“You said or.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I meant.”
“I do.” I kissed her cheek. “Thanks for doing hard things.”
“I’m surrounded by excellent examples.” She paused, then said, “I saw your painting.”
“You’ll have to narrow that down. I have a lot of paintings.”
“You know which one. I want to be that person for you, the one who can cheer you on.”
“Me too, Mom.”
I squeezed her hand, then turned to leave as she began flipping through the mail. I stopped in my tracks and turned back around, seeing something. “Underground gardens. I’ve been wanting to try this out.” I pulled it out of the stack and held it up. “It even has a coupon. Two for the price of one.”
“You should take a date.” She winked at me.
I walked to the front door and opened it. “Suitors?” I called out the door. “Where are all my suitors?”
“Is Elliot out there?” she asked.
“Funny.” I shut the door. “I told you, I have no feelings for Elliot. Not yet, anyway. We’re just friends right now.”
“Is there a law against going to an underground garden with your friend?”
“Well, in my brain, the underground gardens are the most romantic place in the world, so, you’re right, I should totally take a friend.”
I had been kidding, but I pinned that flyer and coupon to my wall, one of the few things left, and every day for the following three days, I walked by it. On the fourth day, I called Elliot. As a fellow artist, he was sure to appreciate the experience.
“This is beautiful,” I said as we walked down two levels of wooden stairs. Vines dripped from the ceiling like stalactites and the air was thick with the sweet aroma of flowers.
“Isn’t it?” Elliot said. He’d been to the gardens before, but when I called, he had said he would love to see them again.
Sunlight poured through sections of the ceiling that were open to the sky. The temperature was slightly cooler but also more humid, like we were in our own tropical forest. And the plants that lived there, I guessed, were tropical plants—big colorful flowers and broad-leafed shrubbery. Drip lines ran along the wall, bringing even more moisture to the area. I felt like I had been transported to an island somewhere.
“I love this,” I said. The garden was divided into dug-out rooms and we walked slowly through each one.
We weren’t the only ones there. Two little kids kept darting past us, their footsteps echoing off the walls as their feet slapped the ground. Their parents tried to keep up with them. A couple was there as well, holding hands and stopping at each display. They looked at each other more than they did the flowers. I remembered telling Cooper this would be a perfect date. I gave Elliot a sideways glance. It didn’t feel like a date now. It felt more like a research mission with Elliot. It kind of was. We were both soaking in the inspiration.
“Are you ready for school to start?” he asked.
“Not really.” This year would be different. I wouldn’t have Cooper. Would I have Rachel? Justin? I hadn’t talked to them in a while. I’d sent a few texts to Justin but hadn’t wanted to explain anything until they were back. Which they would be in exactly three days. I was both excited to see them and nervous to tell them about the destruction of our friend group. I’d understand if they chose Cooper. I was the one who’d set off the bomb. “You ready?” I asked, trying not to think about it too much.
“It’s senior year . . . so no.”
We continued down the wide corridor toward the next dug-out room. “There are carvings on the walls,” I said, tempted to run my hand along the patterns that manifested between plants and vines.
“I know. They probably took hundreds of hours to complete.”
I heard running water somewhere and I left Elliot behind, examining one of the more intricate patterns, to follow the sound to a water feature that took up the corner of one of the rooms. The couple I had seen holding hands was in the room as well. I skirted around them and to the corner. Water poured over stacked rocks and followed a path carved into the floor ending in a pond. Several large koi fish swam in the pond. Images of that day in Cooper’s bathroom while we had a memorial service for Amelia’s fish came into my brain unbidden. I pushed the side of my fist to my forehead and turned around.
Cooper stood at the roughly carved entrance of the room. At first I thought it was my brain putting his face on someone else’s body, since I had just been thinking about him. But then he spoke.
“Abby, don’t be mad.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t mad. Well, I was kind of mad at my body that no matter how many weeks it had been separated from him, it still reacted to the sight of him. It was like feeling rain after spending days in the desert. He was, like my grandpa might say, a sight for sore eyes. His blond hair fell across his forehead just above his intensely blue eyes. I’d almost forgotten how tall and broad he was as well, his frame seeming to fill the entire doorway.
“I sent that flyer to your house.”
“What? Why?”
“To get you here. You said this was your dream location. And I’ve been watching my phone every day since then, and now finally you’ve come.”
“I knew I should’ve taken that app off my phone.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Well, here I am.”
He walked closer.
I looked around to see that the couple who had been in there before was gone. I crossed my arms over my chest, hoping they would protect me from whatever was about to come out of his mouth. Another speech about how we made the best friends? We did make amazing friends.
“I miss you,” he said. His voice was rough, laced with emotion. Now that he was closer I could see the dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t gotten good sleep in a while.
“I miss you too, Cooper, but . . .”
He held up his hand, and I stopped.
“Please don’t say any buts until I finish. Please.”
I nodded.
“It’s been weeks since I’ve seen you, and in that time I figured out my fear.”
“Being alone?” I asked.
He laughed a little. “No. Although that wasn’t fun.” He still had the same amazing smile. The one that lit up his whole face. Why couldn’t that have changed in the last few weeks? I found myself wishing he were missing a tooth or something. What was I going to say at the end of this if he asked to be friends again? I couldn’t do this. My insides were already twisting back up again.
“My fear is being with you.”
“What?”
“All this time, Abby, that’s what I’ve feared. On the beach that night a year ago, you told me you loved me and I was scared. Terrified actually. I knew how much I cared about you as a friend. But I knew that if I let myself fall in love with you, that it would be like handing you my heart to hold. I’d be so exposed. So I held on to it tight. Kept it to myself. And I thought I’d succeeded. I thought that I didn’t feel the same way about you as you did about me. But that’s just because I didn’t realize until now what love really felt like. I thought love was that first-meeting emotion. You know, the one that always fades over time. I kept trying to find my happiness there in that emotion. I’d date girls and think, yes, this is what love feels like. But I was never happy. It always felt empty. It wasn’t until you left, until you took what my happiness really was away, that I realized love was this.” His put his hand on his chest. “This deep, intense caring about someone’s well-being. About wanting that person to be okay no matter what happens to yourself. The realization that you, Abby, are already holding my heart and I’m perfectly okay with that. I love you.”