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“Why is your back all wet?” She asks.
I try my hardest in the moment to invent a lie.
“Oh,” I say simply. “There was a shower leak, but I fixed it.”
She walks over to the countertop, admiring (or perhaps despising) the exotic flowers.
“There were more of these here earlier, weren’t there?” She asks, gently touching the petals of one of the orchids.
I laugh.
“Oh yeah,” I say simply. “The jade vines didn’t really take well to apartment life.”
“So you let them die?” She asks. “That doesn’t seem like you at all.”
Then she picks up the key, and I feel my heart stop.
I immediately realize that this is going to be an argument, and wish that I’d remembered to hide it.
“Did this come from your admirer?” She asks me. “What is this?”
She reads the note out loud.
“The only thing I can’t give you is my name,” she finishes.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” I say, attempting futilely to dissolve the tension. “Why don’t we go to the movie now?”
“We can go to a later showing,” Rory replies. Then, she says to herself, “There’s an address here.” She enters it into her phone.
I’m immediately confronted with the question of what I need to do about this. If she enters the address, she’s going to see the greenhouse and ask questions.
If I walk over and just snap the phone out of her hands, that’s definitely going to raise more questions.
I resent myself for not putting away the key. I knew she was coming. We’d been talking about this movie for weeks.
So how on Earth could I have forgotten?
She holds her phone up to me.
“What the hell is this?” She asks, much more hostile than usual. “This is the key to a greenhouse.”
I can’t think of any responses in the moment, but I keep a nervous smile on my face just in case it’s appropriate.
“Is that why your back is wet? Is that why you’re missing plants?” She asks.
“Is that movie still off the table?” I ask. “I know you said, maybe a later showing… but I really wanted to catch the matinee…”
“I’ll pay for your ticket,” she says. “Can you please answer my question?”
“Yes, it’s a greenhouse,” I say. Her eyes widen in shock. “And yes, it’s the most generous thing anybody’s ever gifted me.”
“I know you didn’t have a lot growing up, but you’ve got to be smarter than this,” Rory says simply. “Please. Cut ties with this guy. Give him back the key. You’re playing a really dangerous game.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I say flatly. “Are we going to see the movie or not?”
Rory chuckles defeatedly. She’s pissed.
“I don’t know how you can do this to me,” she says. “You know what my mom went through. Guy comes into your life, promises to give you everything, then takes control and abuses you? And that’s assuming he’s even human.”
