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“I really hope there aren’t any bugs in there,” Felix says. He spent half the drive asking how long we were going to be here.
Henry, one of the stragglers who interrupted my conversation with Gavin after class, taps at his phone. “The website said there’s supposed to be a butterfly house.”
Felix shudders.
“I am going to let you guys wander,” Gavin says. “But first we’ve got to talk about the reading.”
He waits a second for all of us to quiet down. I feel like a ghost in the crowd, unnoticed and invisible. Gavin is doing everything he can to avoid looking at me. He’ll stare at the wall, the floor, at the sad-looking fern beside the reception desk. But not at me. Whereas I haven’t been able to stop looking at the man who’s broken my heart twice and made me come more times than I can count.
Rewatching the video he made for me has to qualify as a form of self harm. It physically hurts to play it knowing there won’t be anext timefor us.
And yet I watch it every night.
“You’ll recall from the text that natural history emerged as a recognized scientific field in Europe by the end of the Renaissance,” he says. “Would anyone care to remind us of the factors that drove this development?”
Felix raises his hand. Gavin nods.
“Doctors going back through Classical Greek and Roman texts to study medicinal plants,” Felix says.
“That’s one,” Gavin says. “What else?”
After a long stretch of quiet, I raise my hand. I can tell he doesn’t want to call on me, but I’m the only one offering an answer to his question.
“Alexis,” he says, still not looking at me.
“Colonialism and commercial expansion.” I swallow hard. “The importation of plants from the New World. Like tomatoes.”
“It’s hard to imagine Italian cuisine without tomatoes,” Gavin says. “But many of the fruits and vegetables we’ve come to associate with cultural dishes didn’t exist in those places prior to the Columbian exchange.”
Finally, his gaze meets mine and it’s as if all the air has suddenly been sucked from the room. I felt a similar suffocation when I walked into the classroom last week and saw Gavin standing there. By the time he let everyone leave, I knew he’d already made the decision for us: it was over before it had even begun, and I was devastated.
I broke down and told Trevor the whole sad story when he found me crying in my room Friday night. Afterward, he insisted we get dressed up and go out for drinks to forget our dating woes. I appreciated his attempt to cheer me up, but it’s going to take more than a strong martini to make me forget about the taste of Gavin’s kiss.
If the naked longing on his face right now is any indication, he’s just as torn up about all of this as I am.
“Of course,” Gavin says, “new plants also meant new medicines. Physicians founded botanical gardens, like this one, as a way of familiarizing themselves with these new plants.” He turns his attention to the group. “Be thinking about that as you take in everything on display here. We’ll meet back at the van in an hour.”
We disperse into the greenery. I head toward a small fountain brimming with waterlilies and catch sight of Gavin leaving the building through one of the side exits, with an earnest Felix on his heels.
After seeing all there is to see in the main structure, I head outside to check out the grounds. Fall-blooming asters, sedum, and chrysanthemums line the path all the way to the butterfly nursery.
Stepping inside the domed glass structure, I immediately gasp.
Hundreds of butterflies in a variety of sizes and colors lilt between the flowers and foliage. I move further into the nursery, snapping pictures with my phone and breathing in the sweet, exotic perfume of tropical plants.
A blue-and-black butterfly lands on my floral top and refuses to budge when I try to coax it onto my hand. I let it hang out on my left breast as I continue to explore the nursery, stopping short as a red spotted salamander skitters onto the walkway. As I stoop to snap a picture of it, the blue-and-black butterfly alights and flutters around my head before coming to rest in my hair.
“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” says a familiar deep-toned voice.
I glance up to find Gavin watching me from a small alcove. On the back of his outstretched hand sits a monarch butterfly.
“So have you.” I take a steadying breath and join him in front of a trellis coated in flowering vines. “This place is really cool. I can’t believe my parents never brought me here.”
“I used to come here to run the trails during my downtime when I was in grad school.” Gavin points to the butterfly making its way up the side of my head. “He looks like he could use some assistance.”
“Maybe a little.” I hold my breath as Gavin reaches over to grasp the butterfly gently by both of its wings. My stomach flips. This is the first time he’s come close to touching me in over a week.
“Thanks,” I say. He deposits the butterfly onto my shirt, just below my shoulder. “Be honest. You only brought us here because you wanted to play with the butterflies.”
