendship with Vik, although she had lots of favorite parts. She understood Jackson’s feelings. They had been buying too many plants together for at least ten years. Had officially run out of room in both of their homes for more somewhere around Obama’s second term.
Mae did not want to leave a single one.
But the plan was to only take what she could pack in the car when she returned to Greyfin Bay, in a week. Everything else would be put in storage until she had her living situation more fully sussed out.
Having an actual garden—her own borrowed square of soil to plant and weed and love—had always been one of the biggest features of Mae’s daydreams. And part of her mourned for the fact that buying 12 Main Street, as incredible of a venture as it might possibly be, wouldn’t satisfy that particular longing.
Although maybe there was a small plot of land behind the building that Mae hadn’t been able to see, since Dell McCleary hadn’t let her look. Maybe, next to the trash cans, she could find a spot to grow cucumbers and peppers and snap peas and cosmos and dahlias.
Actually…
Something shecoulddo, right away, perhaps the very first thing she could do, was use some of Jesus’s money to buy one of those enormous ceramic planters for the porch of the store, the ones that cost hundreds of dollars that Mae had never been able to afford. She could research the best container plants that would survive the climate of the coast, maybe a combination of?—
Vik dropped Mae’s hand with a gasp.
“You’re doing it. You’re picturing all the plants you’re going to get without me.” Vik shook their head. “You little ho.”
“I wasn’t! Well, I was just thinking about?—”
“About something you can do at your store.” Vik smiled, their gentlest, most affectionate one. “I know that look by now, Mae.”
Mae could feel it then. That she’d been smiling, without consciously thinking about it. A smile that faded as she looked Vik in the eye.
“Tell me again,” she whispered. “That I’m not making a massive mistake.”
Vik was the only one she’d asked this of, the only person to whom she’d expressed any doubt.
The reactions of her friends, when she’d called them all to brunch after returning from Greyfin Bay, had been mixed.
“Ew,” Theo had said immediately. Ozzy had clocked him on the arm.
But Mae had only burst into laughter at Theo’s downturned lips, the honest confusion in his eyes. Had continued laughing when he’d turned to Ozzy and said, “What? I’m sorry, babe; you know I love a day trip to the coast, butliving? In Greyfin Bay?”
Because bless Theo Pham for not being afraid to voice the question that entered Mae’s own head at least once a day.
“Do they even have any gay bars on the coast?” Theo asked, turning back to Mae.
“Oh!” Mae smiled, giggles still burning in her throat, somewhat deliriously.
But everything had felt slightly delirious, really, since Jesus died.
