“I’m sure he deserved it,” I said, and he laughed.
“He absolutely did.”
The time I spent in the garden moved too quickly, and every time I left, time seemed to go achingly slow. Whenever the goose did something, or whenever I saw Oliver, or whenever Eula updated me on RSVPs, I couldn’t wait to tell Rus.
And the only person I told about Rus was my mom—and that was purely by accident.
“Do you like him?” she asked after I vented to her about the day and about Oliver’s insistence that he check every RSVP, and to add a plus-one to every guest even if they didn’t specify. He argued that there wouldn’t be enough food, and that Juliette’s immaculate cheese board would be nothing but rinds if she didn’t budget better. He and Juliette were butting heads more often than not these days, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to take it out into the parking lot or kiss.
I gave a start. “Oliver? I …” I frowned, thinking back over the last month. “I think I used to—maybe. We flirted, but …”
“There’s someone else,” she inferred.
“I’m leaving in a week and a half, there can’t be anyone,” I reminded her, but she simply tsked.
“Love rarely arrives on time, sprout.”
“Love’s not arriving at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m leaving,” I reiterated. “It’s a waste of time.”
I stopped abruptly. Now who did I just sound like?
Mom laughed at me. “Sprout, it’s aprivilegeto wastetime—waste as much of it as you can. On things you love, on things youenjoy, on moments that make you so happy you could burst. And in the end, if you do it right, none if it will have been a waste at all.”
“But . . . what if I really do like him?”
“Good.Let yourself.”
Let myself. It sounded so much easier said than done.
On my eighteenth visit to the garden, we decided to tackle the wall of honeysuckle vines attempting to ensnare a poor dog-wood tree beside it, so we were trying to tamp it back into place. They tended to spreadeverywhere.
“Henry loved these things,” Rus said, pinching a flower off the vine and tasting the end where the nectar pooled. “He’d always be walking around with one in his mouth. Have you tried one?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really a sweets person.”
“Try it. It’s not too sweet. There’s few things that taste better,” he said.
“Like what?”
He hesitated. “I . . . can’t recall,” he lied, the flower suddenly very interesting to him. He twirled it between his fingers, until I plucked it away and put the base of it to my lips, the same petals he’d just tasted.
My tongue burst with the taste of sweet nectar. It was delightful, and I laughed in surprise. “Oh, that’s actually not bad.”
He smiled, warm and soft like sunshine. “What, you think I’d lie to you?”
“Maybe,” I replied coyly, and tasted it again. “Though flowers can’t lie. I think that’s what I love most about them. Did you know in the Victorian era, they used to communicate through flower arrangements? It was a whole intricate language. There were roses for love and daisies for innocence, sure, but lavender for distrust and edelweiss for courage.”
“Honeysuckle for devoted love,” he said, surprising me so much I almost dropped the blossom. “Isn’t it?” he went on, tilting his head. “Unless I’m misremembering.”
“No, it is.” How unexpectedly pleasant. I found myself smiling down at the flower. “You’re full of surprises.”
He winked. “I told you, I was a troublemaker. And troublemakers get time-out a lot, and it just so happenedthiskid got sent to a corner of the library where there was a whole bunch of boring books about flowers.”
I laughed, delighted. “Boring!”
