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“Okay. Then I will.”
“Are you going to tell me about the flowers?”
“Which ones?” he asks during a powerful downswing.
“What other ones did you bring?”
“The Roses.”
From the bath.
“Not the Roses,” I say quickly, hoping he’ll skip that explanation.
Hand on the exposed top of his Adonis belt, Reece pauses, reading my thoughts.
“Different color Roses have different meanings.”
“I know that. I also know what the red ones mean.” Everybody knows what those mean.
“They were burgundy. The Roses last night.”
“Burgundy is a shade of red, rookie.”
“BurgundyRoses…” He resumes chopping. “…mean dark beauty, affection…” The last swing, Reece brings the ax down faster and harder, causing the log to shatter into multiple shards. “And passion,” he finishes while staring directly at me.
I didn’t know that, but like everything else Reece has taught me, I’m glad I do now.
“And the Sunflowers?”
Reece wedges the ax into the stump’s surface, and begins collecting wood chunks off the ground, ignoring my question.
“I’ll just look them up and jump to my own conclusions.”
“You’d need your phone to do that…” Reece purses his lips and squints his eyes in a way that makes him look guiltier than if he’d said it with a straight face.
I almost forgot about that, how I was kidnapped last night with nothing but the measly clothing on my body. Usually, it feels like my phone is another limb, but right now, I feel whole without it. I feel whole without any of that world.
I will have to find a way to call and check up on my mom though. That is a part of me, a permanent part.
Standing with an armful, Reece says, “So I guess I have to tell you,” making me roll my eyes.
He dumps the wood into a basket by my feet, then dusts off his hands.
“Do you know how Sunflowers got their name?”
“Because they look like the sun,” I say confidently, but he shakes his head.
“Because they follow the sun. At sunrise, they face east.” He points east. “Then they follow the sun as it makes its way across the sky.” He makes a large arc over his head before pointing west, where the sun sets.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t they still be facing west when the sun comes up again?”
Gradually reversing the path his arm just took, he says, “Overnight, they slowly turn back toward the east.” By the time he finishes, his finger’s once again pointing east.
That can’t be true. Flowers are that intuitive?
“The sun is completely gone, missing from the sky, but they still know it’ll be there again? Even though it was in a different place the last time they saw it? How?”
“Loyalty. Even when they lose sight of the sun, Sunflowers are loyal to it.”
