“Wow, it really is mostly plants, huh?” Rue said, and I shrugged. “They’re cool, though. Do you work at your dad’s plant shop?”

“Yes,” I said, which was true, but not in the way most people might assume that it was. 

Most people assumed that I had specific work shifts and duties, that I helped out with customers and whatever else needed to be done. What I actually did was whatever I felt like doing, which was mostly fussing more than anyone wanted me to over the minutiae of plant care and growing seedlings in the greenhouse out back.

When I left high school and first started spending more time at the nursery, everyone was dead set on discouraging me from being so careful about everything. We’re more of a bulk nursery, they’d told me, so if some of our plants were a little shabby around the edges or we lost some stock because they accidentally missed out on being watered for a few days during a heatwave, that was fine.

I still didn’t really understand why anyone cared that I made sure that didn’t happen, though. It wasn’t like I nagged anyone else into helping or I was supposed to be doing something more important. Sometimes it felt like people just craved conformity and even they didn’t really know why.

Anyway, a few months ago my dad told me that we’d made a couple of big sales that we probably wouldn’t have otherwise because of how nice the flowers I’d grown and carefully tended from seed were. I think he’d meant it to be vindicating, but it mostly just made me even more mad that they hadn’t left me alone to begin with. And to be fair, everyone did basically leave me alone about it now beyond the occasional teasing comment and my dad constantly wanting me to report all my expenses, but I was still mad because I liked to hold onto my bitter little grudges.

Also, I didn’t really feel like anything had fundamentally changed or any lessons had been learnt. It still felt like there was this haze of doubt hanging over everything I did.

That was the annoying thing about being disabled but also better and smarter than everyone else—at least at that one special thing that was yours. Nobody took you seriously no matter how right you were. Even when they did, it felt like they were just humouring you. 

And sure, maybe knowing about plants didn’t mean I was any good at running a plant shop, but it was endlessly frustrating that I did things like lovingly sculpt tiny bonsai trees planted in whatever nice broken pots I scavenged from the trash and repaired myself and my dad wouldn’t even let me try to sell them because my shitty little beautiful bonsais in their broken pots were apparently too premium a product for our bulk plant store.

Or at least that was what he said. Maybe they just looked like a child’s craft project through everyone else’s eyes and he was embarrassed.

“That’s cool,” Rue said. “I’ve never really paid much attention to plants before, but I like your pictures. What are they for? Do you have an Instagram or something?”

I shook my head. “They’re just… for me. Most people don’t think plants are very interesting.”

“Huh,” Rue said, his eyes momentarily cutting to his own phone before returning to stare down at the picture of a tray of freshly sprouted seedlings before him. “I guess I never really…”

I waited, but he didn’t finish the sentence, so I kept scrolling through his pictures.

It wasn’t until I came across the first picture of a person, of him, that I realised that there hadn’t been any others, and that that was probably odd. I didn’t have pictures of people on my phone either, but I already knew I was weird. I was a little distracted from that line of thought, though, because this was a selfie-style picture he’d taken in a grimy mirror in a poorly-lit bathroom and he was not wearing a shirt. 

When he saw what I was looking at, he gave an awkward chuckle. “Ah, I forgot about that. When I turned eighteen, I decided I was going to join a dating site, so…” He shrugged. “But then I didn’t. It’s a small town so the chances of everyone I know seeing anything I put out there are pretty high. Not worth it.”

I flicked to the next picture, a close up of his face in the same dingy bathroom that was clearly part of the same set. His hair was freshly shaved, his expression flat, and his dark eyes were cold and empty.

“Good,” I said as I flicked back and forth between the two pictures. His hair had grown out a bit since he took the pictures, the dark strands just long enough now to hint at curls. “These are… bad.”

His tongue swiped out to wet his bottom lip. “Kinda cringe?”

“No, I mean like…” I settled on the picture of his glaring face. “If I date you, and then you domestically abuse me, and they put this picture in the newspaper and say that was the face I swiped in whichever direction means ‘yes please’ on, nobody is going to be sympathetic. They’re gonna be like… yeah, obviously.”

He laughed, but there was a certain edge to it, a lopsidedness to his expression that made me feel like maybe I’d missed the mark. “I look like a domestic abuser?”

“In the picture, yes,” I said. “But if you told me this was your brother, not you, I’d believe you, because you barely even look like the same person. You just look angry in the picture.”

“Oh,” Rue said. “Yeah, I guess maybe I was. I guess I was feeling lonely when I had the idea, so the result was… that.” He laughed again, but it came out brittle. “Good thing I never posted them anywhere.”

“I can take one of you now, if you want,” I offered. “You could smile, maybe. You don’t look like a serial killer when you smile.”

That turned his smile more genuine again, at least for a moment before he actually gave it some thought and his expression clouded over. “Nah, it’s fine. I don’t think dating is really for me. Or… I don’t know. Relationships are complicated, right?”

I nodded, because I did agree. I agreed so much that dating just wasn’t really something that I considered. To date someone, you had to really trust them, and I just didn’t have that in me. The more you care about someone, the more they can hurt you, and I knew that what I needed and what I could offer were such specific things that matching them with another person was unlikely.

I wasn’t convinced that Rue suffered from quite the same level of complication in his life. He was handsome and pretty normal, at least as far as I could tell. He probably just needed to find a girl he liked and muster up the courage to ask her out, and he’d be fine.

Probably. Honestly, I barely knew how these things worked, despite having watched my father date multiple women over the years—at different times, of course.

“But, for the record,” Rue continued, rallying more energy back into his voice, “I wouldn’t be a domestic abuser. I definitely wouldn’t be that.”

It had been an offhand joke about how scowly his expression was for something he’d intended for a dating profile, but I was starting to get the feeling that he took it a little personally.

“Sorry,” I said, pressing my shoulder against his as I drew in a breath through my teeth. I was starting to shiver. “How long do you think we’ll be here? I might die of exposure.”

“Oh!” Rue said as he grabbed for his backpack. He unzipped it, dug through the surprisingly full bag, and pulled out a hoodie which he handed to me.

“You came prepared,” I said as I passed his phone back so that I could tug the hoodie on.

He shrugged. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I came out here knowing I was gonna get stranded. It’s kinda nice, y’know? It forces you to just stop and think for a bit.”

“Sorry I got in the way of your thinking time.”

“No big loss.”

That sounded like a load of shit, considering the lengths he’d gone to for his thinking time, but there was no point in interrogating it. The water had already risen high enough that I’d be wading through crashing waves if I tried to leave.

Still, when silence fell between us, I didn’t fight it. I’d take a few hours of silent contemplation over a few hours of forced, awkward smalltalk any day. 

Even with the hoodie, the cold started to sink in after a while, and even Rue was hunched forward when his arms folded over his chest. Neither of us made a single obvious move, but as time ticked on, the incidental touching from close proximity turned into leaning into one another, huddling for warmth.

I kept expecting Rue to ask for his hoodie back, but he didn’t and I wasn’t offering. I’d seen his shirtless mirror pic—he had more meat on his bones than I did. If I gave it back, I’d die of hypothermia, and then he’d have a body to hide, so it was better for both of us that I didn’t.

I tried to lean in closer, but there was no ‘closer’ to be when we were already pressed together, so I ended up unhelpfully pushing my weight against his body instead. He wrapped his arm around me, hooking his hand on my opposite shoulder. We both went still, but neither of us moved away.

I was extra glad I hadn’t let him get a look at what was in my Youtube recommendations.