Just then, Lara and Jack turned a corner and appeared in front of us.
‘Hey, babe,’ said Lara, with a look that indicated that she wasveryimpressed that I was sitting in Finn Tucker’s lap. ‘We found you guys. We’ve been looking for you for …’
‘Not that long,’ said Jack, with a wink.
Lara pulled some straw from her hair. ‘But it’s polite to pretend.’
I climbed down from my somewhat compromising position and fixed my hair. Not that my hair really needed fixing, but my mind did. I was all out of sorts. ‘Shall we check out the rest of this maze before we turn into pumpkins or something?’
‘Probably watermelons,’ suggested Finn. ‘Given that we’re between seasons and all.’
‘How about a cantaloupe?’ said Jack.
‘Absolutely not,’ said the rest of us in unison.
Finn challenged everyone to a bet over who could find the most prototypical sunflower, and we wandered off, trying to solve the maze while spotting the most sunflower-y sunflower we could.
‘So, you and Finn, huh?’ murmured Lara as she and I broke off from the boys, pretending to examine a planter filled with sunflowers.
I sighed. ‘I don’t know. He’s hot, and he makes me laugh …’
‘Which is better than most guys. The ones who expect you to laugh whenyou’reactually the funny one? The worst.’
‘You’re always the funny one, now that I think of it.’
‘Thank you.’ She said it with a smirk.
‘And you’re right. But …’
Lara reapplied her lipstick using her front-facing camera as a mirror. ‘You need more than good looks and good laughs?’
I nodded.
‘I admire your ambition,’ said Lara. ‘Please tell me the other thing is money, because that’s so much easier to find thanchemistry. Or an approach to texting that isn’t completely unhinged.’
She was right; men these dayswereunhinged texters. (As I’d tried to explain to Josephine.)
‘It’s not money,’ I said sadly. ‘I just want someone who’s going to make my lifebetter, I guess.’
My phone dinged: it was Eddie, asking where my Sandy Balls article was.
‘You mean by not dragging you away from your deadlines?’ said Lara, twirling a sunflower between her fingers.
I sighed. ‘I finally make a decision and it’s a bad one.’
Lara bopped me gently with the sunflower. ‘You could tell your boss that you took the job with me. And you could get paid for having fun instead.’
‘That does sound appealing,’ I admitted. ‘Although I’d have to develop an iron liver.’
‘I can help you with that,’ said Lara. ‘As part of your onboarding process.’
We turned left, then right, then left, heading deeper into the Sunflower Maze.
‘Is it just me or are these sunflowers looking kind of depressed?’ asked Lara, when she and I found ourselves stuck at a dead end. ‘They’re flaccid.’
I frowned. ‘You’re right.’
I held out a hand, running my fingers gently over the bright flowers. I could feel the magic pouring off them, but it was interrupted somehow. Like when you sit for too long in a weird position and your leg starts to tingle.
