The handyman laughed, taking all the coffee and teacups over to the sink. “Nah. Not my style. Dropped out after a semester.”
Oliver stared after him in disbelief. “But you got in. And you’re workinghere?”
I glared. “Wow, rude much?”
“I mean—you know what I mean,” Oliver supplied, butwhen none of us came to his defense, he shrank back into himself a little. “Okay, yeah. I see where I went wrong.”
In reply, Juliette clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “Don’t judge books by their covers. Not even the pretty sparkly ones with sprayed edges.” Then she leaned into him and mock-whispered, “I collect them anyway.”
“Sorry, my guy,” he said, turning back to Wykofski. “I was rude.”
“Nah, I get that a lot. My ma always told me to chase what makes you happy. I think more people should do that. Jules, do you need me to walk you to your car?” he added, thumbing in the direction of the parking lot.
“I can walk her,” Oliver said, then turned back to Juliette. “If that’s all right.”
The events and relations director blinked, surprised. She looked at me, then back to Oliver. “I … okay. I guess you can.”
“As an apology,” he went on, standing and outstretching his hand to her, “for being an asshole.”
So she took his hand, and that was that.
36
tidsoptimist
The next evening, golden hour was cooler with a little bite to the coastal breeze, and for the first time I began to notice it starting earlier and earlier as summer wound its way to the end. The door was in the Willow Grove again, against a drooping willow. I pulled out my phone to make a note—like I had for the last few times about where it appeared—and when I went inside I expected Cyrus to be at one of the flower beds where he always was, or watering new seedings, or lacing willow branches into a knee-high fence, but he was missing.
The garden was nearly finished, and with whatever strange magic was here, it looked like a place lovingly tended over years instead of weeks. It wasn’t lost on me how most of it had bloomed when Rus had shrugged off the apathy he’d used as a shield.
“Rus?” I called as I wandered through the garden. I pushed back the curtain of willow boughs, hoping I’d see him there, but he wasn’t.
He had hung the swing from a branch, though.
I sat down on the swing. The old willow branch creaked. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, soft and bright, like reflections on the bottom of a pool. I really could stay here forever.
“Oh, there you are, sunshine.”
Startled, I glanced up toward the voice.
Rus pushed aside the willow boughs as he stepped into the shade, an easy smile on his face. He came over and took hold of the swing. He leaned in close on the rope, bending toward me with the certainty of the willow overhead. His copper hair glinted in the light like polished brass, framing his face in soft shadow. As I looked up at him, I decided that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
“The swing is a perfect touch, I think. The view is beautiful from here.” Though I didn’t look any farther than his face, and he didn’t look any farther than mine.
“It is,” he agreed, bending toward me still, slow and patient, when all I wanted was to marry the distance that instant. I wanted to take his face in my hands and press our lips together just to see how they’d fit. The impulse was so strong, I held on to the rope of the swing tighter. I tilted my head back, like a flower toward the sun, and he trailed his nose across mine, the feathery whisper of his lips across mine. “You smell like roses today,” he murmured, his breath hot against my ear.
“I trimmed the court,” I said. “A colony of bees made a hive in there. We had to relocate them.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Awfully.”
“I’m glad you survived.”
“Me, too.”
His lips kissed the side of my mouth.
I think I more than liked him, but that word was so much bigger, and so much heavier, than anything I’d ever said before.It was a seed I kept tucked in the corner of my heart, buried there, never thinking that it might bloom.
