Chapter Sixty. Rory
Rory
Winter melted into spring, bare earth and slushy sidewalks, and Rory slid into it too, spilling into the warmer season in a tangle of nights out and city weekends.
There was the festival at the end of February, and the midterms in March, and suddenly things were blooming, and they were all turning nineteen, and alternating weekends—one at the city for every one at home—were the norm.
Sometimes Rory thought he saw strange new looks in the hallways between classes, or the sound of whispers eddying as he passed.
But they were always small, furtive things: two girls gossiping at the back of the dendrology seminar, their lips hidden behind cupped hands and their eyes darting his way; conversations in the cafeteria that suddenly stopped just as he was walking past. All minute enough that he was never quite sure if they were real or if he was imagining them altogether.
Noah, too, changed subtly. Sometimes there was a strange, distant look in his eyes.
An extra layer of dryness to his dry humor.
Meetings with him became littered with tiny, hard silences, so small they were almost imperceptible.
Almost, but not quite. Rory found himself studying Elliott and Maggie every time he saw them, hunting for signs of distance in their smiles, too.
Somehow, the fact that he couldn’t find any only made him more anxious.
It was a relief to bury himself in research again, unspooling Wynne’s idea into concrete steps and goals.
It made it almost easy to let these things fall between his fingers—a coincidence, a happenstance, a thing not worth noticing at all; not with Wynne’s solution flaring brighter and more conceivable with every passing day.
It was so much easier this time around. Rory’s first attempt at a solution had taken years and hundreds of construction experiments crowding the garden shed.
The second, months upon months of days in the lab and nights scrubbing under his fingernails.
With Wynne’s help, this one took only a handful of weeks: A dozen or so afternoons of research and calculations in the library.
A few well-phrased questions to Professor McGill.
A handful of nights with Wynne in their living room, figuring out which anchoring method to use, where the border should run, how, exactly, to explain anchoring to Mrs. Matthews and the mailman in a way that would prevent them from running for the hills—Wynne cackling all the while as if she very much wanted to see Mrs. Matthews fleeing the house, screaming about unnatural city practices as she ran.
By April, Rory was all but done. All that was left was to wait for finals to be over, for a stretch of good weather, for spring to firm its hold on the ground.
And finally, it arrived. May, warm and lush, was just days away.
Finals were over, and summer courses were still weeks ahead.
The setting sun stretched golden fingertips to Rory’s arms, his hair, as if winter had never happened at all.
Though the trees were still half bare, the roadside overflowed with nodding bluebells, daffodils, and wild garlic.
Rory picked a bouquet of them, thinking of how Daye would smile when he appeared at the door; the way her smile would widen when she saw the blossoms spilling from the confines of his fingers.
It was Thursday, and Daye wasn’t expecting him until the next afternoon, but all the papers were written and graded, all the lab projects packed up and dispersed, and Rory was vibrating with the need to touch Daye, hold her, kiss her.
It had been almost three weeks since he’d last seen her. Too long.
He walked through the house first, prepared this time for the shut windows, the immaculate order, the stuffy, unused scent of a house only occasionally visited, with Daye at the fortress and Mrs. Matthews arriving only once a week.
He hurried outside, checking first the fortress, then her favorite spots in the forest. He found her, finally, in the meadow.
She was sleeping in the shadow of the hawthorn, flowers floating in her hair.
Three birds perched on the branch above her, chattering softly.
A small bunny nestled against her side, velvety ears twitching at Rory’s approach.
She was so pretty, so piercingly beautiful.
Beautiful enough to make his heart stutter when he allowed himself to stop and really look.
Sometimes Rory couldn’t believe that someone could look like that—like spring given form.
That he got to hold Daye in his arms, to kiss her, to call her his.
The birds tilted their heads. Their eyes followed him as he knelt down.
“Daye,” he said softly against her ear. “Wake up.”
He kissed her lips, once. Like she was an enchanted princess, and he was the one to wake her from a hundred years of sleep. Her lips were soft under his. Storybook pink.
“Rory?” she asked groggily, eyelids fluttering.
“Hey.” He smiled down at her.
“Hey.” She smiled back, dazzling. “You’re home.”
Her smile when she saw the flowers was every bit as brilliant as Rory imagined it would be.