Chapter 14
Felicity dropped her rake. “Shit.”
“More?” Nic sighed. November had turned chilly, and he was wearing an adorable green scarf that looked hand-knit. “I thought we had cleared all that. I swear to god Bruce must bring that possessed Jack Russell of his over here in the middle of the night to—”
“No. Shit like oh no.” Felicity held up her watch. “I forgot about something. I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Just go. I’ll be back in two hours.”
“Why are you being weird?” Nic studied her.
“Why are you always weird?”
“Cute.” He flicked the brim of her cap. “Fine, keep your secrets.”
“It’s not like a secret secret.” She pulled off her gardening gloves. “It’s this thing I’m doing. One of my Ms.”
“Ems? As in Auntie…?”
“No. Ms. Like ‘M is for.’”
He sucked in his bottom lip and shook his head. “Somehow you explaining something always makes it clear as mud.” He stabbed his pitchfork into the soggy ground to emphasize the point.
“It’s a talent.”
“One of your many. Anyhow, I can clean up here, if you need to go.”
She checked her watch again. “Actually, can you help me for a few minutes? Or … like hours? Because I’m running late and have to load—”
“Felicity Gallagher, I keep offering to help you. Remember?” He leaned on the top of his pitchfork, looking a little too much like Westley in The Princess Bride, his hair starting to lighten after all this time working on the courtyard in the sun.
They had gotten the new drainage system installed after only about fifteen increasingly frantic FaceTime calls with one of Felicity’s uncles, who owned a company in Maryland specializing in it.
Felicity hadn’t done this kind of work before, and she was terrified of screwing it up.
Luckily her uncle was as patient as always about her perfectionism.
Now they were re-landscaping everything they’d dug up since Halloween.
The first big rain had happened last night, testing the system. It seemed to work.
“And I agree with you about Ronald,” she said.
“Who’s Ronald and what does he have to do with Ms?”
“Oh.” Felicity chuckled and hauled her tool bucket over her shoulder. “Sorry. My brain’s going a mile a minute right now. Ronald is Bruce’s Jack Russell. Named after—”
“Yeah, I can guess.” He rolled his eyes.
“And I’ll explain the Ms on the way.”
“On the way where?”
“You’ll see.”
An odd look appeared on Nic’s face when he saw the boxes Felicity needed help carrying.
The odd look was still there as he rode in the passenger seat holding a large box of potted plants on his lap, with another at his feet.
He stared at the plants with the same expression he used while working something out in the kitchen late at night.
Not that she ever worked in the garden after the sun went down and occasionally forgot what she was doing because of how distracting his face was at the window. That would be creepy.
“They’re orchids.”
He nodded and looked out the window, away from her. “I know.”
“They aren’t blooming … yet.” She tried to laugh like a mad scientist intent on world domination, but it definitely came out sounding more like a hyena who had sucked on a helium balloon. He did not crack a smile. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Orchid starts with O.” He touched a leaf.
“And C stands for cookie. What’s your point?”
A muscle feathered at the angle of his jaw. The stubble was longer than usual today. “You said you would tell me about the Ms.”
“Oh, right. The Ms. Well, I went to a therapist back when I was in college who helped me come up with a plan to keep my brain healthy. I like alliteration, so I took what she said and made up my seven Ms.”
“Can I ask what the seven Ms are?”
“Move, meals, mess, medications, meditate, make, moment.”
“Okay…”
“Move my body—in my case this means doing my PT exercises for my neck. Eat meals at regular intervals. Keep my space as not messy as possible. Not great at that, but it definitely helps when I’m diligent about it.
Take my medications when I’m supposed to.
Meditate. Yeah, I suck at that one too. Make is ‘make the world a better place in whatever way seems possible.’ My aunt actually inspired that one—long story.
And moment means if I’m super overwhelmed, take a moment to think about the other six and assess why and what steps I can take. ”
He moved his head back and forth as if measuring—another good M word—in his brain. “So … does that help?”
“It does, but it doesn’t fix my—” She paused.
“It doesn’t fix … I mean, it doesn’t make everything perfect.
It’s more like a set of strategies to help when I feel lost. I hadn’t done them in a while, and the other day, I was thinking about how working on the patio makes me feel better, and then I passed my old therapist’s office. It’s a dentist office now, and—”
Nic interrupted her with a gentle touch to her arm. “So what do the orchids have to do with one of the Ms?”
It was good she was driving, because when watching Nic speak, the main M she could think about was make out.
Or the muscles she had seen when he took off his shirt to change out of his muddy clothes before they got into her car.
Seeing a half-naked Nic was enough to require an M word activity that her therapist hadn’t mentioned but was indeed a great source of dopamine.
Her brain continued to riff itself into oblivion.
By the time she had created the second verse of a song about the various and sundry things C stood for that would definitely never be sung by a shaggy blue puppet on a public broadcasting children’s show, they had made it to the parking lot of the assisted living home outside the city.
Nic did not seem to need more explanation after seeing where they’d arrived. He helped her carry all the pots in a single load like a superhero.
The women in the seats occupying the long tables in the activity room also seemed to enjoy this feat of strength, several of them whispering and tittering to each other.
Mr. Sheldon was also enjoying the show and snickered to the woman seated beside him.
That woman’s eyes were so wide, Felicity was tempted to tell the old biddy to put them back into her head.
But Nic wasn’t Felicity’s.
And Felicity was here to do a job.
She stood at the front of the room and held up an orchid.
“When I was here a few weeks ago, I saw that unused greenhouse off the back of the building and had an idea. Your cruise ship director, Gail, liked the idea, and gave me the green light.” Felicity waved at the supervising nurse, who returned the gesture with a grin.
“So, who here has ever killed an orchid?”
Half the hands went up.
“Who here has ever kept one alive?”
Two hands went up. Felicity noticed a familiar face. “Ms. Wendy, right?”
The woman nodded. She had owned the garden center and florist shop Aunt Jeannie had worked at before buying her half of the old church building and opening up Grow Away.
“Well, if anyone has any questions, we have an expert among us.” Felicity winked at Ms. Wendy.
“Don’t judge me too harshly though—I’m not the orchid-wrangler that my aunt was, but I thought we could give these a go.
My aunt always used to say that you buy an orchid at the store, and it’s half dead already.
Bring it home and make it bloom…” Nic’s eyes lifted to meet hers with an intensity that nearly made her forget they were surrounded by sixteen senior citizens.
“M-make it bloom, and it’ll feel like saving a life …
or something like that.” Her cheeks heated.
He was looking at her like he was proud of her.
Something lifted in Felicity’s chest as she looked at the delighted faces and dirt-smeared hands around her.
When she was there with paying customers, there was pressure. She got tongue-tied and so nervous about saying the wrong thing that she ended up seeming flat and robotic.
This was different somehow.
She walked the group through the best way to trim and care for orchids.
There was a woman at the back who was struggling.
Nic spoke in a low voice as he guided her through properly trimming out the bad sections of roots and helped her repot.
He was better at it than Felicity was. He spotted bits of rot that she wouldn’t have noticed and told the woman a trick to the process that made it easier. A trick Felicity didn’t even know.
When all the orchids were repotted, they moved the freshly pruned and spritzed plants into the old greenhouse. Nic pushed a woman in a wheelchair and helped her find a spot on the shelf.
Afterward, Nic helped the staff get the residents back inside for lunch. Felicity was taping plant care instructions on a bulletin board when he returned.
“Why aren’t you like that when you teach classes at the store?”
“No idea.” She touched the leaves of the plant that Mr. Sheldon had worked so hard to get potted correctly.
“One of the only things I loved about being a nurse was talking to older people. Every summer I came here, my aunt would take me on her plant rounds, and I would find someone who looked lonely and play a game with them or talk to them about nothing. I was a chatterbox, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. ”
He frowned. “Was inheriting the store the reason you quit being a nurse?”
“No. I mean, timing-wise, yes. But…” She organized and then reorganized the plant tools. “Nursing ended up not being a good fit for me.”
He nodded. “So when in the world did you clean out the greenhouse?”
It wasn’t the follow-up question she expected, so Felicity laughed in spite of herself before answering.
She swept some stray dirt off the counter and added it to a pot.
“A few weeks ago. One of my plant maintenance service people called out sick—we do the plant care here. I saw this place out here looking neglected. It was my last stop of the day, and I got a little carried away. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.” She shrugged.
“A bunch of orchids went on clearance at the grocery store last week. Gave me the idea.”
“Did you keep the receipts?”
Another weird question.
“For what?”
“The orchids? The plant supplies?”
“Er—I don’t know. Maybe?” Because receipts always accumulate in a wad at the bottom of my backpack no matter how hard I try to have a filing system, she thought. “I figured it would be a nice thing to do.”
“It’s a very nice thing to do. It’s also a tax write-off. Heck, you could probably write off your time too. This kind of thing could help the business. I’m not an accountant, but I—”
“Got a guy.”
He smirked. “Sure do.”
“This isn’t shady? Like, to do this community stuff and then calculate it up like that? Use it as a tax write-off?”
“No.” His huff of air was part exasperation, part something else.
“It’s another way to help your aunt’s shop survive the next six months.
If you decide to give up teaching those other classes—the ones that make you look like you’re sucking on sour candy the entire time—you could donate the equipment to organizations like this. ”
“You just want more patio time.”
“I just … I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
A wrinkle between his eyebrows deepened and then smoothed. “Did you decide about going back to Maryland for Thanksgiving?”
“I’m staying here.”
“Good. So, I’ll see you at the Powells’ for Thanksgiving?”
“I’ll be there.” She motioned for him to follow her back to the meeting room where their things were. “So, where did you learn all about orchids?”
“Oh … I got—”
“A guy?”
He laughed all the way back to the car.