This Summer Will Be Different(47)

“You don’t know that,” I said, though I knew she was right.

“I do.” Stacy gave me two kisses, then met my eyes. “Whatever happens, don’t keep secrets from Bridget. Trust me on this.”

I returned to Felix after she left, shaken.

“I have to finish closing here,” I told him, walking straight to the back to get the broom. “But if you don’t mind waiting, we can head out after.”

Felix followed me, asking if he could help, so I handed him the broom while I moved the flowers into the cooler. Before we left, I wrapped his bouquet with brown paper and a wide black-and-white-striped ribbon.

I handed him the flowers, meeting his eyes for the first time since coming back inside. I was relieved to find there was no electricity there. My aunt was wrong about Felix. He had Chloe; I had Carter. Maybe this could be the beginning of something new. Something safer. More like what it should be.

“You okay?” he said.

“Yeah. I’m good.” It felt like we were finally on solid ground.

I gathered my coat, and we walked along Queen Street East, toward the cozy wine bar Farah and I liked to visit after work. As we passed the windows of an independent bookstore, Felix paused.

“Let’s go in,” I said.

We browsed around separately. I went to the home and garden section, and Felix presumably went to find something published before the invention of the automobile. I was flipping through the pages of Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden when he found me. He was holding his flowers and a tote bag with the store’s logo on the front.

“That was fast,” I said, closing the book. Felix peered at the photograph on the cover. It was of a woman walking through a field in rubber boots, an armful of orange dahlias thrown over her shoulder.

He read the subtitle aloud, “Grow, Harvest, and Arrange Stunning Seasonal Blooms.” Then looked at me. “May I?”

I handed him the book, and he turned through the pretty pages.

“The author owns a flower farm in Washington,” I told him. “It started as a tiny backyard garden, and she and her husband turned it into a massive teaching farm and seed company.”

I followed them on Instagram and scrolled through the feed with envy and admiration.

Felix went back to the beginning, eyes moving quickly over the page titled, “Key Cutting Garden Plant Types.” He read fast. I’d noticed it that first summer.

“A cut flower farm,” Felix said after a minute. “Is this something you’d want to do?” He glanced at me.

I used to think staring into Felix’s eyes was like staring at an ice floe. But I was wrong. They were warm, not glacial. Staring into Felix’s eyes was like floating in a blue lagoon.

I shrugged. “It’s silly.”

“I don’t think so,” he said back.

“I think I’d like to grow my own flowers one day,” I said. I hadn’t told anyone this before, not even Bridget. “I’d like to have a farm.”

Felix held my eyes for three long seconds. I looked at that little dot of brown in his right eye.

“See, it is silly.”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s perfect. I can picture it: you on a farm, surrounded by flowers.”

“It’s just a dream.”

“It’s a good dream,” he said, then walked toward the cash register. He passed the clerk the book.

“You don’t have to do that. I don’t have a garden, and my balcony doesn’t get enough light for me to grow much of anything on it.”

“Dream big with me, Lucy.”





22





Autumn, Two Years Ago





As we walked to the wine bar, I pointed to my favorite neighborhood landmarks. The mural on the side of the butcher shop. The coffee shop with the best salted chocolate chip cookies. Felix had a shopping bag in one hand and the bouquet of flowers in the other. It was a good look.

“So what did you get?” I asked him once we were seated on stools around a horseshoe bar.

He pulled a copy of White Teeth out of his bag and placed it on the counter.

“That’s not like you. You usually read stuff written decades before we were born.”

He blinked at that, like he was surprised I’d noticed. “I’m making my way through a list of modern classics.”

“Ah,” I said, surveying the wine list.

“They have a vinho verde.” Felix pointed to the menu, and I smiled. I guess he’d picked up on a few things about me, too.

We ordered tapas. I told him about Carter, and he told me about Chloe. She’d recently moved to the island from Ottawa. They’d met in Charlottetown, when she asked him for directions to Water Prince Corner Shop, and they had now been dating for a couple of months.

“Finally ran out of tourists, huh?” I joked as the bartender delivered two glasses of the crisp white wine.

But Felix didn’t laugh. He tipped his head. “There weren’t that many.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, taking a sip. “I’m not offended I wasn’t special. I know how you used your recommendation list as a way of getting someone’s number.”

He studied me in a way that made my chest prickle. “I sent that list to a lot of people. I started compiling it because I knew I wanted to put it into a brochure for guests at the cottages one day.”