“I want to show you something,” he says.

We tell the group where we’re going, then head for the row of towering conifers that marks the edge of the party. Things have grown quieter and more relaxed, this late. We step around a girl with a guitar, strumming a serene melody to a sleepy audience. Aiden is leading the way. In any other situation, I’d be hesitant to walk into the dark woods alone with a guy, but I feel so much at home with Aiden that I didn’t even think about it.

“Every time you tell me you have something to show me, something ridiculous happens,” I tell him.

“Name one thing that’s happened today that wasn’t ridiculous,” he answers.

The sounds of the Fling Thing hush all at once when we step into the great green cathedral of the forest. The canopy layers overhead grow together so thick that the very stars are blotted out. It’s dark. Aiden pauses just within the treeline and glances around, apparently checking that no one else is with us. I’m wondering what the hell he might have to show me, all the way up here - something in his pockets? Neither of us brought our bags.

He opens his hands, but there’s nothing in them. There’s a moment of quiet, and then a little orb of golden light escapes. He makes more and more until there’s a gathering of them around us. When we start walking again, they follow, hovering just over our heads like a group of tame fireflies.

We walk in peaceful silence for a bit, close together. The warm color of Aiden’s skin is darker after a long day in the sun. I can still smell the vetiver on him, but now it’s mixed with the comforting scent of the bonfire, and a fresh, grassy kick that I suspect comes from all the running around with the soccer ball. A tiny hint of his sweat, too. He smells like a long, happy day. We listen together to the soft clicks and chirps of the hidden creatures populating the nocturnal landscape. A lazy breeze shifts the tree boughs, adding their leafy whispers to the song of the evening.

I’m not sure if we’re going somewhere specific, so I let Aiden guide us. Maybe he can hear something I can’t, or see some invisible path. Who knows?

“This is an old forest,” he says, eventually.

“Yeah, I know.”

“How do you know?”

He always asks me open questions like this when he wants to listen to me talk.

“Because.” I point overhead. “The size of the trees, the number of canopy layers. Plus, the edge of the forest is curved. New forests, man-made ones, they tend to be planted in straight lines, and have more equal spacing between the trees.”

Aiden smiles, his eyes roaming around the dark woodland like he’s seeking out the language I can read there.

“Can I ask you something?” he murmurs.

“Anything.”

“Why plants? I mean, you know so much about them, even for a guy who works in a flower shop.”

“Mmm.” I think it over before I answer. “You saw my mom’s garden, right? She likes to grow her own stuff to cook with.”

“Yeah.”

“I used to help her with it, even when I was really little. She and I would spend hours there together. We would talk about all kinds of different plants, not just ones in the garden. She could tell I was interested, so one year she gave me a book about plants for Christmas. I read all about how they worked, and...” I break off, considering my wording. “I just think they each have something to teach us.” I trail my fingers along the shiny bark of a wild cherry tree as we pass. “Plants heal us, shelter us, and feed us. Isn’t that what we should all be doing for each other? If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity. Henry David Thoreau wrote that.”

Aiden listens closely, his gaze on the trees overhead.

“I should have known,” he says, smiling to himself.

“Plants are just cool, okay? They take air and sunlight and turn it into life. Solid air and sunlight, that’s what a plant is. Walt Whitman said... I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” I glance over at Aiden, grinning, and catch his eye. “I can quote gay poets who wrote about plants all night long, by the way.”

Aiden laughs. The sound is quickly swallowed up in the deep hush of the woods. The floating lights cast shifting shadows over his face, the curve of his shoulders. I clear my throat and continue.

“Anyways, I always liked that line. The journey-work of stars. It’s happening every day, all around us. It’s the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever gotten to experience. I mean - until I met you.” I look to him again, and find him watching me. “You’re just like them. Doing star-work, making miracles, like it’s no big deal.”

I poke his arm, and we share a smile.

“I’ve never thought of it like that,” he says.

He seems to be considering what I said, so I fall quiet, to give him some time. I’m probably doing a bad job explaining myself, but I hope he knows what I mean. I hope he sees why I find my church in the plants and the forest.

I think he does, because he tips his head back, closes his eyes, and takes a long breath of the evergreen air. One of the tiny lights he created bumps into his arm and drifts peacefully away.

“That being said,” I finally add, “I don’t know enough to navigate us back out of this forest in the dark if we get lost. Are we going somewhere specific?”

“Yes. We’re almost there.”

“Have you been in this forest before?”

“Once.” He moves a branch out of the way. “When I was a kid.”

“And you remember where we’re going?”

“No, but I feel it.”

I could ask him to explain, but he said we’re close, so I simply pad along next to him, being careful not to trip and fall on the network of raised roots and fallen logs and damp leaves.

We come to a thick ridge of brush. Aiden somehow knows a hidden path through it, and we step unscathed out into a wide, grassy clearing. I stop at the edge, my breath frozen in my throat. I crane my head back, my mouth dropped open, staring.

The sky here is completely open to the stars, which are even more staggeringly bright, this far from any light pollution. There is no growth in the clearing, but one.

At the very center is a single tree, unlike any I’ve seen before.

It seems almost prehistoric, with a wide trunk that plummets up towards the sky and stands at least ten feet over the top of Aiden’s head. Not too tall, not by tree standards, but something in its posture speaks to me of great age. The branches start about halfway up, bent under the weight of so many leaves. I cross the clearing without thinking, come up close to the tree. Aiden follows me, and the lights follow him, bathing us in a golden glow.

Not one leaf on this specimen is the same as the rest. A sea of different colors ripples in the breeze: jade, celadon, mint, cyan, emerald. Every version of green that can be found in a forest, there exists in the tiny, close congregations of leaves on this tree.

The bark is silver, and smooth.

I can’t shake the feeling that we’re someplace where time doesn’t exist. Some kind of holy place.

“What is this?” I breathe. Aiden, who had been watching me, turns and nods up at the branching canopy.

“The tree you’ve been dreaming of, I think,” he says.

It dawns on me in fits and starts, then in one giant wave. Yes. This is the exact tree from my dream. This is the sapling I’ve watched those women plant over and over again in my sleep. This clearing, the brush that lines it, everything matches. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection myself.

“What… how…”

“I think I accidentally implanted a little bit of my personal history in your mind, when we were looking at the old photos,” Aiden says.

“Your personal history?” I stare at him. He chews his lip for a moment before he speaks again.

“It’s the source of my power.”

“The tree?” I gape at him, floored. “The source of your power is a plant?”

He only looks at me, doesn’t say a word. I turn back to the tree and reach out slowly. This feels like touching a priceless thing in a museum, but I can’t not. I trail my fingers down the bark, and Aiden shivers.

“Can you feel that?” I ask, flabbergasted.

“Yes.” He presses a hand to his neck.

I need to sit down for a second. I sink down onto the soft grass. Aiden joins me, unfolding his long legs and sprawling out on his back. I follow his lead and lay out flat, too. We stare together up at the strangest, most beautiful ceiling of leaves and stars I’ve ever seen in my life.

“It was brought here a long time ago,” Aiden murmurs. “The sapling was a cutting from another tree, just like this one.”

“How many are there?”

He shakes his head.

“Not a lot. Not anymore.” A beat of silence. “They’re called Guardian Trees.”

“Guardian Trees.” I watch the way the leaves move. “Does anyone else know this is here?”

“My family.” Aiden hesitates again. “And now you.”

It occurs to me that I’ve been let in on an incredible, eons-old secret. I ponder that, a little overwhelmed. Aiden’s lights drift around in the lower branches of the tree.

“Would you have told me about it,” I ask, “If you hadn’t accidentally already put it into my mind?”

To my surprise, this draws one of those sweet, huffing laughs from him.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do anymore. You have me breaking my own rules all over the place.”

My heart swells wildly. I don’t know when exactly I started feeling like this, like the very Earth could shake and it wouldn’t snap the thread between me and him. I want to pull his words around me like a warm blanket.

I abruptly remember how much we used to hate each other. How I used to watch him, thinking it was so damn unfair, everything he had that he didn’t even care about. An adoring girlfriend, a gaggle of friends who would do anything he said, the kind of good looks that didn’t diminish even after a long, sweaty soccer practice. He had all that, but he still went out of his way to make me miserable every chance he got. God, I would go home just seething, thinking: that’s the worst person in the world. Insufferable bastard. I hate him.

This is the same person, flat on his back next to me, looking up at the night sky. It seems impossible.

“I can’t believe the tree is real,” I say, just to say something. “I guess sometimes our dreams tell us more than we think.”

He’s quiet for so long that I almost wonder if he drifted off to sleep.

“Do they shower down on you in your bed, do you smile in your sleep when they find you, the thousands of kisses I send from my dreams…”

For a second, I think I must have imagined it. Did he really say what I think he just said?

Here it is. The right moment, the one I’ve been waiting for.

I’ve spent hours over the last few weeks carefully choosing every word, agonizing over every sentence I planned to say during this conversation. I shouldn’t have bothered. Everything I wanted to tell him flies out of my head, and I hear myself say:

“Aiden. I really want to kiss you.”

He doesn’t answer. I had my eyes squeezed shut when I said it, but now I look at him. His face is turned towards me. My eyes slide to meet his and lock there. There’s some burning wildness, an intensity behind his blue gaze that I’ve never seen before.

We just look at each other. His eyes are wide and round, pools of starlight with pinpricks of gold from the magic fireflies. I’m lost in them. My heart is working itself into overdrive, and I can’t stand it any longer.

I roll onto my side. His arm is tucked behind his head, which means there’s room for me against his ribs. I prop myself up with an elbow and a fist in the grass. My free hand I move, achingly slowly, to rest on his stomach. Hard muscle and soft fabric meet my palm.

Our connection isn’t open, but I can feel the beat of his pulse against my fingertips, racing at a pace that matches my own. Now I’m looking down at him, the grass behind his shoulders, the sky behind mine. He stares up at me, and I wish more than anything that I could read his expression, but I’ve never seen this one on him before, and I don’t know what it is. He’s so still, a breathing statue.

Some of my hair falls forward into my face as I bend over him. Slowly, so slowly, so that he has plenty of time to stop me if he doesn’t want this. I half-expect him to move away.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t move, doesn’t move.

I close my eyes and brush my lips against his. A feather-light kiss, as gentle as I can possibly manage. Something powerful, something I don’t have a name for, moves through my entire body. Everything else in the world but him vanishes. I am pulled up into the tidal wave of my own heart.

I wait, my eyes still shut, our lips a breath apart, for him to push me off or kiss me back. It’s a long, paralytic moment, and I feel at the edge of a precipice.

A shaking exhale escapes Aiden’s lips. His fingers slide up the back of my neck. He takes a fistful of my hair, and this is not a playful ruffle. He’s holding on by the roots. An answering shiver runs up the whole length of my body.

I think I’ve been given permission, and I’m not waiting for another second. I kiss him again, this time long and deep, no longer holding back. I savor the taste of him, the sharp scratch of his stubble against my cheek. This time his lips open under mine; our tongues brush together, and the sweet warmth of his heightened breath spills into my mouth. His fingers tighten in my hair; my hand sweeps up to his chest and grasps a fistful of his shirt.

I’ve never kissed someone like this before. It’s unexpectedly urgent and intense, so different from any other time with anyone else. He's always surprising me. I don’t have words for something so perfect. The best comparison I can make is hearing a song for the first time and knowing you’ll listen to it lovingly for the rest of your life.

It clicks in my head. Everyone before Aiden: a candle. Aiden himself: the sun.

We break apart, breathless. I open my eyes and find him there beneath me, painted gold in the glow of his lights. His cheeks are red, his chest rising and falling unevenly. He opens his eyes and blinks up at me hazily.

“Aiden.” I cup his cheek in my hand, and he suddenly sits bolt upright, swallowing hard. The movement takes me by surprise, and I sit up, too. He presses shaking fingers to his lips, staring at me. A handful of moments pass in silence. He looks shell-shocked.

Oh, no, I think, crashing back down to Earth.

“Please say something,” I rasp, hearing the desperation in my own voice.

“I-” His gaze drops to the ground. “I… listen- I don’t-” He breaks off, staring into the forest, and I could honestly scream. “Hang on - someone’s coming.”

I hear it seconds later. The tramping of footsteps, the chatter of voices.

“Where the hell did they go?” It’s Destinee and Angie.

“We’re pretty far out. Should we go back? Jamie! Aiden! It’s time to goooo!”

Aiden scrambles to his feet. He takes off his hat, adjusts his hair, and puts it back on. He extends a hand to pull me up, all without looking at me. I let him do it, my head spinning.

“We should go,” he says.

“Okay,” I answer, helpless.

They’re the last words we exchange all night.