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“Sure. Show me.” I take out my notebook and slide it toward her, flipping the pages open to where I drew the trees and their leaves. She studies them closely for a moment.
“These are really good.”
“Thanks. Any idea what we’re looking at?”
A strange look flits across her face but it’s gone as soon as my brain can register it.
“Tell me about these guys of yours again,” she pushes. I sigh and launch into the story of how I met all four guys, even though she’s heard it all before. We may not meet up often, but we talk almost every day on social media.
“Hmmm,” is all she says when I finish.
“Hmmm?” I prompt but she just hides a knowing smirk behind her cup as she picks it up to drink again. She’s stalling. “Out with it!”
“Oh, Jas, it’s so obvious! It’s like you can’t see the wood for the trees.” She sighs like a disappointed school teacher, but the effect is ruined by her snorting at the use of the word ‘wood’.
“Real mature,” I grumble, which just makes her laugh outright at me.
“Jas, look. You see this tree here?” She points to the largest, tallest, strongest tree I’ve drawn. I nod. “This is a freaking oak tree. Oak. You get me?”
Erm, yeah, I get that she’s crazy. What’s with the oak obsession. I shrug at her and she shakes her head, exasperated with me.
“See this one, the way the leaves are almost in a fan formation?” I nod again. “This is an Ash tree. The one with the orange berries is a Rowan tree.” She says the name of each tree with heavy significance, as if spelling out the obvious to an idiot. Which clearly, I am.
“Oh! I’ve never heard of a Rowan tree.”
“Really? I’m surprised. They’re considered very magical and sacred...but stop deflecting. You know what this means, right?” Her voice rises with excitement and I hiss at her to quiet down. Her eyes are twinkling with mischief and delight. “Your trees are your guys!”
I groan and look down at the tiny little saplings I have sketched. Jaye catches me.
“It’s too soon to say what they are, but I would be willing to bet they’re Linden trees.”
“There’s no such thing,” I scoff.
She doesn’t deign to answer me, just pulls out her phone and starts furiously typing into it.
“Ah-ha! See?” she crows triumphantly a moment later, spinning the screen around for me to see and thrusting the phone right up against my nose. If I try to read it, I’ll go cross eyed, so I take the phone from her grip and move it to a normal reading distance away from my face.
The page she brought up explains how Silver Lindens are trees which grow up to 115ft tall and can have tree trunks up to 7ft in diameter.
“Okay, so they’re real then.” I shrug. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Girl, please, denial is not just a river in Egypt.”
“Well why are all the other forests fully established but these trees are still growing?” I challenge, folding my arms like a stroppy teenager.
“I’d say probably because you’ve not slept with Linden yet.”
“Ha, joke’s on you because I haven’t slept with Rowan either.”
“No, but you've done...stuff with him, right?”
I snigger. “Stuff? What is this, high school?”
“Hell no, my language was cruder in high school. I’m just so used to having to mind myself around the kids that I sometimes forget how to function in normal adult society. I’ll be telling you I need to pee-pee in a minute.”
The laugh that escapes my lips is loud and uncontrollable, which earns me a glare from Jaye before her face cracks and she joins me.
“Seriously though, there’s a clear message here, Jas. I don’t know how you didn’t see it sooner.” She gives me a sympathetic smile and picks up her drink. While she enjoys the rest of it, I think back over my visions.
