Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Home had always been Vivian’s fortress, but three days after having left New York, it was feeling more like a cage. Baskets and cards and flowers arrived congratulating her, but Vivian only looked at them long enough to note that Yenni Montoya’s was the largest.
Everything made her think of Bryn, made her wonder what Bryn thought when the same gift had probably landed on her doorstep. She smiled when she imagined Bryn talking about truffles and caviar with her roommates even as her chest ached with hollow emptiness.
She couldn’t eat. Could barely focus on prepping her next book.
Iris talked to her and Vivian talked back, but she couldn’t remember what about. Every moment was a soundless, gray nothing that led to the next.
“Harvey’s calling again,” Iris said, jarring Vivian out of the daze that befell her while she sat at the kitchen counter.
Vivian looked at her phone.
“Want me to answer?”
Vivian shook her head and slid open her phone. She left it on speaker, not having the energy to pick it up. “Hello.”
“She’s alive!” Harvey chuckled. “I was about to send a team to Miami to check for signs of life. Listen, I’ve sent you a few emails.
I’ve got people stepping all over each other to get you and Bryn together again.
It’s like everyone woke up at the same time and remembered there were lesbians.
” He giggled. Giggled. “Nothing gets the blood flowing faster than an unsaturated market.”
At the sound of Bryn’s name, Vivian held her breath. She closed her eyes. Of course the publishers would want to repeat what had already worked.
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t know what?” Harvey’s energy was relentless. “Did you not believe your own speech about happy gay love? Because let me tell you, it was all anyone could talk about. My niece tells me it’s gone viral. A sapphic rallying cry—”
“And of course everyone wants to make a buck.”
“At least one,” Harvey agreed. “Don’t worry, I’ve informed all the relevant parties that you’ve upped your hourly rate.”
Vivian hadn’t explicitly told him as such, but it was normal for her to demand more after winning a Platinum Voice in the biggest category. The bigger problem was she hadn’t thought about herself and Bryn as a package deal. She should have.
“So… are you going to tell me why you’re surlier than usual?” he asked as if nothing could impede his excellent mood. “And aren’t opening emails.”
“I have an automatic reply set,” she replied defensively.
“Yeah, that’s kind of my point.” He took a breath. “Vivian. What’s going on? And does it have anything to do with how cozy you and Bryn were last weekend?”
“Cozy? Jesus. I’m not a pair of fluffy socks.”
“Vivian,” he said like he’d called on additional patience, and Vivian nearly ended the call. But she refused to let him think she was being petulant. “You two looked personally involved. More importantly, I’ve never seen you so happy. If you—”
“We are no longer involved, Harvey, not that it’s any of your business.”
He took the barb with a chuckle. “Honey, we’ve been friends for over a decade.” Friends was an exaggeration, but she let it pass. “If you’re going through a hard time, I want to be here for you.”
Unsure how to respond, Vivian erred on the side of polite. “I appreciate your concern.”
“If you don’t want to work with her—”
“No,” Vivian snapped. “No, we’re fine. I don’t expect anyone has Montoya’s apparent clout and would force us to record dual in real time. It’s fine. We’re fine.”
“Fine,” he agreed with an audible smirk. “And hey, if you ever want to swing a bat for the other team, I’ll always be here. I don’t mind being chosen by default. You can just think of me as wearing a permanent strap-on.”
Vivian’s sarcastic chuckle vibrated in her throat. “Oh? So you have eight inches always ready to go and no balls?”
“Eight inches?” He whistled. “You wound me, V. I was just trying to pay you a compliment.”
She laughed at him. Objectification was always intended as a compliment. It didn’t seem to matter whether the recipient received it that way.
“And I was just trying to set expectations so no one was disappointed,” she replied.
“Fair. Listen.” He cleared his throat and used a serious tone Vivian rarely heard. “I mean it, Vivian. If you’re going through something, I’m happy to listen.”
“Thank you, Harvey,” she said, and meant it.
No sooner had she hung up, that Iris materialized on the other side of the kitchen counter.
“I knew it,” Iris said like a cartoon detective. “I knew something happened in New York.” She rested on her elbows and leaned forward. “Spill.”
Vivian looked at her only friend in the world and decided she was tired of holding it all in. She opened her mouth and disgorged every single detail.
It was late afternoon when Vivian stepped out onto the patio. It was hot, even for Miami in the summer, and the humidity was easily 700%.
She didn’t have a plan when she walked into the guesthouse for the first time since before she’d left for New York, but she went straight to the only other being more miserable than her.
The damn violets that refused to thrive. She stared at them on the windowsill. Glared at them with her hands on her hips.
It wasn’t their fault that Iris had betrayed their years of close friendship to side with Bryn.
To tell her, right to her face, that she’d been an idiot.
That she saw every woman as heartbreak, like a hammer saw everything as a nail.
She hadn’t even let Vivian address their age difference or different career trajectories.
Excuses, she’d called them, when all Vivian had done was list facts.
And now, this stupid plant not only refused to flower, but its leaves were so fucking sad. She was tired of them. If they were so damn unhappy with her, then they might as well leave.
Vivian grabbed the plant and got in her car. She plugged “plant store” into her GPS and was pulling up to a Coral Gables florist fifteen minutes later. She burst through the door of the shop that smelled like a thousand fresh flowers and slammed the small pot on the sales counter.
“I need you to take this,” she said to the middle-aged clerk and turned away.
“Um, excuse me!” the woman called before Vivian reached the front door. “I think you have the wrong place.”
Vivian turned around.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, full cheeks red. “We don’t sell these.”
“But you’re a plant shop,” Vivian countered.
“A florist, actually,” she corrected, cringing as if the act was akin to stubbing her toe. “We used to sell the occasional fern, but now we only focus on floral arrangements.”
Vivian stared at her. “Do you not know how to care for a plant?”
The woman blinked. “Well, yes, but I can’t refund you for something you didn’t buy here.”
“I don’t want a refund. I just don’t want the plant,” she said, when what she really meant was that the plant didn’t want her. That it would rather die, slowly and dramatically, than bloom in her care.
“So… you know you didn’t buy it here?” She tipped her head to the side like Vivian was an abstract painting.
“Obviously,” she replied. “I can’t keep it alive, but I don’t wish it any harm, and so there you go. A free plant to a suitable home. Better than throwing it in the garbage.” She ignored the stabbing pain in her stomach.
“It’s not dying,” the woman said instead of calling Vivian an absolute maniac to her face.
“Look at it.” Vivian gestured at the pathetic, drooping leaves. “It is teetering on the edge. No matter what I do, it simply refuses to be happy.”
The clerk smiled, dried her hands on her apron, and picked up the plant. Like a medical doctor, she gave the thing a thorough exam. Inspecting the leaves, the soil, and even sniffing the damn thing. “Do you want the truth?”
“No. I want you to take custody of this thing and make it flower again.”
She looked at Vivian expectantly.
With a sigh, Vivian rolled her eyes. “Sure,” she replied, so eager to know how she’d failed another living thing.
“You’re smothering it.”
“What?” Vivian crossed her arms.
“Wilting leaves, mushy stems, muddy soil, and a funky odor.” She listed the evidence to support her diagnosis. “You’re probably just over-watering it, and this extra pot is interfering with drainage.” She pulled the plant out of the ceramic to reveal the original black plastic.
She wanted to defend herself against the allegations. Iris was the one who’d found the ornate pot somewhere.
“Not everyone would go to these lengths to rescue a plant,” the clerk said, expression softening. “Most people would have thrown it away or given up,” she decided. “Let me repot it for you. With pruning, new soil, and a proper pot, she can recover.”
Stunned, Vivian found herself nodding. Found herself unable to walk out of the store without the damn thing.
The clerk, named Natalie, talked while she performed surgery. She educated Vivian on the dangers of root rot and gave her a recovery plan that included warm, bright, airy conditions to promote healing. Apparently, it could take months. Months of nursing to bring her back.
“I’ll give you my secret to happy plants,” Natalie said when she handed back the violets in a squat clay pot twice the size of the original.
After she’d sheared the thing to death, the few leaves that were left looked so small.
“Talk to her. Sing to her. Whatever you’re comfortable with.
You can even play some classical music.” She smiled.
“Thank you for your help,” Vivian replied, surprised to find she meant it.
Back in the car, she put the plant in the passenger seat.
“Now I’m supposed to talk to you.” She threw the car into reverse. “You’re supposed to be low maintenance, you know?” She turned onto the busy street. “Needing music doesn’t sound low maintenance to me.”
She thought of Bryn, of the first time she’d shown up at her house with the bright purple flowers. How did that already seem like a lifetime ago? Vivian’s stomach dropped. What she wouldn’t give to go back. To start again.
“So, I miss her, okay?”
She shot the plant a look and turned down a residential street.
“Oh, don’t be coy. You know exactly who. You’re probably against me too. Working with Iris to make this all my fault.”
She made another turn without knowing where she was going. Without a plan.
“You probably loved being with her.” Vivian sighed. She couldn’t blame the violets for picking favorites. Not when everything was infinitely better in Bryn’s presence.
“Yeah, well. Me too,” she admitted, tears blurring her sore eyes in a way she couldn’t stop anymore. “But I fucked it up, okay? It’s too late. What am I supposed to say now? Hey, sorry I’m a hot mess, wanna go for dinner?”
Vivian gripped the steering wheel tight. It did nothing to help her feel in control. She was spinning hard and fast and didn’t know how to get off the ride. She pulled over into the parking lot of a daycare, curled forward, and cried.
She cried so hard that the roof of her mouth tasted like blood. She kept her swollen, burning eyes closed and cried until the tears ran out. Until she was dry heaving and fighting for air.
“It doesn’t matter,” she rasped to her silent passenger.
“No matter what I say or what I want, it doesn’t change anything.
” The truth broke free and there was no one there to counter it.
“Bryn is young and incandescent and untarnished. She deserves someone who’s not all fucked up and broken.
I can’t even keep a plant alive, how can I ever nurture a whole other person? A person as incredible as Bryn?”
She banged her head against the steering wheel.
“We all have to accept that my time has passed. Happiness was just never mine to have, Violet.” She calmed herself. “The quicker we move on from this, the sooner we’ll clear the rot from our roots, right?”
On the roundabout drive home, Vivian played Vivaldi’s Seasons. She entered through the front door, evicted a massive vase from the foyer, and set the plant down on the round table directly under the skylight.
She stepped back and looked at the violets in their new home, bathed in natural light. “Alright, Violet. Let’s see if you can figure out how to bloom again.”