Of all the answers she could have anticipated—It’s nice or it’s a little small or it’s obviously not as big as your old place—that wasn’t one of them.
“Like a garden?”
“All the colors... here, close your eyes.”
She did. It was strange to suddenly be floating in the dark in the midst of her own apartment, knowing that he was close to her but not able to see him. She could catch the slight scent of his cologne, a hint of clean leather and untamed forests.
“Now forget that this is your apartment,” Martin said.
“So we’ve broken in somewhere.”
She could hear the laughter in his voice. “Yes. The police are on their way, so we have to hurry.”
“Can’t you reason with them, law enforcement to law enforcement?”
Did this qualify as roleplay? Better question: did Martin carry handcuffs? She sort of hoped so.
“There is an ancient rivalry between city police and the US Marshals office,” he said gravely. “I don’t think they’d listen to me.”
“Goodness. Then you’re right, we really should hurry.”
She had never said “goodness” like that in her life, but she felt it was exactly the sort of thing a bashful accidental criminal would say. Especially when in the company of her tall, dark, and handsome partner in crime.
“Pretend we’ve stumbled into a garden,” Martin said.
Now his voice was soft, almost hypnotic. The darkness around her seemed to intensify, like he had wound a velvet blindfold around her eyes.
“It’s a garden no one’s been in for years. It’s a little overrun in places, it’s gone a little wild, but that just makes it more beautiful. It isn’t all shoved into neat little boxes. And we’re the only two people there.”
“Would you go so far as to say it’s a... secret garden?”
She didn’t mind joking around with him—she liked it—but she wished she hadn’t done it just then. It didn’t match the mood. But the mood had turned more serious than she had been expecting: this no longer reminded her of some light, frivolous roleplay. Martin sounded as if he meant every word he was saying.
So she said, “Never mind,” quickly, not wanting him to have to try to answer her. She met his seriousness with her own, conjuring up the picture he had described.
Wild roses, she decided, in colors like strawberry and blush wine, growing in a thick and thorny carpet up one of those white garden trellises. She imagined worn cobblestones forming a carpet beneath their feet. The earth would be weedy with only the prettiest weeds like speedwell and foxglove and some overgrown goldenrod that had spilled out of its flowerbed.
Tiffani knew what flowers looked like, but mostly from classes in flor
al arrangement, mostly from composing tasteful bouquets in florist shops. She didn’t know if all the flowers she saw in her mind’s eye would be blooming at the same time or not.
She had never had a garden. Why hadn’t she ever had a garden? Until he had mentioned it, she hadn’t even realized she wanted one.
“Now open your eyes,” Martin said.
Tiffani did.
The garden leapt out at her. Her cream-and-rose chair with the faded stripes looked exactly like the trellis she had been imagining, especially with the rose-colored pouf at its foot. The pale wood floor was the dusty earth of the path. The pale green walls encased them in the color of leaves in full sunlight. All around her were hints of lavender and buttercup and orchid-white, with occasional surprising splashes of deep, rich brown like good soil for planting.
“It is a garden,” she said, a little awed by how much her vision of it had changed.
Also apparently she really liked pastels.
“It’s beautiful,” Martin said. “It suits you.”
“How did you see it right away?”
“Because I see you. You come through so clearly that I see right away what suits you.”