Flynn

I took the bus into the city and spent the rest of the day wandering around, watching street performers and people who weren’t quite street performers but were interesting all the same. In the city, you’d see things like men wearing skirts for fashion and totally rocking it and people doing cool tricks on skates. They didn’t have a hat or a violin case out for money; they just wanted to be seen, and noticed, and appreciated. That was a service I provided, with a cheer when they landed their jump or a compliment to someone’s hair or outfit when I passed them in the street. 

As it started to get dark, I popped into my favourite bakery and aggressively flirted with the cashier—in front of his very amused girlfriend, who also worked there—until he gave me half price on the already-discounted doughnuts they were selling off at the end of the day. 

By that point, it was past closing time for the nursery, so I grabbed the next bus for the long ride back. The doughnuts were kind of squished by the time I made it in because I’d shoved them in my backpack and then slept on it on the bus, but they still tasted great.

I wanted to go out and take some pictures of shade-loving plants for Cam right away, but it was dark and I didn’t have a torch. Turned out that was probably a good thing, because after a bit more thinking I realised it’d probably raise a few questions if I started sending him pictures of this place taken at night. I got the feeling Justin at least already suspected something was up. Probably not exactly this, but some of the things he’d said made me think he thought maybe I was homeless or something. 

Maybe I smelled. I’d used a hose and some dish soap to give myself a quick outside shower this morning, but I hadn’t been washing my clothes because there was no way to hang them long enough to dry without anyone noticing. Though at this point, all that looked like was that I’d reworn these shorts once, and I did that all the time. So I probably didn’t smell, unless I always smelled.

I was halfway through my dinner of mushed doughnuts, an apple, and a muesli bar when my phone rang. I was hoping it would be someone offering me somewhere to live, but what I found instead was even more unlikely: Ethan was calling me.

“Hey,” I answered.

Honestly, I’d still mostly been expecting to hear Rue’s voice on the other end, maybe Connor’s, so the reluctant, half-murmured, “hi” still surprised me. Greetings out of the way, Ethan pushed on with more confidence. “Why are you at the nursery?”

“I’m not,” was out of my mouth before I had time to even think about how he knew or if I should maybe not lie to him about it.

“Okay,” Ethan said, dragging the word out slightly. “Well, remember that time you got lost in the bush and we put that friend tracker app on your phone to find you? It’s still connected to Rue’s, you know, and sometimes I check it and, well. I thought maybe you’d just left your phone at the nursery—”

“Yeah, that’s what happened.”

“—But you just answered it, so…”

Right. Huh. Silence stretched between us.

A sigh crackled down the line. “Look, I trust you enough that I think you probably do have a good reason for being there, but not enough that I’m going to just let it go if you don’t tell me. Or you can tell my dad instead, if you want—and that’s not a threat, just an offer.”

“No, I’ll tell you. I…” I really did consider lying, but Ethan wasn’t stupid. He was a lot smarter than I was. If I told him I was here because I’d forgotten something, first of all that would sound insane, but second, he’d be suspicious if he checked that app again later and I was still here or if I’d gone and uninstalled it. “I’m just between places right now, so I’m staying here over night. It’s safe and I’m not hurting anyone, right?”

“We literally have a spare room,” Ethan said. “I mean, it’s Rue’s room, technically. His name’s on the door. But he basically never sleeps in there.”

“I thought about asking you guys, but you know I’d drive you crazy, right?”

“Oh, I know that very well, but sometimes other things are more important. I’m not going to let my friend be a homeless squatter.”

Friend. Had he ever called me that before? But we wouldn’t stay friends for long if we were living under the same roof.

“Look, I know it seems dumb, but I just think this is better,” I told him. “That’s why I didn’t tell anyone. I really don’t mind just chilling out here.”

He mulled that over for a few seconds. “I have savings. I could pay for a hotel.”

“Ethan, come on,” I sighed. “Before this, I was staying at a place with a bunch of people even I didn’t want to be friends with. Compared to them, I had my shit together, and it wasn’t even close. So now, you know, I wake up in the morning in this quiet place, and I say hello to the plants, and it’s pretty nice, right? I just need to be on my own for a bit, not all crammed into a hotel surrounded by other people.”

It wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it was close enough, and more importantly, it was an angle I knew I could get Ethan to bite on.

Ethan made a reluctant sound. “Are you just sleeping on the floor, though?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I have a cushion from the kitchen chairs for a pillow.”

“You don’t own a pillow?”

“I did, but now I don’t. Life’s like that sometimes.”

Ethan let out an unhappy, grumbly groan. “Well, if staying there is what you want to do… okay. I won’t tell anyone. But if you need help, you should call me. I know I’m sheltered compared to you and I’m not good at many things, but I can do this. I can make things be okay.”

“I know you can,” I told him, and meant it. “But things are already pretty great, you know? I think it was probably good that all this happened. I’d settled into a bad place instead of thinking about if maybe I could do better.”

“Make sure the next place has a kitchen.”

“Kitchen, my own room, a bathroom with four walls around it. I’ll be living big, you’ll see. Maybe you could even actually come visit, if I lived in a place that wasn’t crazy. You and Rue.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ethan said. I didn’t think he meant to make that sound like ‘no way in hell,’ but sometimes his actual feelings were pretty damn easy to read when he was trying to act polite. He dropped his voice. “I have to go. The shower just stopped and I don’t know how I’d explain to Rue why I’d be on the phone to you.”

I wouldn’t have asked him to keep anything from Rue, but if he was going to just do it, I wouldn’t stop him. If I had to convince two people to let me do a thing which really didn’t seem to make much sense, it’d get a lot more complicated, because I’d need to use a different angle on Rue and they might compare notes. He wasn’t enough of a loner himself to believe that I was super keen for some alone time despite all the evidence pointing in the dead opposite direction.

I only made it a few words into a goodbye before Ethan hung up on me. Hopefully Rue wouldn’t immediately twig that something was up. It was a complete toss up whether Ethan would be obvious or unreadable. It wasn’t even really a matter of trying. Sometimes he wore his feelings on his sleeve and sometimes he was a confusing little alien. Ethan wasn’t good at being anything other than what he was.

But I wasn’t always so great at that either. Sure, I knew a bit more about how to manage people, but I felt like me was a thing that was too big and messy to keep hold of for very long. I couldn’t imagine going to uni like Rue or doing all the accounting of running a business like Connor. Even Ethan, who got overwhelmed with the world a lot easier than I did, had a handle on the things he set his mind to in a way I couldn’t match. I’d kinda thought maybe because my whole life had been chaos, that’d been why nothing had ever settled for me, but I’d been working at the nursery for months now and I was still just how I’d always been.

Which was fine, pretty much. Customers liked me, and that was the most important thing in customer service. Maybe I was a bit of a slow learner at the rest, but I did okay, and they didn’t really need another plant expert when they all knew so much. I was pretty good at putting my back into the hard work, and I got on with the others. 

It was a warm night, so I gathered together all the seat cushions from the kitchen and dug a bunch of clothes out of my bag, and I made a nest for myself out on the pavers outside between the rows of plants. It really wasn’t comfortable, but what was the point of being all on my own if I wasn’t going to do a bunch of fun things that anyone else would tell me were dumb?

#

I woke up the next morning to sunlight filtering through the shadecloth and a bee buzzing near my ear. No, wait—that was a mosquito. It bumbled along, too gorged to even fly properly, and then exploded into a bloody mess when I slapped it against the ground. 

During my brisk morning hose shower, I discovered the mosquito I’d killed was just the one that’d been too greedy to get away in time. I was covered in bites. 

But that was all right. This was a memory, a funny story. I’d always rather just do the thing and find out the hard way why it was a bad idea than spoilsport myself by thinking things through. 

Of course, sometimes that landed me with a hell of a lot worse than a few itchy bites. I’d learnt to be more careful of people, at least, though I felt like maybe all that’d gotten me was a whole lot of having no friends. I was moved between schools a bunch of times when I was growing up, and I always made new friends first day, but things just hadn’t been like that anymore after Dean. But maybe if I’d learnt my lesson sooner, Dean never would have happened in the first place.

To take my mind off those thoughts, I treated myself to some leftover scraps of doughnut in my morning meal replacement shake. It wasn’t good. I figured one day if I tried enough shit, I would eventually stumble across something that worked. And hey, it was all the same once it was in my stomach anyway.

Bad breakfast or not, I was feeling pretty chipper by the time I heard the crunch of gravel under the tyres of Connor’s car out front. I’d already got the sprinklers on and was hanging out around the front register, though we weren’t open yet.

“Morning, Flynn,” he called out as he pushed through the door, pausing to hold it open for Ethan who had his arms full of a very bulky bundle of something. “You’ve been beating me in every day lately.”

“Ah, yeah, they shifted the bus times around,” I said. “Just temporary, I think. But early’s better than late, right?”

“Sure. I just need to make sure you’re not working outside of your hours, or if you are, sort out the pay for that.”

I shrugged. I had been, but I wasn’t fussed. I could stop if it was going to be a whole big deal. Connor took that kind of thing seriously. It annoyed the hell out of Ethan whenever it got in the way of him doing what he wanted.

Speaking of Ethan, he shoved the bundle into my arms. “Sleeping bag,” he said. “That you asked for. To go camping.”

“Oh! Yeah, thanks,” I said, picking up on the hint to lie my ass off. “Things are still up in the air with when we’re going and all that, so I might have to leave it here for a bit.”

“Looks like you already went,” Connor said as he slipped around me to get to the till. I was confused until he added, “Or you have chicken pox.”

“Oh, ha ha, yeah,” I said, scratching self consciously at the mozzie bite on my neck. “Thought I’d give sleeping outside a go last night. Found out why most people use a tent.”

“I have one of those you can borrow too, if you like.”

“I think my friend’s got that handled, but I’ll let you know,” I said, my eyes tracking Ethan as he made his escape. I flashed Connor a smile, tossed the sleeping bag behind the counter, and gave chase.

It didn’t take me long to catch up. I had longer legs than he did. He wasn’t even half way down the rows of plants towards his private, gated workspace at the back of the nursery that I wasn’t allowed into.

Ethan flicked me a glance as I fell in at his side. “You’re a little too good at lying.”

“Making up friends who I’m gonna go on a fun camping trip with is a little embarrassing. But what was I supposed to do? You started that round of improv.”

“You’ve corrupted me.”

I grinned. “Thanks, by the way. For the sleeping bag, and for covering for me.”

We’d reached the gate, but Ethan lingered outside. Maybe only because he was worried I’d follow him in if the conversation wasn’t over. “There’s a pillow and some two minute noodle packets wrapped up inside as well.”

My grin widened until I could feel the stretch in my cheeks. “You’re amazing. You take better care of me than I do. I bet I could have bought a sleeping bag second hand for like five bucks, but I didn’t even think of it.”

“You couldn’t have because then you’d need an excuse why you had one. It had to come from me. I did think about this, you know.”

“Ah, yeah, I guess that kind of thing had crossed my mind as well. Though mostly it was about what you would notice, because yeah, I know you think about stuff more than anyone else. You’d be the first to notice if something didn’t add up.”

Ethan made a small sound of agreement, his head turning towards the gate. I could tell he was thinking about slipping away.

“So, hey, if you wanted to help me with one more thing, you remember the whole thing with the dead flowers from yesterday?”

Ethan nodded.

“I told my friend that I’d send some pictures of some plants that might do better in that spot, if you want to help…?”

“So you do have friends. Just not camping friends.”

“Well, okay, so he’s actually a guy I only met yesterday because they have a room to rent, so… ‘friend’ might be a bit of a stretch.”

“But you’re going to live with him?”

I laughed. “Oh, hell no. No way. I mean, I wasn’t really looking at the numbers as carefully as I should’ve and it turns out it’s way out of my budget, but also I made a pretty bad first impression. They’re these two guys and they run their own business and all that. Antiques. You don’t want me anywhere near expensive shit.”

The thing I liked about Ethan was that he wasn’t going to reassure me when he didn’t mean it. His face just said yeah, I wouldn’t. His mouth said, “I’ll help you find some good plants. Just let me put my bag down.”

So we walked around the nursery, focussing on the flowers and small, decorative plants. By the end of it, Ethan was communicating with sounds and pointing at labels. If Rue’d been here, he probably would have gotten me off his back a good half hour ago, but he had uni today. And, like, I cared, and I could’ve let him go after we’d sent Cam a few options, but I kept on pushing for more for as long as he’d let me. I didn’t know what that said about me, other than that Ethan had for sure made the right choice in picking Rue instead of me.