Page 70

When she got to the garden, she raced over to their plot to see what had changed in the past few days.

“Oh my God!” She let out a squeal as she looked at the jalapeño plant at the corner of their plot. They’d planted that pepper seedling together, and had nurtured it for weeks now. On Wednesday there had been a bunch of flowers on it, but suddenly, there were actual, tiny little peppers.

“What are we yelling about?” Beth said as she approached the plot. “Was that a good yell or a bad one, so I can prepare myself?”

“A good one, a good one!” Avery pointed to the pepper plant. “I just got here, but look! Look at all of these baby jalapeños!”

Beth came closer.

“Oh my God!” Beth yelled. Avery grinned at her, and Beth had a huge, equally dorky smile on her face that Avery could feel on her own.

“I know, right?” Avery looked back at the plant. “And there are so many of them!”

The older woman who had a plot a few rows away came over to them, probably confused by the yelling.

“Sorry,” Avery said. “We were just excited. By, um, the baby peppers.”

She looked at their peppers and smiled.

“Your first year?” she asked, and they both nodded. Her smile got bigger.

“Us old-timers get excited, too, about our first little baby vegetables. It’s a pity we started playing it cool at some point and don’t yell about it anymore. Keep yelling.”

She smiled at them again and walked back over to her plot. Avery and Beth looked at each other.

“Do you also feel like we got visited by the gardening fairy godmother?” Beth whispered to Avery.

Avery nodded.

“One hundred percent. I’ve always wanted to be visited by a fairy godmother. Who knew I just had to start gardening for it to happen?”

They grinned at each other, and then began their weeding from opposite corners of the plot. It was hard, hot work, and Averydistracted herself by thinking about Friday night and how excellent it had been. Excellent, unexpected, fun, and, surprisingly, very sweet. She’d expected Taylor to be good in bed, but she hadn’t anticipated that she would be so kind and thoughtful. When she’d said that thing about how inexperienced she was compared to Taylor, she really liked that Taylor didn’t deny it, or brush off her worries, but acknowledged them and made her feel better. After they’d moved to the bedroom, she’d been very nervous, which she was sure Taylor knew, and Taylor had managed to give her direction without making her feel bad or inept. And she’d been very complimentary afterward.

“Okay,” Beth said in her ear, making her jump. “That’s the third little chuckle you’ve let out in the last twenty minutes, and I know it wasn’t the little jalapeños this time, or the little radishes or the enormous fucking zucchini. What’s got you in such a good mood?”

Bethwould be the perfect person to talk to about Taylor. She’d already told her about the flirting lessons; she would probably love to hear about what happened at the midterm.

Wait no, she barely knew Beth. She couldn’t tell her about this.

“Enormous zucchini?” Avery asked to buy some time. “Where? I haven’t gotten there yet.”

Beth grabbed her arm and pulled her over to their zucchini plant.

“You can’t see it at first, look under the leaves,” she said. “I was going to pick it, but I left it for you to see first.”

Avery pulled up a few leaves.

“That’s…the biggest…zucchini I’ve ever seen!” she said between gulps of laughter.

“I could say something very dirty about that vegetable right now, but I’m not going to do it,” Beth said. “See how I’m restrainingmyself from saying that it would be just an incredible dildo? Shit, I said it, didn’t I?”

Avery giggled and nodded.

“You sure did.”

Beth reached for the zucchini and snapped it off the plant so quickly that Avery gasped, then giggled again.

“Wow, I am really acting like a teenager today, aren’t I?” Avery said. “I swear, I’m not usually like this. Um, did you know that zucchini—and all squash, actually—are fruits, not vegetables?”