Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Peter
I’m in my bedroom adding clothes to a duffel bag when a series of frantic knocks sound at my door. The knocking is insistent enough that I half wonder if the building is on fire, and this is my warning to evacuate. But when I leave the now-full duffel bag in the kitchen and swing open my front door, I only find Sophie, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, looking more alive and beautiful than ever.
“You okay?” I say as she barrels into the apartment. “Who’s chasing you?”
Sophie’s smile stretches wide as she puts her hands on my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “No chasing. Just very exciting news.”
My eyebrows lift, even as my heart pounds a little faster for how close she’s standing. I haven’t seen Sophie since I ran into her on my way to the office. That was only two days ago, which isn’t that long. When we’re both busy, we’ll often go twice that or longer without seeing each other in person. But with how much I’ve been thinking about her lately, two days felt like ten, so it feels good to see her, to have her here. “Let me hear it, then,” I say.
Sophie grins. “Okay, I need you to brace yourself, because what I’m about to tell you isn’t going to make any sense.”
“Are we talking Willa teleporting into Archer’s closet kind of stuff? Or more like…you ran into your high school boyfriend, and he pretended like he didn’t know you kind of stuff?”
She scrunches her brow. “Maybe somewhere in the middle?”
“Okay. Shoot.”
She grins. “I figured it out.”
A pulse of trepidation pushes through me.
She figured out what, exactly? That I like her? That through all these years of friendship, I’ve always been low-key obsessed with her?
It’s a stupid thought. Putting my arm around her was a bold move for me, but Sophie hugs people she meets in line at the grocery store. She wouldn’t read into something like that without any other evidence.
Sophie gives my shoulders a squeeze, forcing me to focus on the here and now instead of my own spiraling worries. “Do you remember the mystery flower I found in my garden?” she asks.
Relief washes over me, but I feel a tinge of disappointment mixed in, too. It would definitely make things easier on me if Sophie really had figured out how I feel. “The love flower?” I ask. “The one you were sketching on your iPad? Did you figure out what it is?”
“Sort of?” she says, eyes sparkling. “I still have no idea what it’s called, but I did figure out what makes it bloom.” Her hands fall away, and I immediately miss the warmth of her standing so close, but Sophie is clearly too full of energy to stand still. I watch as Sophie moves into my living room and rearranges my throw pillows, moving one from the chair to the couch, then swapping the ones on the sofa so the colors alternate.
Even just that subtle shift makes the living room look better. She always makes everything better.
“I’m on pins and needles, Soph,” I say.
She props her hands on her hips, biting her lip as she takes a deep breath. “The flower really is a love flower,” she says. “It blooms in the presence of love.”
I let out a scoff. Because… what? “It does what?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. When two people who are in love stand in its presence, the flower blooms.” She sits, so I move into the living room and join her, sitting down in the armchair perpendicular to the couch.
“Do you remember the Serendipity Springs history room at the downtown library?” she asks. “Where we went to work on our final research papers senior year?”
I nod. “Yeah. Of course I do.” We spent hours in that room—usually alone—talking as much as we were studying. That was the room where Sophie discovered a chart on the inside of my history notebook filled with numbers. She asked me what it was, and I made up something about the number of times I wanted to play through a certain video game before I left for college.
Really, it was a chart counting down the number of days we had before we both left for college—the number of days we had left together.
“I went to the library searching, hoping I might find something on local flora and fauna. That idea didn’t pan out at all, but then the librarian helped me find a book of oral histories,” Sophie says, “published in 1954, and it includes a story from a college student who lived here, in The Serendipity, while it was still a women’s dorm. She wrote about a flower just like mine. She even included a sketch, and it’s absolutely the same flower. Same leaves, same bloom. It was her theory that the flower blooms in the presence of love.”
“So, are you only going off what you read? Or…”
“No,” Sophie says. “Everything I read totally tracks with what I’ve observed on my own. The flower bloomed once when Willa and Archer were nearby, then again for the Hathaways. After I read the story, I came back to The Serendipity and took Iris and Matteo up on the roof, and sure enough, it bloomed right then and there. I watched it open with my own two eyeballs. And the flower closed up again when they left.”
I resist the urge to reject what Sophie is telling me as fantastical, even ridiculous. But flowers that sense feelings? It’s not quite as outlandish as a teleporting closet, but it’s close.
“Matteo and Iris?” I ask. The names sound familiar, but I don’t think I know them.
She nods. “They live on the third floor. Just started dating.”
“Huh. I hadn’t heard they got together. That’s cool.” It’s an inane thing to say, but it’s innocuous, and that’s what I need right now. To say meaningless words while my brain tries to wrap itself around Sophie’s claims.
“Anyway, even though three couples felt like pretty good evidence,” she continues, “I still wanted more proof, so I basically spent the last two days entirely in the garden, waiting for couples to show up.”
“You just sat up there and waited?”
My tone is more judgmental than I mean for it to be, and Sophie bristles.
“What else was I supposed to do?” she asks. “I wasn’t going to just knock on random people’s doors. And a lot of people come up to the garden”—she shoots me a look—“unlike some people I know, so it didn’t take that long.”
“I get it,” I say. “I’m sorry. I was mostly just thinking about your work schedule.”
She winces. “Okay, that’s fair. I tried to take my laptop with me, but without my desk setup, I was pretty much useless, so I basically did nothing for two solid days. I’ll have to play catch-up to meet my next deadline, but this was important, and I honestly thought it would take longer. Two days feels pretty reasonable, all things considered.”
There is nothing reasonable about this conversation, though I can’t quite tell if I feel that way because we’re talking about love and Sophie and that’s making me nervous, or if it’s just because of the whole magical flower thing.
I want to believe her, for her sake, if nothing else. But the mental gymnastics required to do so still feel just out of reach.
“So you think you finally proved it, then?” I ask. “You saw enough couples come into the garden?”
“Six couples in total,” she says. “It was amazing.”
“That many?”
“Wild, right?” She lets out a little laugh. “But that’s not even the best part.” She moves into the kitchen, still buzzing with energy, and helps herself to a huge glass of water. She stands beside the counter and chugs it down while I do my best not to stare at the shape of her. She’s wearing bright orange overalls over a white tank top, an outfit that does excellent things for her curves.
When she finally turns to face me again, I force my gaze to her face, not wanting her to catch me checking her out. If she does notice, she doesn’t care enough to say anything.
“So, the story I read speculated that the flower also blooms when there is the potential for love,” Sophie says as she moves back into the living room. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to test that part, but then, this guy, Jason, the dentist who lives on the fourth floor, brought a date onto the roof, and it was their first date. They barely know each other, so they definitely aren’t in love yet, but the flower bloomed anyway. Do you know what that means?”
“That Jason’s probably going to have a good time tonight?”
“Exactly! Because they’re going to fall in love! The flower is a freaking fortune teller. A mystical, magical, love-finding fortune teller.” Sophie looks around, like she’s finally come down off her high enough to notice where she is. Her eyes catch on the duffel bag in the kitchen. “Are you going somewhere?”
It takes me a second to register her question. I’m still hung up on the last part of Sophie’s discovery because I can’t stop wondering: if she and I were on the roof together, would the flower bloom for us ?
Not that I believe in Sophie’s magic love flower. I don’t.
But if I did believe, and I went onto the roof with Sophie and the flower didn’t bloom, would that mean love would never be possible?
The more important question might be: Would Sophie take it to mean love would never be possible?
I clear my throat and force myself to focus on Sophie’s immediate question.
“Uh, yeah, actually,” I say. “I’m going to go stay with my parents for a few days.”
“What? Why?” she asks.
As if to answer her question, the lights in my living room start flashing, repeated flickers as they brighten, then dim, then turn off completely before repeating the cycle over and over again. Sophie shields her eyes to the strobe-like effect. After twenty or so seconds, the flickering stops.
“That’s why,” I say, pointing to the ceiling. “They’ve been doing that for two days, but it’s gotten worse this afternoon. I can’t get them to stop, and I can’t work as long as they’re blinking. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Can’t you just leave them off? Use the natural light from the windows?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re off. They still flicker. It’s happening in the bedroom too. I’ve barely slept the past two nights.”
She crosses into my living room and stares up at the light fixture. “Why not just take out all your lightbulbs?”
“And then what? Use candlelight after seven p.m.?”
The lights flicker one more time.
“It has to be better than that, ” Sophie says, pointing toward the ceiling. “Did you call Steve? Or Archer?”
I’ve talked to The Serendipity’s building manager at least ten times today, but so far, our conversations haven’t been very productive.
“Yeah, Steve brought an electrician by today, but they couldn’t find anything wrong. That’s the main reason I’m leaving. They’re going to have to remove some sections of wall to get to all the old wiring, and I really don’t want to live in a construction zone.”
Sophie frowns. “Is your parent’s place going to be any better? With all the packing they’re doing?”
It’s a valid question. I’m not particularly excited about witnessing the dismantling of my childhood home, but Mom assured me my bedroom is still functional, if completely devoid of LEGO sets, so it has to be better than here.
“It’s free and it’s close,” I say. “Plus, I’m supposed to pick up the rest of my LEGO bricks anyway.”
“But we’re doing that together,” she says. “Why not just come crash at my place? My couch is super comfortable, and then you’ll still be close to all your stuff.”
I prop my hands on my hips, considering. It would be easier to stay with Sophie. That way, if I need anything from home, I’m only a floor away. It would also give us more time together—and maybe give me more opportunity to talk to her about how I feel.
Then again, if I tell her, ask her out, and she says no, would I have to keep living at her place like everything is normal?
In that circumstance, I probably could just bail and go stay with Mom and Dad.
“Come on,” Sophie says. “It’ll be fun. Besides, if you’re staying with me, it’ll only be easier for you to help me with my new plan.”
“Your new plan?”
“Yep,” she says brightly. “I’m going to use my magic flower to find love.”