Chapter Text
“Where are the purple wisterias?”
Link was unable to hide his annoyance from the two innocent souls helping him unload the delivery truck.
“I just slid them over there, next to the crape myrtles,” Riley said, as the delivery truck driver handed her a flat of multicolored pansies.
Link walked over to check the labels on the black plastic cans. “No,” he sighed, standing up straight. “Those are white. Where are the purple ones?”
Riley looked at Link as she was handed another flat of flowers—snapdragons this time. She had been working with Link for eight years and always seemed to know exactly when he was about to lose his temper. “Are you sure you ordered purple ones?” she asked, setting the flat down in the wet dirt and wiping her hands on her faded jeans; it had rained that morning.
“Of course I ordered purple ones,” he snapped, turning his clipboard in her direction and tapping the attached invoice with his pen a few times. “I order them every April and this is the second year in a row they haven’t sent them to me.”
He looked at the delivery truck driver, needing someone to blame. “Do you guys even have them in stock? Why are they still on your website if you don’t have them in stock?”
“Link,” Riley warned, “he wouldn’t know what they have in stock.”
“I don’t know what they have in stock,” the delivery man said.
Link glanced between the man and Riley a few times before dropping his shoulders in defeat. It was too early in the morning for this.
“You can request a refund,” the delivery man offered hesitantly.
Sensing Riley’s gaze, Link looked at her again. Her black hair was gathered up in a claw clip, and she wasn’t wearing makeup, which was her signature look—she was a natural beauty and seemed to know it. Her skin was pale no matter the time of year, and her brown eyes were familiar and calming. She was only four years younger than Link, making her thirty-nine. If she wasn’t married and if Link didn’t exclusively like men, they may have ended up together. Instead, she was his lifeline, and one of the main reasons why he hadn’t given up and sold the plant nursery a long time ago.
She stared at Link, her eyes pleading—It’s fine, let it go—and he surrendered.
“Actually, it’s fine,” Link said, sounding as though he was still trying to convince himself that it was, in fact, fine. “The white ones will sell. Let’s just finish unloading.”
Riley visibly relaxed and turned to unload the rest of the plants from the truck as Link set his clipboard down on a nearby stack of mulch bags, realizing that he should probably help. Before he could pull one of the remaining cans out of the truck, he heard his name being called from the nearby gate that led from the nursery to the delivery driveway.
“Link?” Layla, another one of his employees, called out timidly. She was the youngest person working for Link, having been only nineteen when he hired her two years before. Her impressive resume and the fact that she was majoring in horticulture had easily gotten her the job.
Link turned to see her standing with one hand on the fence and the other on her hip. She was wearing a forest green T-shirt that complimented her deep brown skin, and her natural curls that ended just below her chin were pulled away from her face with a bandana. Behind her, and towering about a foot over her, stood a man who had clearly just witnessed Link’s tantrum.
“What’s up?” Link asked, hoping to appear less flustered than he actually was. He made eye contact with the stranger for a brief moment before looking back at Layla.
She stepped to the side slightly, revealing more of the man behind her, and gestured in his direction. “He wanted to talk to the owner. He’s got a resume,” she said.
Link’s first instinct was to tell the man that they weren’t hiring. With the way his morning was going, the last thing he wanted to do was dig through his filing cabinet for an application, but there was something about the man that made Link pause. He was significantly taller than Link, which was notable, because Link was six feet tall, and he had golden brown curls that reached his shoulders. Link could tell that he was smiling shyly behind his beard, and his olive green eyes gave away his nervousness.
There was no denying that the man was gorgeous, and probably pretty strong, which would benefit them. Link preferred having a woman-dominated crew, observing over the years that they paid more attention to detail and were better at entertaining the creative visions of their customers, which had resulted in him having only one male employee—Emilio, who had grown up raising sheep in Mexico and could carry an impressive amount of weight.
Their crew of five got along just fine, but still, Link figured it would be helpful to have one more person around who could effortlessly throw around forty-pound bags of soil, especially on Emilio’s days off.
His thoughts were interrupted by the man’s voice, which was more honey-smooth than he could have anticipated. “Or, I could come back later, if this is a bad time,” he offered.
“No! Sorry, I was just thinking. We actually are hiring,” he scrambled to say, beginning to walk toward the gate. “Follow me inside and I’ll get you an application.”
He thanked Layla as he passed her and made his way to the gift shop, a building the size of a small house that stood in the center of the nursery. Sitting on two acres of land on the outskirts of Cary, North Carolina, the nursery sold everything from water plants to cacti. The fence that separated the parking lot from the inside of the nursery was covered in orange trumpet vines—creating the illusion of entering a secret garden—and there was a small pond on either side of the cobblestone path that led to the porch that wrapped around the gift shop.
Both ponds were full of water hyacinths and various species of water lilies, and they sat beneath two Chinese elms that kept the water cool for the mosquito fish. Between the entrance and the gift shop lived several rows of shade plants, shaded by a canopy made of green and brown tarps that filtered the sunlight.
To the right of the gift shop, past the gate that led to the delivery driveway, were racks of ground cover and bedding plants. A desert landscape to the left of the gift shop housed dozens of different species of succulents and cacti. Displayed on industrial-strength shelves against the fence behind the cacti and succulents were pots of all shapes, colors, finishes, and sizes—from cheap terracotta, to glazed pots imported from Italy.
The porch surrounded the gift shop with pre-potted plants, yard art, rare succulents that Link sometimes found at other nurseries that he visited in different cities for inspiration, and plants that only liked a few hours of sunlight a day.
Inside, there was a maze of houseplants; on the floor and against walls, surrounding hutches and wooden shelves that held even more plants, hanging in the windows, and meticulously scattered on top of the L-shaped counter in the front right corner of the building, making very little room for anything other than two cash registers.
On one side of the store, there were shelves of gardening tools and a plethora of plant treatments, and a rack full of flower and vegetable seed packets. There were windows on every wall and doors on three of the four, letting in plenty of natural light. Handmade and unique knickknacks, cards, and gifts were displayed throughout the gift shop, giving the building its name.
In the back right corner was Link’s office—small, painted a comforting shade of sage green, with a big corner window. In front of the window sat his desk that was always organized, and a candle was often burning on the side table next to the leather couch that barely fit between the wall and the office’s glass door.
Beyond the back door, the cobblestone path continued and led to a patio that was shaded by loblolly pines and more Chinese elms. In the center, a water fountain that never stopped flowing was surrounded by small containers of geraniums and boxwoods, and there were three wooden benches around the perimeter of the patio, facing the fountain.
Surrounding the patio on all sides were plants that preferred direct sunlight, all the way from the back porch to where the tree section began at the back of the nursery. While the shade plants were set up in rows, this part of the nursery was laid out in a way that was designed to spark inspiration. It was meant to resemble a garden, or an overgrown back yard, and that was one of the things that made Link’s nursery memorable.
To the right, just before the trees, were vegetables, fruits, and herbs, and to the left, was a small tool shed under the shade of two mature mulberry trees. Past the veggies and the shed was an organized forest of dozens of assorted species of trees—including fruit and citrus—from five-gallon containers to twenty-five-gallon containers.
Link’s hard work was evident in every square inch of the nursery, from the front fence to the back fence, and as he made his way to the gift shop, he hoped that the handsome stranger following him noticed the nursery’s magnificence, too.
When they reached the double front doors, Link held one of them open for the man, gesturing for him to enter first.
“Wait here, they’re in my office,” Link told him after following him inside.
Link walked into his office, flipping on the light and opening the filing cabinet to look for the application that he desperately hoped he had copies of. He heard movement behind him as he flipped through the folders and turned to see Campbell—one of the stray cats that lived at the nursery—stretching in the office chair, like he had just been woken up. He was only about two years old, fully gray, and always managed to sneak into the gift shop when someone opened a door. He meowed at Link.
“Oh, no,” Link feigned exasperation. “I’m so sorry I woke you up, you poor thing.”
Campbell meowed again as Link finally found an application and pulled it out, sighing with relief. He turned to the cat and gave him a scratch behind the ear. “Go back to sleep,” he told him. Link heard him meow one more time as he flipped the light off and walked out of the office.
“Lucky for you, I found one,” Link said, smiling as he handed the sheet of paper to the bearded man.
“Thank goodness, I would have been heartbroken if you hadn’t,” he replied with just as much sarcasm, smiling as he took the paper.
Link felt like he was in danger of stuttering. “You can bring it back whenever. If you can’t find me, just give it to someone who works here and they’ll get it to me.”
“Sounds good, thank you very much,” he said, holding his hand out. Link took his hand and the man shook firmly.
“No problem,” Link replied shakily, after the man had already dropped his hand and turned to leave, rattled by his strength.
Link watched as he left, opening the door just as Kristin was walking in. She made eye contact with him, apologized for being in his way, and then turned back to look at him once more through the closing glass door.
Kristin was in her mid-twenties, blonde, almost as tall as Link, and one of the most talkative people he knew. If there was something to gossip about, Kristin was the person to go to, which is why Link immediately began to walk behind the counter to act busy. It didn’t work.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“I dunno, he wanted an application,” he said, hoping she would let it go.
“What? Why did you give him one?”
“Because, we could use an extra person.”
“Okay…” She paused for a moment, studying Link’s face. “But, is that a good idea right now?”
She had been working at the nursery for almost three years, securing the job by telling Link that, although she didn’t know much about plants, she loved helping customers and didn’t mind standing behind a register for hours at a time. So, Link put her in charge of the gift shop. As the main cashier, she kept track of sales, opened the register in the morning, and closed it out at night.
“Kristin, thank you, but I can make decisions like this by myself,” Link said, shutting the conversation down.
“Okay,” Kristin replied defensively, “I was just—”
She was interrupted by the nursery’s phone ringing.
“I know.”
“Okay. I’m sorry,” she tried again. The phone kept ringing.
“It’s fine,” he told her, releasing a trapped breath and walking back outside to see if anything still needed to be unloaded from the delivery truck.
“Good morning, Neal’s Nursery,” Link heard Kristin say cheerfully into the phone, as the door closed behind him.
⊱―𐫱―⊰
The sun was shining its hottest beams of the day as Link stood behind the gift shop counter, ringing up what would likely be the last customer of the afternoon. The day wasn’t coming to an end fast enough.
A second wave of rain had hit around noon and soaked the invoice attached to his clipboard that was left outside after the delivery. Link had the papers laid out on the counter beneath the window in a pathetic attempt to salvage them. The weather had since cleared up, and the rain had been replaced with a blanket of humidity, which was worse.
As the customer’s receipt was printing, Layla walked behind the counter to empty the trash for the night. Link checked his watch to see that it was three thirty-four; just under thirty minutes until they could all go home.
“All right, here you go. Have a nice evening,” Link said with a bright smile, handing the receipt to the customer. He waited for the man to leave the building before resting his elbows on the counter and sighing loudly.
“Same,” Layla said, snapping a new trash bag in the air to open it.
“How is it only Thursday?” he groaned.
Layla replied with a breathy laugh, and swung the full trash bag over her shoulder.
“Are you doing anything fun tomorrow on your day off?” Link asked her, attempting to start a conversation and waste some time.
“Nope.” She walked out from behind the counter, through the waist-high swinging door. Link noticed that it was getting squeaky and needed to be oiled. “I’m actually gonna force myself to sleep as long as possible,” she added.
Link nodded. “That sounds like fun to me.”
“What about your next day off? You finally gonna take yourself on vacation or something?”
Link’s shoulders jumped with a single, forced laugh. He gestured around himself, at the nursery. “I can’t leave town.”
“Well, you need to,” Layla said, walking backward while approaching the front doors. “Your stress is stressing me out.”
Link laughed again, a real one this time. “I’ll think about it.”
“Sure, you will,” she said, squinting at him.
They were both too caught up in their conversation to notice that someone was on the other side of the door reaching for the handle, just as Layla pushed it open with her back. A gasp was punched out of her from the sudden resistance, and she quickly spun around as the door was pulled open from the other side.
“I am so sorry!” She apologized profusely to the man who was now standing in front of her—the same man who had come in to pick up an application that morning.
“It’s all right, sorry if I startled you,” he told her.
“No! Here, go on in,” she said, holding the door open for him. As he made his way through the door, Layla peered around him to look at Link, and she widened her eyes when they made eye contact. Link gave her a small nod, and then she let the door shut behind her.
Link watched the man approach the counter and began to feel self-conscious about the way he was slouching. Standing up straight, he offered a welcoming smile. “Hi again,” he said.
“Hi, uh, I know you’re closing soon, but I wanted to bring this back before the end of the day,” he said, setting the application on the counter. His resume was stapled to the back.
“Oh, thank you.” Link reached for the paper and found his name written in black ink at the top of the document: Rhett McLaughlin. “Rhett”. The name sounded good coming out of his mouth, and maybe Rhett thought so too, because he was grinning when Link raised his head to look at him again.
Link looked back down at the paper, feeling his cheeks heat up. “Are you—uh, are you available to work on weekends?” he asked.
“I’m available whenever you need me, yes.”
“And you’re all right with working in hot or cold weather?”
“Yes, sir.”
Link took a deep breath and willed himself not to tell Rhett that he was hired on the spot. “You can call me Link, actually,” he said.
“Link?” The name rolled off Rhett’s tongue like the sweetest batch of honey ever made.
“Short for Lincoln.”
“Oh, I see. You don’t look like a Lincoln,” Rhett said.
Link smiled. “Maybe because it’s my middle name.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
Link was quiet, not giving Rhett what he was obviously waiting for.
“What, is your real name top secret?” Rhett asked, breaking the silence.
Link shook his head. “No, that would be a terrible name.”
At that, Link heard Rhett’s laugh for the first time, and he wondered how he had survived so long without hearing it. He couldn't help but laugh along with him, feeling his anxiety drain from his body for a moment, which was something that didn’t happen often.
Drunk on mental clarity, Link suddenly wanted Rhett to know everything about him. “It’s, uh, it’s Charles,” he said, watching Rhett’s eyes light up at the confession.
“Charles. Yeah, I can see that.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s very regal,” Rhett said, crossing his arms. “I actually might have to call you Charles instead of Link,” he said.
Link’s smile fell. “No, don’t call me that.”
The look on Rhett’s face was that of immediate regret, and he appeared to be scrambling to find the right words to apologize. “Oh, I won’t. I’m sorry. I was just—I’m sorry. I won’t.”
“You’re fine, it’s fine,” Link assured him. “It’s just—”
Link’s explanation was cut short by Kristin and Riley walking through the side door, laughing at something one of them had just said. When they saw Rhett, they both fell silent.
“It doesn’t matter, actually,” Link said. “Forget about it.” He smiled at Rhett, hoping he hadn’t frightened him. “I’ll look at everything, and I should be able to call you tomorrow if it seems like it’s gonna work out.”
Rhett nodded. “Great, I’ll be looking forward to your call, Link,” he said as he turned to leave, and Link noted the emphasis Rhett put on his name.
“Okay, have a good night,” Link told him.
“You do the same.” And then, he was gone.
Link watched the door shut before turning to look at Kristin and Riley.
“Wow, back already,” Kristin observed. “He must be serious about working here.”
“Are you really thinking about hiring him?” Riley asked, judgment dripping from her words.
Link shrugged and headed toward his office, waving the stapled papers in the air. “We’ll see. I haven’t looked at these yet.”
The truth was, Link didn’t need to look at Rhett’s application. He didn’t need to read his resume. He had already made up his mind—Rhett was hired. He knew being attracted to an employee was majorly frowned upon, and the fact that he was already so affected by him should have been the only reason he needed to turn him down, but he couldn’t risk the possibility of never seeing him again.
Link was professional. He had self-control. Nothing had to happen between him and Rhett, and nothing would—he would make sure of it. Still, that didn’t mean Link couldn’t hire him for the selfish reason of wanting to be in his life.
He sat down at his desk and began skimming through Rhett’s application to the sound of his employees finishing their closing responsibilities.
His middle name was James, he was eight months older than Link, and his emergency contacts were his parents: Jim and Diane. Link’s eyes skipped around the boring information, such as Rhett’s social security number and availability, in order to read Rhett’s academic history.
He was shocked to see that Rhett had attended North Carolina State University at the same time as him, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science in 2000. There were a couple summer jobs listed from high school and college, but Rhett’s only long-term job was as a curator at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.
Link’s jaw dropped. How, and why, had Rhett ended up applying at a random plant nursery in Cary after having a job like that?
Link set the papers down on his desk, lined them up perfectly with the edge, and leaned back in his chair. His open lap must have been seen as an invitation, because Campbell immediately jumped into it, startling Link. “Oh, shit,” he yelped, before relaxing again and petting the cat’s back. “I didn’t know you were in here, bud.”
Campbell meowed, making sure Link knew he wanted his dinner.
“I know, I’ll feed you in a second. I’ve gotta make an order real quick.”
Another meow, and then Campbell curled up in Link's warm lap. Link turned on his computer and navigated to his most-trusted indoor plant supplier, where he built a fairly large order of houseplants. He chose common ones that he liked to have in stock at all times, and then splurged on a few less-common options. When he navigated to the checkout screen and looked at his total, the number glared at him ominously, and with a defeated sigh, he deleted a couple selections from his cart and submitted the order.
The time on the clock read three-fifty, and he bounced one leg to wake the sleeping bundle of fur in his lap. “Up, come on,” he said.
Campbell jumped up excitedly, watching as Link turned off his computer, stood up, pushed in his chair, and dug into the cardboard box full of canned cat food that sat beside his filing cabinet. By the time he had two cans pulled out, Campbell was already out of the office and standing in front of the back doors.
Link grabbed his car keys from his desk drawer and slipped them into his front pocket, switched off his office lights, and pulled the door closed behind him. Outside—once he had opened the door for Campbell and stepped out after him—he was greeted by the three other cats that claimed the nursery as their home.
Omen was a black cat that showed up the same week Link started working at the nursery. When he and his papa found him as a kitten, dumped in the parking lot by his previous owners, his papa had made a joke about the black cat being an omen for Link’s new job at the nursery. Link had said that he chose to believe it was a good omen, and the name stuck.
Honey was a tortoiseshell cat that Link brought to the nursery at the same time as Campbell, after his neighbors found them under their porch. He offered to take the kittens off their hands, not wanting them to end up at the shelter. Honey had a habit of almost always poking the tip of her tongue out of her mouth, which made her a customer favorite.
Merle was the oldest cat at the nursery at seventeen years old, found and named by Link’s papa. He had arrived long before Link was given a key to the place. Merle was gray with white paws, white fur around his mouth that made him look like he had a goatee, and long legs. He was beginning to slow down, but was still as sweet as ever, always asking employees and customers for affection.
Link opened both cans of cat food and used one of the lids to distribute the food evenly into all four bowls, refilled their water bowl, and wished them a good night before heading back inside.
Kristin was putting the cash from the registers into the safe and filling out the nightly paperwork, Layla was turning off the strings of pre-lit garland that lined most of the shelves, and Riley was sitting on one of the three stools that surrounded the counter, venting about something Link hadn’t been inside to hear the beginning of.
“But this is the second time in three years!” she exclaimed. “Why do they want me so bad?”
“They’re out to get you, for sure,” Layla said from across the room.
“Who’s out to get you?” Link asked, taking a seat on one of the other stools.
Riley rolled her eyes. “The entire goddamn government. I got another jury duty summons.”
“Again?” Link gasped dramatically, making Kristin laugh.
“That’s what I’m saying!”
“I’ll just write a letter to get you out of it like I did last time,” Link told her, “because you’re crucial to the workplace, and we’ll be screwed without you.”
She smiled. “Well, you said it.”
He smiled back. “I’ll write it tomorrow, before I forget.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.” Link watched Kristin put the paperwork away as Layla grabbed the gift shop key from an old tool box beneath the counter—the one that also held the keys to everything else on the property. “We ready to go?”
“I think so,” Layla said.
“The driveway gate is locked?” Link asked.
“Yep.”
“All the customers are gone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All right,” he said, standing. “Let’s get out of here.”
Kristin and Riley grabbed their belongings and headed outside while Link held the door open for Layla, who locked all the doors and tossed the key back into the tool box before gathering her tote bag and water bottle. Once everyone was out, Link pushed on the door until he heard it lock, and then the four of them walked out to the parking lot.
“Have a good night, guys,” Link told them, as he pulled the large double-sided front gate shut and locked it.
“You too!” The reply came from all three of them simultaneously, like a choir.
As always, Link was the last to pull out of the parking lot. He drove home in a daze, listening to music but not processing any of the lyrics, thinking about what he was going to say when he called Rhett in the morning to offer him the job.