Page 99 of One Adult, Please

The bioluminescent-inspired lighting is still running on backup power. I don't know what designer decided that a botanical garden in a theme park needed to glow blue-green after dark, but they did, and the power system that Joel maintains keeps it breathing. And now I'm walking through a space that looks like the inside of a dream.

The paths wind between beds of flowers that have closed for the night, petals furled, sleeping the way plants sleep.

Grant's always in the same place at night, the wildlife center, checking on the animals one more time. Tonight, I'm going to intercept him.

I see his silhouette against the glow. He's on the path ahead, watching something in the bushes. I see the moment he registers my footsteps. The slight turn of his head. The way his body shifts from observation mode to awareness-of-Grace mode.

"Hey," I say when I'm close enough.

"Hey." He doesn't turn. "There's a possum. She has babies."

I step up beside him.

In the shadows beneath a flowering bush, there's a possum. On her back, tiny faces peer out from fur. Babies. We watch the possum in silence. She waddles across the path, her babies clinging, and disappears into the bushes on the other side. The garden settles back into stillness.

Grant turns to me.

In the bioluminescent light, his face is all planes and shadows. The scar on his eyebrow that I've never asked about. The lines around his eyes that come from squinting into sun and watching things at a distance.

"Grace." His voice is quiet. "Why are you here?"

I could make a joke. Say something about the round friends needing a midnight check-in, or Kevin staging a coup. I don't. "Because you're the first person who just stayed still. And I wanted to come to you. Just because I wanted to."

Grant stands in the blue-green light, completely motionless.

I step close enough to touch him if I reached. "I want to touch you now. Is that okay?" I ask.

"Yes."

I put my hand over his heart. Grant always seems so calm. But his heart is pounding against my hand and his breath catches when I touch him.

"You can touch me back."

"I need you to be really sure. Because once I start I'm not going to want to stop and I need to know that this is something you're positive about."

I step into him, closing the last distance, my body against his body, my hand still over his heart.

Grant's hands come up. His palms land on my waist and his fingers spread across my lower back.

"Grace," he says, and my name in his mouth sounds like something he's been saying in his head for days, waiting for permission to say out loud.

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to kiss you now. Is that okay?"

"Please."

His mouth moves against mine slowly. Asking questions with his lips and waiting for my body to answer. His hands slide into my hair, angling my head so he can deepen the kiss. My fingers fist in his shirt, pulling him closer.

I pull back just enough to breathe. "Grant."

"Mm?"

"We're in the garden path."

"I know."

"Someone could see."