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“Colleagues.”

When I say the word to Jess, she looks almost amused.

“Colleagues?” she repeats.

“Colleagues,” I confirm, as in, I think we should be just.

The word sounded more convincing coming from Celia’s mouth. Jess catches the dissonance, too, and grins a cocky smile from ear to ear. It’s a smile that feels like a secret, or a plan—like the wolf pretending to be friends with Little Red Riding Hood. It sends my heart through my stomach. If anyone recognizes a smile like that, it’s me.

“Colleagues,” Jess repeats for the fourth time, and this time it’s almost taunting, like she knows it’s not what I want. “Okay. Let’s be colleagues.”

So we’re colleagues for a few days. We might as well wear power suits, ties with Windsor knots, make small talk by the water cooler. I say things like, Boy, it’s hot today and Wow, that’s a big bouquet order. I keep a list of things that colleagues wouldn’t notice: how Jess’s arm muscles flex when she moves a heavy bird-of-paradise that isn’t getting enough sunlight. The length of her legs when she reaches on tiptoe to pull down a bag of soil for a customer. That smile she occasionally flashes in my direction when she catches me staring. This whole time: colleagues, colleagues, colleagues.

And even though Celia’s right—at least I think she’s right—I start to feel a little resentful of her. Why am I listening to her? Why am I letting her make my decisions for me? Why is she telling me not to follow my heart? It’s true, I can be reckless, I can rush, I can get hurt—but why am I ignoring this feeling in my body, this feeling like a curled new leaf, ready to spring open? Why would she tell me to do so?

And then, in the middle of the week, the day before Into the Woods starts, a million bouquets to build, a customer approaches the checkout holding the terrarium that Celia loves.

“This is beautiful,” I say, as if I’m seeing it for the first time. I lay my hand on the glass roof and can practically feel Celia’s love for it, as though it’s a drink she spilled all over the roof.

“It’s for my daughter,” the man says.

I nod and begin to ring him up. Am I really going to sell the thing that Celia loves? If the roles were reversed, she wouldn’t let the terrarium go. She would make up an elaborate excuse about how it wasn’t actually for sale, move it to the side, persuade him to buy a different thing.

I look across the store at Jess, my colleague. Why am I always listening to Celia?

“That’s sixty-five even,” I say, and swipe the man’s credit card with a twinge of guilt.

I watch him go. I’m slightly horrified at how easy it is, to sell the thing my friend loves. Celia is a much better friend than I am, no doubt about that. Though lately I’ve been wondering if there’s such a thing as too good a friend. Or if maybe there’s another reason Celia told me not to share the poem. If Celia’s kindness isn’t just about friendship, but something more, something I can’t give her.

Jess is rummaging around in the freezer behind me.

“How are we on orchids?” she asks.

Selling the terrarium was easy. You know what else is easy?

Rushing.

“I wrote a poem about you,” I say.

“Of course you did,” says Jess, into the freezer.

Then she turns and does a strange thing. With two fingers and her thumb, she plucks at my chain, a liquid gold thing I always wear, sleep in, shower in, swim in. No one has ever touched my chain this way. I feel like an instrument, and she is the only one who knows how to play.

Later, when darkness falls, when we are exhausted from kissing, rushed, intense kisses in Jess’s bedroom while her mom putters around downstairs, oblivious, I unfasten the chain from my neck and drop it in the outstretched palm of Jess’s hand.

“I miss you already,” Jess says, and she fastens the chain around her own neck.

I can’t believe I’ve met someone like this: someone who knows that rushing is the best part.