The nursery was a sprawling place, the kind of thing you only found well outside of the city, beyond the outer suburbs. The parking lot was gravelly, bare earth that kicked up dust when we pulled in. There were only a few other cars. This wasn’t a busy place.

A bell jingled above the door as we stepped into a little shop that served as an entranceway into the rest of the nursery. This was where they displayed packets of seeds, gardening tools, small garden ornaments, and anything else they were selling that they didn’t want to get damaged or dirtied by the elements.

Behind the counter, a ginger-haired man with a beard to match flashed us a smile. His name badge said Connor. “How’re you going?”

“Great, thanks,” I said. “Is Flynn around?”

Connor had been leaning against the counter, but he stood up straight now, a hint of wariness in his gaze. “Oh, are you friends of his?”

The two seconds of hesitation before I said, “Uh, yeah,” probably didn’t make us look any less suspicious. “He’s been sending me some plant recommendations. We told him we’d drop by.”

There was nothing hostile about him, exactly. It was mostly the contrast to the way he’d greeted us when he didn’t yet know we knew Flynn that made the shift in his demeanour obvious. I was just about to pull out my phone and show Connor the texts as proof when he said, “Let me go see if he’s around.”

I didn’t really see how there could be any uncertainty as to whether he was around in a place like this. Where would he go? I suspected he’d actually gone to ask Flynn if we were welcome.

Justin leant in close and murmured, “Awkward,” even though Connor had already ventured out into the outdoor section of the nursery in search of Flynn and was well out of earshot. I nodded.

Connor returned a couple of minutes later with a hand on Flynn’s shoulder and a smile on his face. He immediately offered us his hand to shake and we exchanged names.

“So, are you the friends Flynn is going camping with?” Connor asked.

“Camping?” I asked. “No…”

“Hey, so, let me show you those plants,” Flynn said, corralling me and Justin towards the door. “We have a whole bunch to choose from.”

“You look like you’ve already been camping,” Justin said as Flynn led us outside with a nod to the red spots dotting Flynn’s skin. They looked suspiciously like mosquito bites.

Flynn laughed, walking backwards so he could watch us as he led us past rows of plants. “I slept outside last night. Didn’t realise how bad the mozzies would beeee…” Flynn said, the last word extending as Justin grabbed his arm and redirected him before he could walk backwards into a display of terracotta pots.

“Why were you sleeping outside?” Justin asked.

“I dunno, seemed fun?” Flynn swept his arm out, indicating a dense wall of large, bright yellow flowers that were planted along the outer edge of the nursery. “Like our sunflowers?”

“Very nice,” I said.

“It’s pretty cool how things grow, right? Just one little seed, dirt, water, air, and then you’ve got this whole big thing. And you could take the seeds from just one of them, and there’s like… I dunno. Hundreds, I think. You can just keep making more sunflowers, basically for free.”

Flynn continued chattering away as he started showing us plants, and it hit me all at once just how different he was in this place. Even when he’d almost backpedalled into those pots, he’d just laughed it off. He hadn’t been nearly as comfortable with us, in our spaces.

And it wasn’t just because he was really into plants. He kept having to stop and slowly read the tags, and at a couple of points he dashed to the back of the nursery and forwarded our questions to someone behind a tall gate. Ethan, he said.

“What about this one?” Justin asked, picking up a plant bursting with little red flowers to show me. Flynn moved to grab it from him but quickly thought better and retreated, but by that point Justin had already started relinquishing it. The result was the plant on the ground, plastic pot cracked and spilling dirt.

“Ah, shit, sorry,” Flynn said, bending to pick up the pot and doing his best to hold the broken pieces together. He left a trail of soil as he ran off to pass it to Ethan through the gate. 

He was smiling when he bounced back to us a minute later. “He wasn’t mad,” he announced like that was some kind of victory. “You can take the tags out, so he just puts them in new pots when this kind of thing happens. And he keeps the old pots when old plants die or whatever, so he has lots.”

That all seemed fairly obvious to me, but Flynn seemed to think it was clever, and I wouldn’t question anything that kept a smile on his face. I could tell Justin was enjoying him, too. You couldn’t say that he was smiling by any stretch of the imagination, but if you were as familiar with his face as I was, you could see the gentle amusement in his eyes. 

People wondered how we didn’t get jealous, but it was simple, really. I loved seeing that fond look in his eye, but did I want him to look at me like I was a precious baby kitten? No, I did not. Though maybe most couples solved this conundrum with an actual kitten, or perhaps by starting a family. Don’t get me wrong, Justin would have made an amazing dad, but watching him look after Tammy had never stirred this heat in my belly. It was its own thing.

Five minutes later, an auburn-haired young man slipped out from behind the gate and approached with the red flowered plant in hand, now in a blue pot. He reached his arm out to offer it to Flynn without stepping too close.

“Hey, Ethan,” I said.

If looks could kill. He murmured a reluctant, “hi,” and then hurried off the second Flynn took the plant.

“Did we do something?” I asked as I watched his retreat. “Everyone here keeps looking at us like we’re deeply suspicious.”

Flynn laughed. “Nah, that’s just Ethan. He’s shy.”

I didn’t know if I’d describe the deeply affronted look Ethan had given me as ‘shy,’ but okay. “What about Connor? When we told him we were your friends, he seemed like he very much wanted to verify that before letting us near you.”

“Ah, well, that,” Flynn said, scratching the back of his neck. “That one is a bit different. When I first started working here, I was in the middle of leaving my ex. Well, I mean, I’d already left, but he didn’t like that, so he was trying to screw with everything I had going on so that I’d have to go back.” He gave a fractured grin. “Didn’t work on Connor. Plus then a few months ago this other guy I work with, Rue, his dad came by when he wasn’t wanted and I didn’t know what was really happening, so I kinda led him straight to Rue. Which was okay in the end, but man. So, y’know. Nothing personal. He was just making sure.”

“Are things with the ex okay now?” Justin asked.

“Oh yeah, yeah, don’t worry about that,” Flynn said. “Funny thing when you have a relationship like that. They treat you like you’re not worth shit, but when you try to leave, they don’t like to let go. But he gave up eventually.”

I was starting to think things were a little more complicated than our theory that this charming young man had the whole world wrapped around his finger. The breezy way he talked about his abusive ex was a little unsettling. There was trauma there—there had to be—but you wouldn’t know it from the way he swept back into showing us plants, a smile coming to his lips just as easily as before.

In the end, we bought the plant in its new blue pot and a few other similar ones, plus a basket brimming with the kind of big, bright flowers I’d been known to place in shady corners as a birthday gift for my mother. Ethan’s creation, Flynn told us proudly.

We’d been ready to check out and leave when Flynn told us to wait and ran off, leaving us to smile awkwardly at Connor and twiddle our thumbs. 

Connor apologised for him and checked us out himself, and then since Flynn still wasn’t back, we launched into conversation to fill the space and ended up on the topic of my many plant murders. I’d been worried that Connor might refund our purchases and order us off the premises, but instead he gave me some tips on how to know when it was time to water my plants and which kinds of fertilisers were best for what. I wasn’t sure I fully followed the fertiliser talk, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind to use it before, so whatever little information had stuck couldn’t hurt. Unless it did, I mused, as Connor started explaining fertiliser burn.

It was then that Flynn finally dashed back into the shop holding a bunch of sunflowers so large it took both of his not-small hands to contain them. “We’re giving out sunflowers to all our customers, but I got a few extra for you,” he said, and then he winked. 

It took everything I had in me to respond with nothing more than my thanks and a friendly smile. Justin was significantly more practiced in the art of impassivity, but I could tell from the set of his mouth that Flynn’s weapons grade charm had hit him just as hard.

Flynn wrapped the flowers in butcher’s paper for us and we said our goodbyes. On our way out to the car, Justin considered my face for a second, then let out a breath and shook his head. I brushed him off with a roll of my eyes. As if he was so unaffected. He could fool anyone else, but he couldn’t fool me.