ivy

Summary:

“Typical,” Nic says. “Beck Whitney has a magic teleporting house and she forgets to tell us.”

A story about a greenhouse, a widow, a rooftop, a handful of cities, a little bit of magic, and an awful lot of coffee. (Or, a Far Meridian AU.)

Fandom: Blaseball

Published: 25 December 2020

Word count: 16.3k

Ao3 link: ivy

Notes

A/N: This is based very loosely on the podcast The Far Meridian. You don't have to know anything about the show to read this, although I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out. The essentials are that this is kind of a slipstream/magical realism modern AU, with no blaseball.

For Tam. Happy anniversary, my love.

Content warnings: referenced death/grief, some light smoking/drinking/cursing, descriptions of dissociation (in the nightclub scene, if you'd like to skip over it)

This is a story about a greenhouse.

At first it lived behind an unassuming house, in an unassuming neighborhood. The house was not quite in Boston, but it was close enough that the greenhouse was novel without being absurd; not quite in the suburbs, but close enough that the greenhouse was impressive without being an eyesore. The neighbors worried about property values, as is the way of neighbors, but it turned out to be quite the attraction.

The greenhouse was small, as far as greenhouses go. It was also not small, considering that it was built by hobbyists. It was simple, not terribly impressive from the outside. It was surprisingly hard to see inside.

The neighbors called the owners backyard botanists, and there used to be two of them. Married, happy as could be. They built the greenhouse together, the neighbors said at dinner parties. They did it all by themselves, isn’t that incredible? What a special kind of love, to build something together.

And the backyard botanists were beloved, as much as anyone is beloved by their neighbors. The two of them let children into the greenhouse. The children always had apples and cherries afterwards, which they shared among themselves and whispered about. They always said that the greenhouse was massive, bigger than it looked, stretched out for miles, and their parents shook their heads and laughed and wondered what it was like to be so small, for the world to feel so big and wonderful.

It’s such a tragedy, the neighbors said, what happened to Caligula. Gone, almost overnight. Bad luck.

The remaining botanist was suddenly a widow. The neighbors brought casseroles and made promises that they might have kept, if asked. They grieved, distantly, passively. The widow was kind, but she left the house less and less. The children stopped eating apples and cherries. The greenhouse went silent, and everybody wondered what had changed. Like a background hum that they only noticed in its absence.

Time passed, as time prefers to do, and the greenhouse was no longer a curiosity. After time, neither was the widow. The neighbors wondered if she might one day leave the house again, but they believed that the story had ended. They stopped talking about her. They stopped inviting her over. They never knocked on her door again.

Of course, they would be hard pressed to do so now. The greenhouse disappeared one day, and it took the house with it.

Beck Whitney wakes up in the wrong place.

Well, not exactly. She’s in her house, on the couch where she drifted off after watching some bad movie. She intended to rest her eyes, just for a moment, but she must’ve slept through the night, because the room is sun-warm and bright.

She doesn’t move for a minute, content to linger in the moment. She never used to like the sunlight. Cali used to tease her about it, but Beck’s always preferred cloudy days, grey skies. She was never one for brightness. This is lovely every now and again, though, waking up to the sunlight streaming in through the window behind her.

Then she opens her eyes fully. That window faces southwest. Sunlight should not stream in.

She stumbles to her feet, heart pounding. The air is wrong, too dry and dusty. She knows, intimately, that she is not in Boston. The house has moved. Somehow, the house has moved.

Beck runs to the greenhouse. It’s connected directly to the house, something she insisted on. Cali had thought it was unnecessary, but Beck knew, in the way that you know truths in the back of your mind, that it was important. She hadn’t anticipated something like this, of course, had always assumed it would just be convenient for the winter to be able to go straight from home to greenhouse, but if the house is in the wrong place then what if—

She opens the back door. The greenhouse is there.

Beck lets out a sigh of relief, so deep that it makes her stomach hurt. “Cali,” she murmurs, and trails a hand down some of the ivy by the doorframe. “You’d be laughing at me right now. Freaking out because of a little sunshine.”

The ivy doesn’t answer. Beck curls her fingers around one of the vines and looks up. The sun is blindingly bright, and it feels like the flowers are singing around her. “Is this better?” she asks, to nobody in particular. “Being somewhere new? Does it feel like starting over?”

Maudlin, she thinks to herself. It sounds like Cali. The air feels like Cali. It even smells like her. Everything, everything is Cali, except the sunlight. Boston doesn’t get sun like this. And even then the sun is Cali on a honeymoon, at a picnic, in dozens of scattered memories.

One day, Beck thinks, she might not see Cali everywhere. One day she will be able to move forward and stumble into life-after-Cali. But today she spends her time in the greenhouse until she sweats through her shirt. Today she puts on gloves and works and she breathes, like she hasn’t breathed in years, and it helps. She needs it to help.

She falls asleep in bed, without crawling under the covers. She leaves a window open, and the bedroom is warm, and she closes her eyes. She doesn’t dream.

When Beck wakes up, there’s a breeze coming through the window, more aggressively than she was expecting. There’s also sunlight coming through it, which means that she’s moved again.

“Cali,” she mumbles into the pillow, “you’re not gonna believe this.”

She used to leave the house.

She didn’t stop all at once. Cali wouldn’t have wanted her to stop. Unfortunately, Cali’s not here anymore, which means that Beck’s bad decisions are hers and hers alone.

At least, they are now. In the beginning Nic and Margarito called, pretty often; Jacob, sometimes; King, rarely. They all tried so hard for her sake. But the sunlight hurt to look at and the clouds weren’t worth getting out of bed for, so she stopped trying.

So Beck went from going out four times a week to once to every other, went from grocery stores to grocery deliveries, learned how to do the plumbing and home repairs herself so nobody else had to come in. She closed herself off. She doesn’t resent them for letting her. It’s what she wanted. It’s what she said she wanted.

People who met her a year ago would’ve called her cheerful. Optimistic. Friendly. Outgoing, even, which seems laughable. Beck’s as introverted as they come. But with Cali there the world seemed bigger, more open, more… worth being a part of. The colors were brighter and the sounders were louder and she was sharper, she was better with Cali there.

And they said, in the support groups and the online forums and the grief counseling, they said that a loss like this changes you. It feels like the part of you that loves other people has been cauterized. Cut off at the source. A dead heart inside porcelain ribs, at risk of breaking forever, and you have to wake it up gently. You can find that love again, you can feel that love, you can move on.

But that’s not what happened. Beck’s still full of love. It’s caked under her fingernails and clotted in her eyelashes and floating in the space between her ribs. She can feel it every day, simmering underneath the surface, begging to be let out into the world.

It’s just that Cali’s gone. So nothing seems worth loving.

Beck learns the rules, over time. The house moves every day, and she and the greenhouse and everything inside move with it. It doesn’t matter what time she falls asleep or what time she wakes up. She tries staying awake overnight and still moves in the night without realizing it. She never loses electricity or running water, thankfully; one less thing to worry about.

The biggest problem, she thinks, is going to be the groceries. She can’t get a delivery because she doesn’t have an address, and also can’t always figure out where she is. So she’s going to have to leave the house.

The last time Beck left the house was two hundred and eighty-six days ago. Hell of a streak to lose.

Now: she is frozen outside a grocery store, looking at the doors. It’s raining, a slow, sunny drizzle that never gets any worse and is somehow terrible because of that. She’s going from damp to drenched, and she didn’t think to bring an umbrella, because she hasn’t been outside in nearly ten months. She feels like an idiot, like some piece of basic human knowledge is missing. Beck Whitney has forgotten how to be a person. A horrible way to go.

“You look lost,” someone says behind her. When Beck turns there’s a man smiling at her gently. He’s unassuming, with thick glasses and paint stains on his hands. If she were capable of feeling anything other than dread, Beck thinks she would like him. “Do you need help?”

Beck opens her mouth. “I,” she says, stops, has to start again. “My wife used to get the groceries.”

This is a lie; she and Cali went together when she could. But the man just nods, looking sympathetic. “Do you want a shopping buddy?”

His name is Wyatt Owens, and he’s an art teacher. The first part of this he tells her, but the rest she figures out. He mentions his students while he’s talking about the food pyramid, and talks about drawing as he helps her load a cart with nonperishables. Then he mentions growing on a farm, and that, Beck can talk about that plenty, about making sure things grow.

“Have you ever considered growing your own food?” Wyatt asks earnestly at one point, and Beck thinks about fruit trees and nods mutely.

Wyatt does not ask questions about the things that make Beck stop talking. He doesn’t ask about her wife who used to do the shopping. Instead they amble through the store together, each with their own cart. He stops to get things for himself but mostly he’s filling her cart, helping her navigate the store with a steady stream of chatter. It helps. She isn’t in a great cavernous terrifying store, she’s having a conversation with a new friend.

God, Beck hasn’t made a new friend in years.

He offers to drive her home afterwards and Beck looks down at her full cart and accepts without hesitation. The house and greenhouse are tucked away at the bottom of a hill, just close enough that they don’t need a driveway.

“Can I help you bring them in?” Wyatt asks.

The last people in the house were Nic and Margarito, about three months ago. They’re busy, the two of them, but they’ve always tried to carve out time for Beck. She doesn’t think she’s ready yet for them to be the second-last people in the house.

“I think I can do it,” Beck says.

Wyatt still helps her carry everything to the doorstep, which she expected. “You can ask for help if you need,” he says mildly, and Beck nods and does not tell him that she will be gone tomorrow. “It was good meeting you, Beck.”

“Thank you,” Beck says, and she wishes she were the kind of person who said things like can I get you dinner, or I can pay for gas if you want, or you are the first new person I’ve met in almost a year, thank you for being kind to me. Instead she says again, “Thank you,” and she hopes he understands.

Wyatt grins at her. He has a nice smile. His eyes look huge behind the glasses. “Take care of yourself,” he says, and then he’s gone.

It takes Beck an hour to put away the groceries. There are things here that she knows she’s probably not going to eat, but she keeps them anyways, organizes the pantry the way she and Cali used to. Methodical. Careful.

She has Wyatt’s phone number, so she digs up a magnet and pins it to the fridge. She’s never going to call him. But she wants to remember him.

The rhythm goes like this:

Beck wakes up, and she is somewhere new. She gets ready for the day, showers or brushes her hair, gets dressed or puts on work boots. She makes coffee. She eats lunch. She goes to the greenhouse and she works. She eats dinner, watches a movie. She sleeps. She wakes up, and she is somewhere new, and she does it again.

Now, a variation:

She eats lunch. And then she steps outside.

At first it’s only to see where the house is today. She steps outside into deserts and blizzards and cityscapes and swamps. She learns to look out the window before actually going outside. Eventually she starts looking up where she is, looking up local attractions and the weather and anything else she should know.

But Beck is having fun. This is something she forgot, something that’s been dormant inside her: she likes finding new places. She likes figuring things out, the challenge of directions and puzzles.

Today, Beck steps outside into Tokyo. She’s definitely still by the city, but her house is at the edge of the ocean, greenhouse dangerously close to the water. She doesn’t allow herself to worry about that, instead turns a slow circle, looking around.

There’s a person with an open-sided sports tank, looking at her. Beck looks back for a long moment and lifts a hand in a wave.

The person frowns. “You shouldn’t be here,” they say, not quite an accusation.

Beck glances at the house. She wonders if there’s something that normally takes up this space, or if this section of beach is just a little wider today. “But I am,” she says.

“You are,” sports tank concedes. They’re wearing a ball cap flipped backwards, and they fiddle with it as they walk over to Beck. “Are you a tourist?”

“I guess,” Beck says slowly. “Are you?”

“I don’t know what I am,” sports tank says blithely. “I’m somewhere new. I think I might be someone new, too. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“Does being somewhere new make you different?”

Sports tank shrugs. “Being different makes me different. Don’t you feel different when you’re somewhere new?”

Beck opens her mouth to say no, but she thinks about it. If she were in Boston right now, she would be inside.

“I’m only here for the day,” she says instead. “What’s something I can do here?”

“In Tokyo? Literally anything.”

“What’s something you like?”

“Literally anything,” they repeat, lips quirking up into a smile. “You’re really not from around here, huh?”

“Neither are you.” She pauses. “I’m Beck.”

“Quitter. You wanna go find something new?”

“Please,” Beck says fervently.

Quitter doesn’t talk about themself much, but they’re talking constantly anyways. They point out fashion trends that Beck wouldn’t notice and tell her stories about getting lost on trains. They take her to a park with tennis courts. Beck has never played tennis in her life, but she plays against Quitter and loses miserably.

“Who are you?” she asks at one point. Quitter frowns at her and she clarifies, “You just seem… different.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why you’re different?”

“Who I am. It keeps changing.”

“You said earlier that you were someone new.”

Quitter shrugs. “I might be someone new. Or someone old. It changes. Seasons and time and cities, they all make you different. I’m building on myself.”

“But what’s the foundation?”

Quitter looks at her for just a moment too long. “Someone,” they say at last. “I hope.”

They keep walking through the park, down the streets, exploring the city until the sun starts going down. Beck looks up with a start. “I have to get home.”

Quitter rolls their eyes. “The house will be there when you get back.”

“Will it?”

“It took you with it, didn’t it? It won’t leave without you.”

“But I’ve never-”

“Come on, Beck,” Quitter says, an eye-roll packed into every syllable. “Live a little!”

Beck’s breath seizes in her throat. “I have to go home,” she says, and it’s not enough of an apology. “I need to be there.”

“Don’t you want to be here?” Quitter demands. There’s something desperate to it that Beck refuses to listen to. “Don’t you want to be someone?”

“I am someone,” Beck says, and it feels like a lie. But she is someone. She has a home to get to, plants to tend to, a place to be. “I’m sorry.”

Quitter doesn’t go with her back to the house, and they don’t give her a cell phone number. Beck gets to the house alone. Her whole day has been thrown off, and she has to stay up late in the greenhouse. But she thinks it’s well worth it: there’s a pleasant ache in her arms from the tennis match, and there’s something comforting in coming back home instead of simply being home.

It was a good day. Even with stumbles and mistakes, it was a good day. When Beck falls asleep, humming old songs to herself, it takes minutes instead of hours; when Beck falls asleep, she dreams of clouds.

But remember: this is not a story about Beck Whitney. This is a story about a greenhouse.

It’s snowing outside, and Beck is grateful that she left her windows closed overnight. She works in the morning and drinks her coffee, but she’s feeling antsy, so she goes to the greenhouse earlier than she normally does. It’s an easy rhythm, checking on everything. It’s always the same.

It’s always the same, except as Beck is tending to one of the rosebeds, a voice from behind her says, “Uh, three?”

Beck whips around so fast she nearly falls into the rosebed. “Three what?” she says, before the rest of her brain catches up enough to helpfully tell her that there is somebody else in her fucking greenhouse.

“Shoot,” the woman mumbles. She has a shock of bright red hair, just bright enough that Beck can’t tell if it’s natural or not. “I knew this was going to happen. Out of order, that’s what I get.”

“What are you talking about?” Beck demands. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

The woman holds her hands up in a placating gesture. “I promise this is going to make sense one day,” she says, which is laughable. “My name is Eugenia, and we’ve met before. Or, well, I’ve met you. I don’t think you’ve met me.”

“How could that happen?”

“Things are strange here.” Eugenia spreads her arms out like she’s trying to encompass the entirety of the greenhouse. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

Beck has noticed. The greenhouse has always been special. But she had thought that it was only special for her and Cali.

“How did you get here?” she says again. She’s a little calmer now, even if her hand is hovering by her pruning shears. Just in case.

Eugenia shrugs. “There’s more than one way into a greenhouse. I went to mine, and you went to yours, and we’re meeting in the middle.”

“How is there a middle to meet in? I thought this was my greenhouse.”

“Weirder things have happened,” Eugenia says. “I don’t know why we’re meeting out of order, though. I can’t explain that.”

Beck stares. “You said you knew me?”

“This is the third conversation I’ve had with you.”

“But I haven’t met you.”

“It’s the greenhouses,” Eugenia says, like that could possibly be an explanation for anything. “I wish I knew time travel rules. I have questions I want to ask you, but I don’t want to cause a paradox or whatever.”

“Questions like what?”

“Do you live by yourself?”

Beck opens her mouth but no words come out. Cali lives here, in a way, but she gets the feeling that that’s not what she’s being asked. And that’s terrifying, the idea that there’s someone else in her life that she just hasn’t met yet, that she’s going to let into her home.

Eugenia must be able to tell that she’s uncomfortable, because she steers the conversation away. “Do you want help with the roses?”

“Why?”

“Because we’re both here, and there’s not much else to do.”

“Do you know anything about flowers?”

“I work at a greenhouse,” Eugenia says, somewhere between gentle and chastising. “I wouldn’t offer if I thought I was going to wreck your setup, or whatever.”

For a minute Beck considers saying no anyways. She has no reason to believe anything this woman has said to her. It sounds fantastical, borderline unbelievable.

Then again, the last few weeks have been pretty unbelievable.

“Okay,” she says at last. Eugenia smiles in relief. “Sure.”

Eugenia is from Utah, and she has a very dark sense of humor. “You’d understand if you lived in Utah,” she says, and Beck supposes she might be right. She hums under her breath, and she tells a lot of stories. When Beck stops answering, Eugenia stops talking. It is uncomfortably close to a routine that Beck does not remember establishing.

They work their way through the greenhouse, never straying too far from the door to the house. Eugenia doesn’t ask questions about the path they take through the garden. She lets Beck take the lead and direct her towards certain plants. She seems content to be here, even with how anxious Beck feels.

“Did I like you when you met me?” Beck asks abruptly.

Eugenia looks up from the plumeria bush she’s pruning. She doesn’t say anything at first, just looks at Beck and tilts her head. Her hair catches the light. Wherever they are, Beck realizes, it’s not snowing anymore.

“I’d like to think so,” Eugenia says at last. There’s a wry little twist to her mouth. “I liked you.”

Beck nods. Her mouth is suddenly dry. “I think I have to go.”

Eugenia doesn’t question it. “It was nice talking to you again, Beck. I hope I see you again soon.”

“You too,” Beck says, and she’s not even sure if she means it. She’s dizzy with confusion, and she barely avoids tripping over her own feet as she heads back towards the door. She’s thinking about time, and flowers, and Eugenia avoiding the lotuses. She’s thinking about the lotuses. She’s thinking about—

When Beck gets back into the house she shivers immediately. It’s been snowing outside, and she didn’t think to turn the heat on before she went into the greenhouse. She makes herself lunch and works in the evening and does not think about anything in particular.

She goes back later that night and Eugenia is gone. She is not disappointed. She’s not.

“I don’t think this is working out,” Avila says.

Beck hums to herself, takes a sip of her coffee. “You don’t sound very sure of yourself.”

“Breaking up with people is hard,” Avila protests. “Even if it’s fake, it’s scary.”

“You think I’m scary?”

“I mean-” Avila makes a gesture at Beck that she doesn’t quite understand. “Of course I do.”

“I’m not scary,” Beck says. “I woke up this morning and I stubbed my toe and you know what I said?”

“What did you say?”

“I said ow,” Beck says, perfectly straight-faced, and Avila snorts. “I’m just a person, come on, you don’t have to be scared of me. Let’s keep practicing.”

They’re in Seattle, and it’s cloudy, because it’s Seattle. Beck hadn’t wanted to get out of bed because of the clouds, and then she’d forced herself to get out of bed specifically because she wanted to spite that part of herself. She used to like the clouds. She wants to experience them.

She had gone somewhere indie for coffee, because it’s Seattle, and she so rarely gets coffee that she knows is good. It was her first time going to a restaurant or coffee shop or anything like that in… well, in a while. She was excited to get out of the house.

Avila was in front of Beck in the line at the coffee shop, and she had looked abjectly miserable. She’d been sniffling at her phone, so distracted that it took her two tries to get her order right. Beck had felt bad — even if she didn’t know what was wrong, this woman was clearly upset — so she paid for Avila’s drink, and the two of them had started talking.

As it turned out, Avila had been broken up with for the third time in two months. It would be easier, she told Beck, if she had ever broken up with someone herself, if she could just practice having that kind of conversation.

And, well, Beck didn’t have much to do, so she had offered to let Avila break up with her. For practice. And for conversation. It’s stilted and strange, but it’s the most Beck’s talked to somebody in a while, so she’s willing to try.

“Okay, okay,” Avila says, and takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders. “Beck, I think we need to break up.”

“Better,” Beck says slowly. “That was more confident. Try again.”

“Beck, I’m dumping you.”

“A little harsh. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of.”

Avila pulls a face. “I don’t want to be on the receiving end of any of this.”

Beck hums to herself. “Well, don’t say anything that will make someone make a mean Facebook post about you or whatever.”

“Fine.” Avila takes a breath. “Beck, this isn’t working out. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“That’s good!” Beck says, trying to sound encouraging. “That was a good one.”

Avila sighs, relieved. “Okay, I can do this. I can definitely do it.”

“You just did it.”

“We’re not actually dating. We just met this morning.”

“It’s still more than you’ve said before,” Beck says gently. They’re walking down a random street in Seattle. She’s doing her best to keep track of where the house is, to make sure she can get home soon. Avila doesn’t seem to have any idea where they’re going. Beck’s not sure if that makes her feel better or worse. “You’re getting better.”

Avila takes a long drink of coffee. “Beck,” she says, stone-cold serious. “These last two hours have been two of the most hourly hours in my life.”

“God, don’t say that,” Beck laughs.

“But I have a confession,” Avila continues, clearly trying not to laugh. “I just don’t think you’re the one. So it’s over.”

“This is ridiculous-”

“One time a girl broke up with me like that.”

Beck groans. “You dodged a bullet, then.”

“I sure did,” Avila mutters. “It’s weird how that works, right? I was devastated, but now I can recognize that she was an asshole. Time makes everything suck less, even when it still sucks.”

“Yeah,” Beck murmurs. She has her own devastation to think about — not the same, of course, but she still wonders if it hurts less now. She hasn’t wondered that in a long time. “Do you want to try again?”

“Could I?”

“Let’s start from the top.”

Avila smiles. Beck smiles back.

Beck doesn’t normally bring coffee with her into the greenhouse, but she needs the boost today. She wanders in with work gloves and a mug, not quite ready to get to work yet. Instead, she decides to go deep into the greenhouse, past irises and hawthorns and pear trees, into the parts she doesn’t know as well. It gets warmer and warmer as she goes, things that look less like flowers and more like shrubs.

Beck doesn’t question it. She just walks until she sees a flash of red, something almost too bright to believe. “Eugenia?”

Eugenia’s head pops up. She smiles broadly at Beck. She’s wearing work clothes this time, looks a little dirtier. “Hi,” she says, voice warm. “Uh. Five times.”

Beck has to think about it for a second, trying to recall her first conversation with Eugenia. “Oh,” she says. “Two? Second time.”

Eugenia nods. “Welcome to my neck of the woods.”

“Have I been here before?”

“I met you here once.”

“But I haven’t been here yet.”

“Is that a question?”

Beck smiles. “I guess not. Am I in Utah?”

“I don’t know. Where were you?”

“Not sure.”

“Right,” Eugenia says. Beck must look confused, because she adds, “You told me. About the house.”

“I’m going to tell you about the house?”

“You tell me things sometimes. We’re friends, you know.”

“I believe you.”

“Do you?”

“I want to,” Beck says quietly. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”

Eugenia’s face softens. “I’ll be your friend,” she says. “And that’s not true. You have plenty of friends.”

“I feel like that’s a spoiler.”

“Barely. You wanna help me?”

Tentatively, Beck drops down to her knees by Eugenia. “I don’t know a lot about desert plants.”

“I can show you.”

“Have you shown me before?” Beck pauses. “Or did I know? Because you’re showing me now? Is this a time loop?”

“You’re spiraling,” Eugenia says mildly. “The time thing doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.”

Beck makes a frustrated noise before she can help herself. “I feel like it needs to matter,” she says. “Everything is supposed to be… in order. It’s supposed to go from bad to better, or strangers to friends, or hard to easy.”

Eugenia laughs, and ignores the sharp look that Beck cuts over towards her. “Come on,” she says. “That’s not even how it works in linear time.”

“No.” Beck sighs. “I know. It just feels like it shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

“It’s not.” Eugenia pauses; Beck is acutely aware of how close Eugenia’s hand is to her, how it would be easy for her to touch Beck’s knee or elbow or something. She wonders, if she were a different Beck, if Eugenia would close that distance. “It would be easier in straight lines. But the best we can do is learn to ride the curve.”

Beck swallows and nods. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s confusing. I know I was confused.”

“But you’re not anymore?”

“No,” Eugenia says resolutely. “I’m not. Let me show you the plants, come on.”

Beck sweats a lot in the heat, and she still has to tend to everything in her own section of the greenhouse afterwards. It’s exhausting. But it’s also good, sitting next to someone, working hard. It’s good stepping back and seeing something that she did, that she made, for no reason beyond wanting to help a friend.

The house is on the roof of a building.

“Huh,” Beck says, looking out across the street. She’s definitely in New York, for the fourth time in her life, and she didn’t really enjoy the first three. Not for the first time, she takes a minute to be grateful that she looked out the window before walking out the front door.

“New York real estate, huh?” someone says. When Beck glances over there’s a guy standing towards the edge of the building, smoking. He grins at her. “You’d better hope you can un-teleport your house or else rent here is gonna skyrocket.”

“I’ll be on my way soon,” Beck promises. “Am I interrupting you?”

“Nah, you’re my entertainment for the day. You want a smoke?”

“No, thank you.”

He shrugs. “Suit yourself. But the door into the building locks unless you have an apartment key.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re trapping me up here?”

“I’m implying it.”

Beck rolls her eyes. “I can keep you company without smoking.”

The guy winks. “What’s the point in that?”

“Let me grab a book,” Beck says, even though she already knows she’s not actually going to read it.

His name is Dominic, and he calls Beck a wimp for not wanting to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the building. Instead she sits next to him, legs pretzel-crossed beneath her, as he smokes and kicks his feet over the edge. He doesn’t seem bothered by the heights at all.

“Do you come up here a lot?” Beck asks, curious.

Dominic shrugs. “Sometimes. When I wanna clear my head.”

“You got a lot going on?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Of course everyone does.”

“It’s just nice, looking at the city.” Dominic looks up, and Beck tries to follow his gaze. “See what I mean?”

It’s intimidating, being up this high. She’s never been afraid of heights before, not more than the average person. There’s something delightfully claustrophobic about this city, about not being able to see a real horizon through all the high-rises and skyscrapers. It makes her feel small, and too high up, and dizzy with relief.

“Yeah,” Beck says. “I see what you mean.”

He passes her the cigarette, like it’s a ritual, and she waits a few seconds before she passes it back. He looks surprised when she does, at first, and then she sees something click into place. She can’t say what it is, only that he looks quietly shattered as he turns to her.

Beck understands. He looks the way she feels when she accidentally cooks twice as much dinner, when she starts singing songs in the greenhouse and keeps waiting for someone to sing the other half.

“My wife,” she says, “hated cities.”

Dominic looks at her again. She can see him figure it out: the present and past tense, the way she reaches up to fidget with the ring on a chain around her neck. He nods, slowly, and says, “Why?”

“She was one of those people who liked grass and skies, you know? Said that the buildings were oppressive.”

“Where are you from, Beck?”

“Boston. But we lived on the outskirts. It was a compromise.”

“Do you like New York?”

“It’s too much city for me,” she admits, and Dominic snorts. “Do you like New York?”

“I used to.” He looks out at the buildings again. “My brother,” he starts, and then he takes a long drag of the cigarette. His hands are shaking.

“You don’t have to,” Beck says. She means it as a kindness, but his fingers flex against the edge of the building. “Unless you want to.”

Dominic takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You’d think it gets easier,” he says, and he sounds fucking exhausted. “My brother loved the city, but he loved other places more, so he was gone. My sister loved the city, but she loved the idea of distance, so she’s gone too. Now it’s just me.”

“Where’s your sister now?”

“She hasn’t written in a while. I’m not sure.”

Beck nods. She doesn’t need to ask about his brother.

Dominic leans over until his forehead falls on her shoulder, heavy and tired. “Surviving’s hard work.”

“Yeah,” Beck murmurs. Her house is too big now. Her house is all hers now and it shouldn’t be. It’s a place that’s meant to have more than one person. “Dominic?”

“You can call me Dom, we’re at that point.”

Beck smiles. “You know how my house showed up on your roof?”

“I noticed, yeah.”

“It’s going to leave by the end of the night.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“Do you want to come with me when it goes?”

Dom doesn’t say anything for a minute. Beck waits him out, fidgeting with her book, running her thumb along the edges of the pages. Finally, he says, “Where?”

“I don’t know. I can’t control it.”

“You mean you didn’t come here on purpose?”

“I don’t go anywhere on purpose. I just go.”

“Okay,” Dom says.

Beck blinks. “Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll come with you. Do I have time to pack a bag?”

“We should be inside by sundown just in case, so you have until then to pack as many bags as you want.”

“Will I be able to come back to New York?”

“Whenever you want,” Beck says, even though she already wants to ask him to stay. “But you can also stay as long as you need.”

“Okay,” Dom says again. He kicks his feet over the ledge, stubs out his cigarette on the edge of the roof. “Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s the weirdest place you’ve ended up?”

“On a rooftop,” Beck says, and Dom doesn’t laugh, but she can feel his smile pressed against her shoulder. “We’ll find places together.”

“An adventure,” Dom says, and Beck looks out across the street, at the buildings that are not quite a horizon. It’s been a long time since she had a proper adventure.

This is not a story about Dominic Marijuana.

There are many reasons for this. He was not here at the beginning, and he will be gone before the end. He is less tidy than Beck, and they have their share of arguments about it. He plays his music too loudly. He hates doing the dishes, even though he cooks. He does not have the makings of a protagonist, at least not for this story.

But the real reason is this: Beck doesn’t let him in the greenhouse. Not at first. So this can’t be a story about Dominic, because this is still a story about a greenhouse.

They get used to each other, in fits and starts. The biggest problem is all the little habits that Beck didn’t realize she had, things that come flying to the forefront when she’s faced with another person. But Dom agrees to do most of the grocery shopping, and Beck agrees to stop wearing her work boots in the house, and they come to an understanding.

Beck has not had to make room in her life for someone new in a very long time. Somehow, stumbling through this is the happiest she’s been in weeks.

Dom’s more adventurous than her, in just about every way. He cooks more than she does, and he cooks insane things. He goes out more, and eventually she starts going out more with him. He wants to meet people.

Beck tries. She tries so hard.

But most days she still spends hours in the greenhouse. Dom isn’t allowed in, which he accepts with grace. He doesn’t ask questions about Cali, she doesn’t ask questions about his brother, but they talk about it when they want to. Neither of them want to very often.

So she goes to the greenhouse. She brings coffee — which she makes, not Dom, because she’s better at it and he likes cold brew anyways — and sometimes lunch. Some days she doesn’t even work. Some days she just brings a book and finds a tree and sits.

It’s on one of these days, sitting under a tree, that she hears footsteps. She smiles without looking up. “Three times.”

“What?” Eugenia says. It’s a little sharper than Beck remembers, so she looks up. Eugenia stares down, with absolutely no recognition. Beck bites her lip, and Eugenia frowns. “Where am I?”

Slowly, Beck sets her book down. “Hi,” she says cautiously. Eugenia frowns a little deeper. “I’m Beck. You haven’t met me before, right?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Time gets weird here,” Beck says, and decides that Eugenia looks freaked out enough that she shouldn’t add more details. “This is my third time meeting you.”

“Where are we?”

“The greenhouse.”

“What greenhouse?”

“The greenhouse,” Beck says again, because there’s really no way to explain it. “I come from that way-” she points back towards the house- “and you normally come from the other way. And sometimes there’s enough of a middle for us to meet in.”

Eugenia just stares at her for a long moment. “You seem really okay with this.”

“It’s my third time. I’m basically an expert.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either,” Beck says. It doesn’t scare her the way it does the last time she talked to Eugenia, although she can’t say why. “You don’t have to spend time with me if you don’t want to.”

“But?”

“But it’s my day off, and I’m reading, and I wouldn’t mind company if you also wanted to take a break.”

“This isn’t the kind of weird I’m used to,” Eugenia mumbles. Beck arches an eyebrow, and she clarifies, “Like, I’ve been around… supernatural, whatever. Scary stuff. But this isn’t scary. It’s just wrong. Like we’re two steps to the left of what normal is supposed to be.”

“You can sit with me,” Beck says. “It doesn’t fix the greenhouse, but you can sit.”

Eugenia bites her lip. “If I leave to get a book or something, will you be here when I get back?”

That’s enough to give Beck pause. They haven’t experimented with that, with separating and then coming back together. “I’m not sure,” she says slowly. “If you want to try it we can.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then I already know I’ll see you again.”

Slowly, Eugenia nods. “Don’t move,” she says. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Beck promises, and picks up her book.

At first she thinks that Eugenia doesn’t come back because she’s still getting the book. Then she thinks it’s because Eugenia must’ve been held up. Then she thinks it’s because Eugenia wanted to explore something else.

But on some level she can tell that she’s alone in the greenhouse again. She doesn’t know why or how, but it’s just her.

Beck settles against the tree and lifts her book a little higher in front of her face, and she tries not to be disappointed. She tries.

Dom wears her down eventually.

Or, no, that’s not a particularly kind way of putting it. Maybe they both wear each other down. Dom starts spending more nights in with Beck, and it’s only fair that she starts going out with him more. They have different ideas of fun, different bars that they gravitate towards when they go out, but they come to an understanding.

It’s good spending time with someone new. Beck always knew it would be, in a matter-of-fact abstract way that didn’t ever seem to impact her actual behavior. Knowing is one thing; making friends while wracked with grief is another.

Now here she is, going out a few nights a week with Dom. Here she is, learning what kind of food he likes and what kind of jokes make him laugh. Here she is, listening to his stories about his siblings and telling stories in turn.

Beck is getting dangerously close to life-after-Cali. It’s all one word, the way she thinks about it. Technically all life is life after Cali now, but there’s a difference between that and finding a new sense of normal, finding a rhythm. The idea of a routine, of something steady, of a real life-after-Cali scares her. It’s been nearly a year and it still scares her.

But she goes out anyways. She goes to karaoke bars and clubs and movie theaters and whatever other adventures Dom suggests. She gets used to it. She’s, unfortunately, getting used to it.

They go out together in Houston, and Dom picks somewhere quieter than his usual. Maybe he can tell that she’s tired; maybe he’s tired too. Either way they spend the night drinking and arguing about a soccer match, and it’s good and that’s not a good thing. Beck’s supposed to be grieving. It’s not supposed to feel good.

“Do you think I’m a bad person for wanting to be whole?” she says abruptly.

Dom’s in the bathroom, something she only remembers a second too late, so she looks like an idiot asking a question to thin air. But the bartender looks at her thoughtfully. At least she thinks it’s thoughtful. There’s an abstract quality to them, something that makes them hard to look directly at.

“Define whole,” they say at last, which is so far from what Beck was expecting that it makes her stop and think about it, really think about it.

“Different,” she says slowly. The bartender tilts their head. “Or maybe not.”

“Wholeness does not make a person.”

“I know,” Beck murmurs. For a second she thinks about Quitter in Tokyo, asking Beck if she wants to be someone. She thinks about how she still feels like a shell some days — and even then, she’s a shell filled with boiling water. She still feels all that love that she thought was supposed to be Cali’s. It’s not Cali’s anymore. She’s full of something, but that’s different from being whole.

She shakes her head, trying to clear it. “Sorry, I should ask your name before I try and force philosophical conversations on you.”

“Most people don’t,” they say, a wry little lilt to their voice. “Occupational hazard. I’m Fitzgerald. Fitz is fine.”

“Fitz,” she repeats. “I’m Beck.”

“You’re not a bad person for wanting things, regardless of what those things are.”

“What if they’re different from what I used to want?”

Fitz gently pulls her glass away from her. For a second Beck thinks that their fingers aren’t solid. For a second longer she’s sure they’re not.

“People change,” Fitz says. “Every second, people change.”

Beck opens her mouth to say something, but then Dom is plopping onto the barstool next to her. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry, took longer than I expected. Were you talking to someone?”

Beck looks back behind the bar. Fitz is, predictably, not there.

“Dom,” she says, and then stops. He looks at her expectantly, and she forces herself to smile. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Dom says cheerfully. “Next time we go out I’m picking somewhere loud.”

Beck groans and thumps her forehead against the bar. When she lifts her head there’s a new beer, perfectly positioned where the old one was. She doesn’t question it, just lifts it in a toast towards an invisible figure and starts drinking.

It still gets easier, is the thing. They go out more and it’s easier. Beck meets people and it’s easier. And then feeling okay about it gets easier.

Life-after-Cali is drawing ever nearer. Beck thinks that that’s getting easier to think about too.

As soon as they’re outside Dom rips the cap off his head and starts fanning his face. “Fucking humidity,” he mutters. “Where are we, Atlantis?”

Beck squints down at her phone. “Texas, I think.”

“Texas,” Dom repeats in disgust. “There aren’t even beaches in Texas.”

“There are definitely beaches in Texas.”

“Are we at a beach in Texas?”

“I don’t know, Dominic, do you see the ocean?”

“You’re always so mean to me,” Dom complains, but he’s smiling. “Can’t you look it up? For me? I haven’t been to a good beach in forever.”

Because the world bends to Dom’s will, they actually are by the beach. But because Dom bends to Beck’s will, he goes out to get both of them swimsuits and beach towels while Beck spends her morning in the greenhouse. He comes back with beach things and tacos, smiling broadly.

“You didn’t ask for my order,” Beck says suspiciously.

Dom rolls his eyes. “I’ve been cooking for you for like a month now. I know what food you eat.”

He’s unfortunately right. The tacos are incredible. He even got her a decent swimsuit.

The last time Beck went to a beach, like the last time Beck did most things, was with Cali. It was a group thing with some of Cali’s coworkers, and Beck was mostly there to be a social buffer if Cali got tired. But Cali liked the beach. Beck had spent most of the trip on the sand with a book, watching Cali and Inez playing volleyball against Castillo and Owen. Cali had dragged her into the ocean once or twice, and Beck had let her, because it was Cali.

There are a lot of people at the beach. Beck sticks close to Dom’s side, and he doesn’t ask about it. He’s wearing giant sunglasses and spends the whole walk to the beach pointing out other people’s increasingly absurd swimsuits.

“You gonna come in the water?” he asks.

Beck has two paperbacks in a tote bag, and a couple beach towels that she dug out from a closet. She does not want to go into the water.

“Sure,” she sighs. “Why not.”

Dom doesn’t tell stories about the beach, which seems unusual for him. Although she supposes it makes sense; all of his stories probably have his siblings. He still seems in high spirits, though, helping Beck set up towels and an umbrella before they wade into the water. They don’t go far, only halfway up to Beck’s knees, but Dom is smiling broadly the whole way. Like he’s just happy to be here.

She kicks some shallow water at his knees. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“This sucks.”

He laughs out loud. “I’m trying to make a fun outing!”

“Well, you need to make it fun for me.”

Dom grins at her, and she realizes too late that she said the exact wrong thing. She backs up a couple steps. “Dominic, don’t you dare-”

“Watch out,” he yells, and then dives for her knees. She goes down hard, barely closing her eyes in time as they both go into the water. When she pops up Dom is laughing at her, and she doesn’t hesitate before leaping at him, pushing his shoulders and knocking him down.

Beck spits seawater back into the ocean, kneeling in the shallows. “This is disgusting,” she says, trying desperately to keep the laugh out of her voice. “You dragged me here, for no reason-”

“It’s a fun outing!”

“There is already sand everywhere, and that water is going to kill me, and you’re going to try to kill me first!” She points at him. “Quit laughing, you asshole, I see what you’re doing here! This is assassination attempt!”

Dom’s wheezing with laughter, still half-submerged in the water. “I think you’re over-”

“If you say I’m overreacting, I swear to god-”

“God forbid you tell Beck she’s overreacting,” says a voice behind her.

Beck whips around so fast she falls in the water. She has to lift a hand to shade her eyes to look up. Nic Winkler, Nic goddamn Winkler, is looking down at her.

“Holy shit,” Beck says. “No way.”

“You do not get to no-way me,” Nic says, mock sternly. There’s a note to his voice that she can’t quite parse, but mostly he sounds like he’s smiling. “You’re the one who went missing.”

“That wasn’t me, that was my house.”

“You live in the house, Whitney.” He reaches a hand down, and Beck lets him pull her up. He braces her by grabbing onto her shoulders, not quite a hug but still contact, still a familiar gesture. Behind her, Dom gets to his feet too; Nic spares him half a glance before turning back to her. “You wanna go scare Margo?”

“Xe’s here too?”

“We needed a vacation.”

“Margo works too hard,” Beck says automatically. She hasn’t spoken to Margo in months, though. That might not be true anymore.

“You work too hard,” Nic answers, a conversation they’ve had a hundred times. “You can bring your- uh-”

“Roommate,” Beck says. Nic’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’m only explaining it once, you can wait till Margo’s there.”

“Sure,” Nic agrees, although the look he gives Dom is distinctly suspicious. “Roommate, you coming?”

“Why not,” Dom says. When Beck turns, he’s giving her a quizzical look, but he doesn’t seem bothered. “Let’s go scare your friend.”

Beck met Margarito Nava years and years ago, both of them working as servers at a shitty chain restaurant to pay their way through school. Xe’s been one of her best friends ever since. They were in each other’s wedding parties. Xe practically moved into her spare room for the week before the funeral. She wants to know why xe didn’t call her about the house, but she supposes she didn’t call xem either.

She spots xem on the beach almost immediately and her mouth goes dry. How could she not have noticed? All these people and she still found xem right away.

Nic nudges Beck. “I can distract xem, if you wanna surprise xem.”

“Perfect.”

Nic goes ahead, and Dom nudges her as she hangs back. “Do you need to run away?” he says, carefully nonjudgmental. “I’m not above causing a scene so you can escape.”

“I know you’re not.” She sighs. “No, I want to see them. I do.”

“Do you need privacy or something? I can leave you to it.”

She shoots him a dirty look. “If you leave me right now, you’ll be walking back to New York.”

“Ouch,” Dom says, but he bumps his hip against hers, calm as can be. “Go on, head over. I’ll stop by in a minute.”

Beck takes a deep breath and walks over. Nic’s lying down next to Margo, both of their heads bent together. For a second she fiercely misses Cali, but she forces it down. She misses Margo too, and out of the two of them, one of them is right in front of her.

She plops down unceremoniously on the sand. “Am I interrupting?”

“Yes,” Margo says, and then xe turns to look at her. Xe’s wearing massive sunglasses, but she can still see xir eyes go wide as xe recognizes her. “Beck?”

“Hi,” she says, barely keeping the nerves out of her voice. “Surprise?”

“Oh my god,” Margo breathes, and then tackles her unceremoniously in what’s probably supposed to be a hug. It ends up with xem lying on top of her, trying to wrap xir arms around her shoulders. “You’re- what the hell- Texas? Did you move to Texas? Why would you move to Texas, don’t you hate it here? I hate it here.”

“I hate it here too!”

“Good!” Margo smacks a messy kiss on her temple and then rolls back, grinning at her broadly. “Did you and Nic plan this?”

“I swear, it’s just a total coincidence, we were just passing through.”

“We?”

“She was with a guy,” Nic says helpfully. “He’s the we.”

Beck lifts her head but can’t quite spot Dom. “He lives with me.”

“He lives with you?” Margo repeats. “In Texas?”

“Not in Texas.”

“Did you know your house is gone?”

“My house is here. It’s been moving around.”

“Typical,” Nic says. “Beck Whitney has a magic teleporting house and she forgets to tell us.”

“I’ve been busy,” Beck protests. “I had a teleporting house to deal with.”

“Is the greenhouse there too?” Margo asks, concern low in xir voice. Beck nods, and xe sighs in relief. “Good.”

“How’d you end up with a roommate?” Nic says, sounding fascinated. “He seems insane.”

“Oh, my house ended up on the roof of his apartment building,” Beck says airily. Nic and Margo nod in understanding. “I wasn’t even looking for anyone to live with, it was just… one of those things. We just got along.”

“Got along like a flea on a dog,” Dom says. Beck looks up as he drops her tote bag next to her. He has their beach towels too. “Hi. I thought you might want these instead of just lying on the sand and making yourself miserable.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Beck says in a monotone, but she gets up and brushes the sand off herself. “Dom, this is Nic and Margarito. Nic, Margo, that’s Dom. He’s the flea, I’m the dog.”

“The house is the dog,” Dom corrects her. “We’re both fleas.”

“It’s my teleporting house, Dominic.”

Dom blinks, surprised. “You mentioned the teleporting?”

“Why wouldn’t I mention the teleporting?”

“Because most people’s houses don’t teleport.”

“Well, but Beck’s house was never normal,” Margo points out. “That greenhouse was always like that.”

Dom shoots Beck a look. “Like what?”

Nic turns to Beck immediately. “You haven’t shown him?”

“I don’t show most people the greenhouse,” Beck says defensively. She’s suddenly embarrassed, although she can’t say why. She sits down on her towel, and Dom sits next to her, still staring. “It’s not a secret, I just… haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Having a greenhouse isn’t the same thing as having a house that teleports,” Dom points out. “Like, I’m pretty sure lots of annoying rich people do backyard greenhouses.”

Margo snorts. “Beck’s not an annoying rich person. And the greenhouse-”

“I’ll show you after we all grab dinner tonight,” Beck says. “Margo’s paying.”

Margo nods easily, like xe expected it. Xe was probably going to suggest the same thing anyways. “I want to see the house. Gotta make sure you’re not living in a hovel.”

“Am I a hovel kind of person?”

“No,” Margo says, but behind xir eyes she can see xem cut a glance over at Dom. “It’s just… on principle.”

“Right,” Beck says. “Well, we can do a greenhouse trip tonight after you guys check for hovel status, sound good?”

“I’ve been to greenhouses before,” Dom says. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

Nic grins. “You’ll get it later,” he promises. “Trust me.”

This is a story about a greenhouse.

It was built by two lovers who wanted something to call their own. When they were finished they discovered that the greenhouse was infinite, dozens of times larger than what they had built. They took full advantage of this, of course. They planted their favorite things closest to the door to their house, but they filled the greenhouse as far as they could. Flowers and ivy and succulents. Fruit trees, apples and cherries.

The lovers protected the greenhouse zealously. Children were allowed inside, because they deserved to see a piece of the magic, but they were afraid of what the neighbors would do. They allowed themselves to be called finicky and odd, and they didn’t mind, because they were finicky and odd. They allowed themselves to become babysitters, to become a staple of the community, to become part of everything.

One of the lovers died, eventually, and left the other widowed. The widow was afraid that the greenhouse would become only a greenhouse again. That some of the elastic space and the sense of wonder would vanish. It never did. At first, she resented that. This was never meant to be hers, it was supposed to be theirs, and there wasn’t a them anymore.

But whether she wanted it or not, the greenhouse belonged to her.

One day she tried to share it, with some of the only friends she had left. They were amazed, and afraid, and the widow did not want this to be a fearful place. They understood. They did not come back. Before long, it was gone, and the widow and the house along with it.

And so the greenhouse was the widow’s once again, following her as she journeyed from widow back to woman. The greenhouse carried her, gently, just as the woman-widow was gentle with it. The greenhouse took her to cities and seascapes and everywhere it could think of that might help her.

It was hers. Over time, she came to love it for that.

Dinner is at a Mexican restaurant where Margo orders for all of them, because none of the servers speak any English. Beck spends most of the time catching up with them, and Dom doesn’t seem to mind being on the outside of the conversation. “I’m just happy to see you happy,” he says, which is ridiculous.

She is happy, though. Funnily enough, she’s very happy.

They get dessert and bring it back to Beck’s house. And then Margo says, “I’m filming this next part.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Dom says suspiciously.

“Obviously,” Beck says, and Nic grins. “And I’m about to tell you, so get ready.”

When she opens the door to the greenhouse, Dom is the first inside, Margo following close behind with xir phone camera pointed at his face. Nic trails in, and Beck closes the door behind her. “Well?”

It still takes her breath away. It was supposed to be a few dozen square feet, enough to keep plants alive out of season. But it’s infinite. Her door is the one constant point in the sea of plants, flowers and trees and trellises, bushes and rosebeds, things that Beck remembers planting, things she knows for a fact she didn’t. Maybe, somewhere, it stretches all the way to Utah.

“Huh,” Dom says. Nic starts cackling. “This is… not what I expected.”

“It’s something,” Margo agrees. “When Beck showed us, Nic and I thought we were just high or something.”

“How big is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Beck admits. “I’ve tried to go as deep as I can, but I don’t like getting too far from the door. But a lot of this is-” Ours, she does not say. “Mine. Do you want the grand tour?”

Dom looks at her. She wonders if he understands exactly what this means. He has to; she’s mentioned Cali and the greenhouse in the same breath before. Grief is the same, across stories and across lives, and inviting somebody to share in it is just as intimate.

“Yeah,” he says. His eyes are soft. “Show me around, c’mon.”

Nic and Margo stay as late as they can, but there comes a point where Beck’s not sure how much longer the house will be in Texas. She insists that they take all the leftovers, and the leftover dessert, and some flowers from the greenhouse for good measure.

When Nic hugs her goodbye, he whispers, “The place looks good.” She’s not sure if he means that it looks better than the last time she visited, when she was caught in the throes of grief and hopelessness, or if he just means that it’s good in general. She hugs him back and holds on tight.

When Margo hugs her goodbye, xe says, “Don’t be a stranger.” Xe means it as a plea, and she understands: she went missing without a goodbye, and even before that she drew into herself so far that nobody could follow her. But she missed xem.

“I’ll call you,” she says. “Tomorrow, or the day after, or something.”

“You’d better,” Margo mumbles. “And if you don’t, I’ll call you.”

“I’ll call,” Beck promises again. It’s a promise she’s made before. This time it’s a promise she plans on keeping.

So that night she lets both of them trap her in the middle of a hug. That night, she thinks that she is glad that she has people who knew her before. That night, she’s glad that for this shining moment, she feels like she has reached after.

Dom goes into the greenhouse a grand total of six times.

There’s the first time, obviously, and the next four are unimportant. Beck normally wants to be alone, but on the days she doesn’t, she invites him in. Dom normally doesn’t want to be alone, so he accepts most of those days. He’s terrible with plants, not that Beck would ever tell him that. He’s trying so hard, and if nothing else he helps carry equipment around for labor-intensive things.

On the sixth visit, Dom says, “Do you ever explore?”

“Some days,” Beck says. “I don’t normally like going too far from where I can see the door, but sometimes I like to try and find plants I don’t recognize.”

“Do you take care of those ones?”

“I used to, because I didn’t think that anyone else would. But I don’t anymore.”

“What changed?”

Beck pauses. She used to try to take care of all of the plants, when she felt daring enough to find them. But something about meeting Eugenia changed that. Maybe she’s not sure that the greenhouse is entirely hers. Maybe she’s not sure it matters if it is.

“I think I did,” she answers. “You wanna go for a walk?”

Dom picks a direction at random, and they start walking. He asks about every single thing he sees, and Beck answers questions as best as she can: zinnias, tulips, pear trees. But they start getting further and further from the door, and Beck has fewer and fewer answers.

At one point she glances behind her and stumbles. She can’t see the door. “Dom-”

“We’ve been walking in a straight line for fifteen minutes,” Dom says, calm as can be. “All we have to do is walk back. Once we see the pear trees I’ll know we’re getting closer.”

She lets out a breath. “You’re good at this.”

“You don’t have siblings, do you?”

“No, why?”

Dom smiles and doesn’t answer. She doesn’t ask again.

It takes her a while, actually, to realize that they’re getting into the desert plants. She’s only been out here once before, and she’s pretty sure that she took a different path. But Beck starts craning her neck anyways, looking for a flash of red hair.

Dom notices immediately. “What are you looking for.”

“Uh,” Beck says. How can she explain this? “You know how the greenhouse is… impossible?”

“I noticed,” he says dryly.

Beck smiles faintly, still looking around the shrubs. “Well, lately I’ve been running into someone here.”

“There’s another person in your greenhouse?”

“You’re in my greenhouse, actually,” a voice says from behind. Dom whips around, startled, but Beck is a little slower to turn. Eugenia relaxes visibly as soon as she sees Beck’s face. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Beck says. “Uh. Four?”

“Four what?”

Right. “This is the fourth time I’ve met you. We’ve been keeping track so it’s easier to line up.”

Eugenia’s eyebrows furrow as she works through that. After a second she says, “Two.”

“Two?” Dom repeats. “You guys are time traveling?”

“Only in the greenhouse, and only with each other,” Beck answers. She’s been trying to keep track of the plants and how they change, and she doesn’t think the greenhouse itself is going through time. Maybe it’s just them. “Eugenia, this is Dominic. He’s my roommate right now. Dom, this is Eugenia, she works here.”

“In this greenhouse,” Dom says. “Which is not your greenhouse.”

“Right.”

Eugenia cocks her head. “Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Huh,” she says. “You just have one of those faces, I guess.”

“Is your greenhouse always like this?” Dom asks, fascinated. “I know Beck’s is always infinite, but does this happen to you every day?”

It’s a good question, one Beck can’t believe she never thought to ask. Eugenia just shakes her head. “The only other time this happened was when Beck was there.”

Beck frowns, thinking through that. “You think it’s because of me?”

“I don’t think it’s anything,” Eugenia says truthfully. “I think there’s something going on that we can’t control. And I think if you’re loitering in my greenhouse I’m going to put you to work.”

“Can she do that?” Dom mumbles.

Beck elbows him. “We’re just passing through,” she says apologetically. “We should really get back. But it was good seeing you.”

“Is there a lot to explore?” Eugenia says suddenly. There’s a light behind her eyes that Beck hasn’t seen before, one that catches her attention. “It- he said infinite, is it really infinite?”

“I don’t think anything’s infinite, but I haven’t found edges to it yet.”

“Would I get lost?”

“Not if you’re careful.”

Eugenia nods. Her hands are twitching by her sides. “Do you think I could look around?”

“I don’t see why not,” Beck says, but Eugenia bites her lip, and then Beck understands. Last time they split up and Eugenia never came back. It’d probably happen again if they split up now. “Do you want to walk with us for a while?”

“Yes,” Eugenia says, almost before Beck is finished asking. She doesn’t look embarrassed or standoffish at all; there’s almost a glow to her, an eagerness that makes Beck think of Cali, of herself. “Please.”

Dom seems to have an unerring sense of direction. He leads them in a loop, through the desert plants and into a more humid section, then coastal plants. He spends the whole time asking about every single flower, and between Beck and Eugenia they know most of them. Eugenia’s smart, it turns out, and can tell Dom about the best conditions to grow certain fruits, certain flowers, certain trees.

Beck’s almost disappointed when she realizes they’re at the pear trees, not far from when they started. Eugenia goes over to inspect the pears, and to take a couple — she’s been picking whatever fruit they find, and Beck wonders if she should do the same sometime. She only ever liked the apples and cherries because she grew them herself, but there’s no reason not to try other things while they’re here.

She bumps her shoulder into Dom’s. “Hey.”

“You doing okay?” Dom asks immediately. “We can head back.”

“No, I actually wanted to ask if we could keep going.”

Dom’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really.”

“We’re having fun,” Beck says defensively. “I’m having fun. And it’s nice, and-”

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Dom says. She gets the feeling that he’s laughing at her. “We can keep going. But if you need to stop-”

“I can tell you.”

“We need a signal.”

“A signal?”

Dom taps the side of his nose with two fingers twice. “That’s our signal.”

“You’re being weird,” Beck says fondly. “Find somewhere else for us to go.”

It takes hours for them to circle back to the pear trees again. By the end of it Beck is sweaty and grinning. But so is Eugenia, and so is Dom. They’ve all seen things they couldn’t recognize. Eugenia takes hundreds of pictures, things to look up later.

“Will I see you again?” Eugenia asks Beck. She looks nervous, almost.

“Yes,” Beck says decisively, and Eugenia sighs in relief. “I’ve already met you for your third time.”

“Time travel,” Eugenia mumbles. “It’s impossible to keep straight.”

Beck smiles and thinks about the last time she was in the desert plants. About Eugenia kneeling in the dirt, reassuring her. “It’s not as big of a deal as you think it is,” she says. “Promise.”

The nightclub feels like pounding.

That’s not just the music, but the music must be why. There’s rhythm pounding all around, a crush of bodies pounding into Beck, with feet all pounding rhythms on the floor. It feels incessant, breathless, brand new chaos that she didn’t miss, exactly. She prefers the chaos of a bowling alley, game night, not a nightclub.

Dom has vanished now, drawn in by all the endless motion of the crowd, and Beck is by herself. She’s dancing, but she doesn’t feel like she’s been moving on her own. She’s floating far above the floor now, even as she’s standing in the nightclub.

There’s a rhythm to it, though, and she can feel enough to join the motion. Beck is moving through the crowd, her feet are pounding on the floor, and she can’t feel it but she hears the sound.

She hasn’t danced like this since Cali died. She didn’t dance like this with Cali, either.

“Hi,” a voice says, low and close behind her. When she turns, she sees a short-haired woman, smiling broadly at her. “You look like you need a partner.”

“I would love one,” Beck says, even though she’s not quite sure she would. “I’m Beck.”

“I’m Hahn.” She holds her left hand out, and Beck can see a wedding ring, and not a shining new one either. “Do you want to have some fun?”

“I do,” she breathes, and so Hahn grabs her hand.

Now Beck, she never liked to go to clubs. But Margo did, and so she’s been to more than her fair share of clubs in Boston. Beck’s not sure quite where she is tonight, and for a moment she still feels like she’s above the floor, just watching Hahn’s hand wrap around her own. But then she feels the warmth, the pressure of Hahn’s fingers. When she blinks, her feet are on the ground again.

“You with me?” Hahn says, eyes still locked on Beck. She waits for Beck to nod, then gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “You looked a little out of it.”

“I was,” Beck answers, more of an admission than intended. “This is… not my scene.”

“I know,” Hahn answers dryly. She’s still swaying gently, not quite with the rhythm of the beat. It feels like they’ve been separated from the other dancers, in the crowd but not a part of it. “I make a point of finding people who could use a partner.”

“Don’t you have a partner?”

“No,” she says, and when she holds her hand up to the light, the ring is just a touch too dull to glint. “I love her, very much, but this is also not her scene. And I’m just here to have some fun.”

The music is hypnotic. Beck did not decide to sway in place, but now she is. Her hips are moving to the sound of boots and feet and laughter and the overwhelming noise.

The world begins to fade to static fuzz. “Dance with me,” Hahn says, and so Beck does.

They’re only on the floor for minutes, pressed together in the dark. It’s nice, and new, to have Hahn’s hands on her, to feel at home in place with all the noise. She feels alive, electric in a way she hasn’t felt in years. She feels- she feels—

“Beck,” Dom says, clear like a bell. “We have to go, now.”

“I’m in the middle of a dance-”

“Beck,” Dom says again. This time he puts a hand on her shoulder, and she almost gasps to feel it. It’s like cold water. It’s like waking up from a dream. “It’s almost one in the morning, we need to get back to the house.”

“What?” Beck says, a little more sharply than she intended. She’s lost her rhythm now, standing stock-still in the middle of the dance floor. She turns to face Dom fully. “But we- didn’t we just get here?”

“It’s been a couple hours,” Dom says. He looks concerned now, looking her up and down. “Are you okay? You seem… spacey.”

“I was-” Beck swallows. When she turns around, Hahn’s already gone. “This place is weird.”

“You can say that again,” Dom mutters. “You’re a magnet for weird scenes, Whitney.”

“More fun that way?” Beck says, aiming for levity. She’s ready to leave, but when she turns it feels like she’s slipping out of her body again, and she thinks of the dance floor and of solidness, of the rhythm being the only thing that’s real.

She thinks she sees a flash of Hahn’s dark hair, of neon bracelets moving through the crowd. She wants to say goodbye, to dive back in, to feel the crush of bodies all around.

Dom’s hand squeezes her shoulder. “We have to go,” he says, very gently.

Beck forces herself to lift a hand and grab Dom’s wrist. “Can you keep talking to me?” she says, a little hoarse. “I keep… losing myself.”

“Of course,” Dom says. “Let’s get out of here, come on.”

She still gets lost inside her head, a time or two. She can’t keep track of why she slips back out of touch. She thinks she hears the music from the club, the rhythm pulsing somewhere in her mind, a steady drumbeat moving through her head and maybe she should go back in —

And then Dom will make a joke that pulls her back, into the harsh chill and the ache in her feet and the sound of his voice. And then she feels solid again, for just a little longer.

“I think Dom’s going to leave soon,” Beck says.

She’s on her tiptoes, looking at the sweet peas. She planted them maybe a week before the travelling started, and they’re already climbing their way up the trellis. They’ll be taller than Beck soon. The flowers are all lovely pastels, sweet colors that make her think of Cali.

“Which is fine, if he does.” She pauses, runs her fingers down the trellis. “I mean, I think it is, right? He was never going to stay forever. Most people want something stable.”

Beck used to want stable. Beck wanted a picket fence and Cali, stable as stable gets. And then it all got ripped out from under her. It still feels like a nightmare, some days. She feels like she should wake up and Cali will be next to her, and she has to remember all over again that it’s been a year now.

She’s getting better at the little things, though. She’s not buying Cali’s favorite foods anymore. She’s been keeping the air conditioning on and keeping it colder, just a little. She’s getting out of bed every day now, something that was impossible half a year ago. She’s getting better.

It’s funny how moving on feels like a failure.

It’s not, of course. Beck knows that. But it feels like a betrayal of Cali to want something new and different, something without her there. To dream of life after her wife. To think about a new future. It feels wrong. It feels like she shouldn’t want it.

But at least she wants something. Cali would want Beck to want things again.

“I’m scared that I won’t be able to bring myself back,” she says conversationally. She’s not pruning anything, not gardening, just looking at the flowers on the trellis. “When things happen, like the nightclub or like Tokyo, I’m worried about what it’ll be when it’s just me. But there have been more good days than bad, lately. Is that a good thing?”

There’s no answer. Beck sighs. She knows what Cali’s answer would be anyways. It’s a stupid question.

“I’m going to miss him,” she admits. “I’m going to miss him so much. But I can call him. I can talk to him, just like I talk to you.”

She tangles her fingers around the stem of one of the sweet peas, gentle, cautious. “And he’ll talk back,” she murmurs. “And it’ll be okay.”

As soon as Beck is in the greenhouse, Eugenia’s voice comes sailing through the trees. “Four times?”

“Number five,” Beck calls back. “Almost synced up.”

“Maybe one day,” Eugenia says, although she doesn’t sound terribly hopeful. Beck rounds a corner and finds her bent over some daffodils. She straightens up when she sees Beck, offering a smile. “How’s Dom?”

“Good,” Beck says. He’s going to leave, but she doesn’t know how much that matters. After all, from where she’s standing, Eugenia has already met her for a fifth time. “How’s… do you have roommates?”

“Not right now.”

“I should know more about you.”

“Do you want to?” Eugenia says, and there is something cautious to it, something hopeful.

When Beck was very young, she went to a state fair and got her hand dipped in wax. She still has the mold somewhere, one of those childhood relics that she never quite managed to part with. She remembers dipping her hand in with tiny fingers splayed wide, because she was afraid she would crack the shell if she did anything else. She remembers thinking that if she moved wrong, thought wrong, breathed wrong, she would ruin everything.

It’s how she feels now, looking at Eugenia. She is afraid to speak. She is afraid to be open. One wrong move, she thinks, and the wax breaks.

“Yes, I want to,” Beck says. It feels exhilarating to say out loud. “And I’ll answer questions for you too.”

They find an almond tree together, something that neither of them recognize. Neutral ground, Beck thinks. They sit on the ground, cross-legged. Beck says, “What do you want to tell me?”

Eugenia smiles. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can I ask you questions too?”

“I think that’s only fair.” Beck takes a breath. “So what do you do for a living?”

Eugenia has a bachelor’s in psychology, and it took her six years to get. She started working at a florist’s shop to pay her way through college, and she kept the job. She’s been at the greenhouse for about two years now, and she loves it. She hasn’t met anybody other than Beck through magical means.

Beck got her masters in creative writing. She wanted to write nonfiction, tell stories about people, find some kind of a niche. She never quite managed that, so now she does copyediting. It’s not what she wanted, but it keeps her afloat, and more importantly it’s easy to do from home.

Eugenia is afraid of dogs, or at least big dogs. She can’t cook, but she can bake. She prefers skirts to pants, but she doesn’t like wearing skirts at work. She doesn’t watch a lot of TV, but she listens to Broadway soundtracks. She’s lactose intolerant, and she prefers almond milk.

Beck watches too much reality TV. She reads a lot of Stephen King, even though she doesn’t like most of it. She snorts when she laughs. She’s not afraid of birds, but she doesn’t like being around them. She got a watch as a graduation gift from Margo, the most expensive thing she owns, and she refuses to wear it.

Eugenia’s favorite color is yellow, but pastel, not mustard. Her childhood best friend is named Iggy. Her first pet was a hamster, and she cried so hard when he died that she hasn’t had any pets since then. Her first girlfriend was named Percy, and they broke up spectacularly, and Eugenia still misses her.

“Have you ever been in love?” Eugenia says. Beck nods before she can even think about it, reaching up to the chain around her neck. Eugenia’s eyes follow the motion, and Beck can see the exact moment she realizes what it is. “Oh. Oh, wow.”

“We were married for three years,” Beck says. “It’s been just me for about a year and a half.”

“Can you tell me about her?”

Beck swallows. “She was my favorite person in the world. We built the greenhouse together.”

“You built it?”

“In our backyard.”

“So that door-”

“Is my house.”

“Where do you live?”

“It used to be Boston.” She pauses. “The house has been kind of… moving, actually. It’s how I met Dom. It teleports.”

Eugenia shakes her head, looking amazed. “Magic greenhouse, magic house,” she murmurs. “Beck, the magician.”

“Beck Whitney.”

“Whitney?”

Beck nods. There’s something intimate about this: the choice to share something as simple as her full name.

Eugenia smiles and holds out a hand to shake. “Eugenia Bickle. Pleased to meet you.”

Beck takes her hand to shake, and lets her hand linger, gently. “I’ve enjoyed this,” she says. “A lot.”

“We can keep talking,” Eugenia says. “About— about her, or not. Whatever you want to tell me, I’m happy to listen.”

Beck doesn’t know what time it is. She doesn’t know if Dom’s looking for her. She’s not even sure he’d be able to find her if he came looking. She should get back. She should.

“I’d like that,” she says. When Eugenia smiles at her, it feels like sunlight.

This is a story about a greenhouse. It is also a story about Caligula Lotus.

Caligula was a quiet person, but that did not mean she was gentle. She was exuberant and athletic. She enjoyed sunny days and stargazing and everything the world had to offer her. She wanted to see all of it. She always wanted to travel.

It was not love at first sight when Caligula met Beck Whitney. They were similar in the wrong ways: too determined, too headstrong, too kind in ways that did not accommodate one another. But they untangled themselves, piece by piece, until they could see each other and understand. It was love at first effort, perhaps: as soon as they tried, they knew.

They got married, eventually. Bought a house and moved into the not-quite-suburbs of Boston. The greenhouse was Caligula’s idea, but Beck dreamed it, designed it, saved up for the equipment. It was theirs, but it was Beck’s first, and Caligula never had the heart to tell her.

When Caligula died, it was quick. Not painless, exactly, but quick. She doesn’t like to think about that much. But she does still think about it, from time to time. There’s not much else to think about.

Caligula is not alive, exactly. Caligula is not dead, exactly. Caligula is not exactly a greenhouse, and Caligula does not exactly think. But the greenhouse is Caligula, and every so often the greenhouse has thoughts on her behalf. And, on the most special of occasions, the greenhouse is able to act. It acted on a day where Beck was alone, and the only thing Caligula could think was that Beck needed to go somewhere new. It acted on a day where Caligula thought that Beck needed a friend who could understand her.

One day, Caligula thought that Beck needed somebody new to love. And slow but sure, the greenhouse reached through time and space and cosmic fog, all the way to Eugenia Bickle.

Dom’s been looking at apartments.

He doesn’t know that Beck saw. He slams her laptop shut every time she gets too close. But she knows. She pays attention. And this was bound to happen, really. This day was always going to come, and pretending that it’s not here is a disservice to them both.

So she sits down one day in the armchair across from him. Normally she’d go into the greenhouse, but today this is what she needs. What they need.

Dom lifts his eyebrows. “Hello, Rebecca,” he says.

Beck frowns automatically. “It’s just Beck.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really, did you seriously think my name was Rebecca this whole time?”

“Why wouldn’t it be short for something?”

“Why would it be-” Beck shakes her head. “You’re distracting me.”

“From what?”

“I’m helping you look for apartments.”

For a second, Dom’s face shutters. She can see him closing off, like he’s not ready to talk about this. She thinks, maybe, she overstepped.

But then he sighs, and all the fight goes out of him. “I had a speech for this, you know.”

“A speech or a note in your phone with things you wanted to say?”

He waves a hand. “Tomayto, tomahto. I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”

“Well, consider it figured. Are you looking in New York?”

“No, I…” he pauses, bites his lip. “I called Lenny.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah. I haven’t talked to her since…” He trails off, and she understands what he means: since Randy’s funeral. She’s still not sure how long it’s been. He doesn’t talk about it. But then, she hasn’t really talked about Cali either.

Beck just nods. “Where does she live?”

“Seattle, apparently.”

“So we’re looking in Seattle?”

“No, she says being in the same city is too close.”

“But you don’t want to go to New York?”

Dom laughs wetly. “Hell if I know. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived.”

She leans back, thinking. They’ve been to countless cities together: Provo and Galveston, Nashville and Chicago, Omaha and Los Angeles. She’s seen Dom in all of them, day after day, trying to find something he liked.

“Portland,” she says at last. He looks at her quizzically, and she clarifies, “It’s driving distance from Seattle. Still a major city. Driving distance from beaches. Lots of things to do. You can figure something out there.”

Dom stares at her. “How did you do that?”

“I pay attention,” Beck says primly, and he finally cracks a smile. “I’m not mad at you.”

“You sure?”

“Dom, as soon as I invited you to live here you told me you were going to leave one day. I always knew it was going to happen.”

“I don’t have to go.”

I want you to stay, she does not say. I want you to be here with me, she does not say. I could lie to you and stop you from leaving, she does not say.

Instead, Beck says, “I’m not going to keep you. And even though I’ll miss you, it’ll be okay, because you’re going to call me every day.”

Dom grins. “Am I now?”

“Yes,” Beck says, in a tone that brooks no room for argument. “And twice on special occasions.”

“What’s a special occasion?”

“Whatever we decide it is.”

“Not-Rebecca Whitney.” Dom reaches out with both hands, and Beck reaches out to take his hands. “Every day’s a special occasion when you’re there.”

“Dominic Marijuana,” Beck says. “Will you please, for the love of god, shut up?”

He skates a thumb across the back of her hand. “Whatever you want,” he says, and Beck smiles at him.

Dominic Marijuana moves to Portland eight days later. Beck helps him move out, and move in. There’s a young woman there who doesn’t introduce herself to Beck. She has a mullet, and a dozen piercings, and she hugs Dom fiercely when she sees him. Beck worries, of course she does, but she worries a little less after that.

He calls Beck that night. “I can’t believe the view out my window is going to be the same when I wake up tomorrow,” he says. “What do you think that’s going to be like?”

“Boring,” she says, and she doesn’t mean it, not one bit.

Miami’s loud. Beck thinks she would’ve hated it if she were here two months ago, but she kind of likes it, here and now. It’s colorful and chaotic and she understands how to navigate it. The house has been here a couple times before, and she’s getting better at it. She’s getting used to it.

This time, though, this isn’t a tourism trip. It’s a grocery trip. By agreement, Dom did basically all of the shopping, and while Beck tagged along sometimes she’s still no expert. So this is her first solo trip in a long time.

It’s strange, she thinks idly as she pushes her cart through the store, that she wasn’t expecting this to be such an adjustment. FIguring out life-after-Cali felt like an inevitable calamity from day one, completely insurmountable. Like she’d never be able to find a new normal. This is a different magnitude of loss, a different feeling, but it still feels like a loss. Life-after-Dominic is hard too. Who knew.

She spends a lot of the trip texting him. Even though most of the questions are inane - she can’t for the life of her remember the brand of peanut butter that he always got - she ends up wrapped up in the conversation. So wrapped up, in fact, that she completely doesn’t notice that there’s someone crossing in front of the aisle she’s leaving until she slams her cart into theirs.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Beck says on instinct. She turns to the person she just hit. “I didn’t mean to- Wyatt?”

“Beck,” says Wyatt Owens, looking pleased. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Beck says slowly. She doesn’t fully remember where she was when she met him for the first time, but she’s pretty sure it wasn’t Miami. That’s not necessarily strange, though, people move all the time. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You too,” Wyatt answers. “I was wondering when I’d run into you.”

“You were?”

“I had a feeling.”

That is, Beck supposes, not any stranger than anything else she’s encountered in the last couple months. “Here I am,” she says.

“Here you are,” Wyatt agrees. “You look well.”

“I’m doing well,” Beck says, and then frowns in surprise. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“I think I’m actually doing well.”

“Congratulations,” Wyatt says sincerely. “I knew you would be.”

“You did?”

“Of course I did.”

“I didn’t,” Beck says. She feels small.

Wyatt just smiles. “Of course you didn’t. It’s easier to see from the outside.”

“What do you see?” Beck asks, curious despite herself.

Wyatt’s smile widens. His hands shift on the handle of his cart. There are spots of paint on his fingers, almost exactly where Beck remembers them being. His glasses have a thumbprint on the left lens, just like they did before. She even thinks she recognizes the things in his cart.

“Like I said,” Wyatt says. “You look well.”

Beck just nods. She doesn’t know what else there is to do, to say.

“I’ll let you finish up,” Wyatt says. “Unless you need the company?”

“No, I think I’m good this time.”

Wyatt nods and waves and goes on his way. Beck watches as he leaves. Her phone buzzes, probably Dom again.

She lets out a breath. There are things outside this grocery store. There are things after this.

The air in Boston smells different.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe this is like a compass pointing north. Maybe it’s like holding hands with someone new and feeling their palm slot into place. Maybe there’s something beyond the physical, beyond what Beck can sense. All she knows is that she opens her eyes and she is in Boston.

There’s something else, too, something that she doesn’t bother thinking too much about as she putters around the kitchen. She texts Dom to let him know that she’s in Boston, something she only really does because of time zones. He sends back a string of emojis that she barely even looks at, but it’s enough to make her smile. She also texts Nic and Margo, who insist on coming over for dinner. She’s looking forward to it.

She makes herself coffee in her favorite mug, a heavy black thing with roses etched along the handle and the base. And after only a moment’s hesitation, she grabs a second mug, this one dark green. Someone got it for Cali as a gift and she’d hated it, but Beck had liked it. So she uses it now, pours a second cup, adds almond milk, waits, and breathes, and hopes, and hopes, and hopes.

When she pushes the door to the greenhouse open, she calls out, “Number six?”

“Number six,” Eugenia calls back, and Beck sighs in relief. “By the mums.”

Beck makes her way to the chrysanthemums, mugs in hand. “We finally lined up.”

“Six is the magic number,” Eugenia answers. She looks down at Beck’s mugs, then back at her quizzically. “How did you-”

“Had a feeling.” Beck hands her the green mug. “Almond milk. I forgot sugar, though.”

Eugenia takes a sip. “It’s perfect,” she says, and Beck thinks of wax hands, of moving too fast, of being a child and being afraid of doing the wrong thing, of how it worked. It will work. “So what’s going on? Is Dom here?”

“He moved out, actually. Said it was time to move on.”

“Oh, Beck, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s good,” Beck says, and she’s surprised by how much she means it. She’s been telling herself that over and over since he was gone, but now she understands it. Looking at Eugenia, she understands. “This is good for him. He’s doing better, and he calls every day. He asks about you.”

Eugenia smiles, looking pleased. “He should.”

“He should,” Beck agrees. “We’re trying to figure out if it’s possible for him to visit, considering… everything.”

“If anyone could find a way,” Eugenia murmurs, and takes another sip of her coffee.

She smiles. “Didn’t know you had that much faith in Dom.”

Eugenia’s eyes meet Beck’s over the top of their coffee mugs. “Not him,” she says quietly.

Beck breathes in and she feels, all at once, the flood. There is love inside her and it will always belong to Cali, but she understands now that it isn’t Cali’s alone. She loves Nic and Margarito, Dominic and beaches. She loves coffee, and rooftops, and the feeling of dirt underneath her boots. She loves the greenhouse.

She loves Eugenia, new and sharp and sweet. The color of it is different, but the shape is the same.

Eugenia is still looking at her. There will be time, Beck thinks, to talk about futures and feelings. There will be time for Beck to kiss Eugenia, for Eugenia to braid Beck’s hair. There will be time for something next, and Beck wants to know what it is. She wants to know so badly.

Next starts with a first step. Next starts with something simple.

Beck says, “Do you want to come inside?”

This is a story about a greenhouse. It might be a woman. It might be magical. It is, above all other things, a greenhouse.

There are two women inside, looking at chrysanthemums and drinking coffee. Later, Beck will admit that she hates almond milk but she remembered that Eugenia prefers it, so she’s been buying it just in case. Later, Eugenia will tell Beck about her best friends, and how she gets to say “I told you so” a thousand times. Later, Dom will call, and he’ll laugh at both of them, and they’ll laugh right back.

And later, there will be conversations about the mundane things. Do you shower in the morning or the evening? Do you use coasters on your tables? What are you allergic to? Is this okay? Is there somebody you need to call to tell them what’s happening? Would they believe it? Can you believe it? Can you believe this?

And later still, the greenhouse will move and the house will move with it, time and again. There will be arguments and reunions and parties and tears. They will be together for all of it.

This is a story about a greenhouse. But really, it’s a story about love. They’re the same thing, if you look close enough.

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