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71


The first thing Claire noticed about Maya wasn't her laugh though that would come to haunt her dreams but the way she tended to her mother's roses with the same careful attention most people reserved for precious artifacts. Every morning at seven-thirty, Maya would emerge from the house next door in paint-stained overalls, her dark hair twisted into a messy bun secured with whatever was handy: pencils, paintbrushes, sometimes even a wooden spoon.

Claire had been watching from her bedroom window for three weeks before she worked up the courage to say hello.

"Your roses are beautiful," Claire called over the fence one Saturday morning, immediately cringing at how formal she sounded. She was twenty-two, not seventy-two, but something about Maya made her feel simultaneously ancient and newborn.

Maya looked up, soil-darkened fingers still wrapped around a particularly stubborn weed. "Thanks. Mom always said they needed someone who understood heartbreak to really bloom." She grinned, and Claire felt something flutter in her chest that had nothing to do with the morning coffee she'd been drinking.

"Do you?" Claire asked, then immediately wished she could swallow the words back.

"Understand heartbreak?" Maya's smile turned thoughtful. "I'm learning."

That was how it started conversations over the fence while Maya gardened and Claire pretended to read on her back porch. Maya was Mrs. Henderson's daughter, home from art school for the summer, though Claire suspected she was hiding from something more than just student loans and cafeteria food.

"What do you paint?" Claire asked one afternoon, finally brave enough to approach the fence directly instead of shouting across the yard.

"Feelings, mostly." Maya wiped her hands on her shirt, leaving streaks of earth across her ribs. "Sounds pretentious, I know, but I never know how else to explain it. Like, yesterday I painted what it feels like when you remember something happy and sad at the same time."

Claire nodded as if this made perfect sense, though she'd never thought about emotions having colors and shapes before meeting Maya. "Can I see it sometime?"

"Maybe." Maya's cheeks flushed pink. "If you want."

The invitation came two weeks later, delivered via a folded piece of paper tucked into Claire's mailbox. Studio showing tonight, 8 PM. Bring wine if you have it, bring yourself if you don't. - M

Maya's studio was actually the Henderson's converted garage, which smelled like turpentine and possibility. Canvases lined every available wall space, creating a maze of color and emotion that made Claire feel like she was walking through Maya's mind.

"This is incredible," Claire breathed, stopping in front of a painting that seemed to pulse with longing. Deep blues melted into silver-white highlights, and somehow Claire could feel the exact sensation Maya had been trying to capture that moment when you want something so badly it becomes a physical ache.

"That one's called 'Before,'" Maya said quietly, appearing beside Claire with two mismatched wine glasses. "I painted it the day before I dropped out of school."

"You dropped out?"

"Last month. Mom doesn't know yet." Maya handed Claire the wine something red and cheap that tasted like honesty. "I kept painting what professors called 'too personal' instead of what they wanted to see. Turns out I'm not very good at pretending."

Claire studied Maya's profile in the dim light of the garage. "What were you pretending?"

Maya was quiet for so long that Claire thought she wouldn't answer. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. "That I didn't spend most of senior year completely in love with my roommate Sarah. That when she got engaged to her boyfriend, I wasn't devastated. That when I came home, I wasn't hoping to figure out who I actually am instead of who I thought I should be."

The admission hung between them like a bridge neither was sure they were brave enough to cross. Claire set down her wine glass and turned to face Maya fully.

"I've been watching you garden every morning for two months," Claire said. "I moved back to my childhood bedroom after a breakup with someone my parents adored, someone who checked all the right boxes except the one that mattered. And every morning, I'd see you out there with the roses, looking so comfortable in your own skin, and I'd think about how I've never felt that way about anything."

Maya's eyes were dark in the garage light, unreadable. "What was the box that mattered?"

"The one where I actually wanted to kiss her goodnight instead of just going through the motions because that's what girlfriends do." Claire's heart was beating so hard she was sure Maya could hear it. "The one where I stopped pretending I wasn't attracted to the woman who tends roses like prayers and paints feelings like they're landscapes."

Maya stepped closer, close enough that Claire could smell the faint scent of paint and earth that seemed to follow her everywhere. "Claire."

"Yeah?"

"I've been gardening extra slowly so you'd stay on the porch longer."

Claire laughed, surprised by the admission. "I've been pretending to read the same page for weeks."

"What happens now?" Maya asked.

Claire reached out, threading her fingers through Maya's. "I don't know. I've never been good at this part."

"The falling in love part?"

"The being honest about it part."

Maya squeezed her hand. "We could practice. On each other."

They kissed surrounded by paintings of feelings Maya had never found words for, tasting like cheap wine and new beginnings. When they broke apart, Claire felt like she'd been holding her breath for months and was finally allowed to exhale.

"I should probably tell you," Maya said, her forehead still pressed against Claire's, "I painted that one thinking about you." She nodded toward a canvas Claire hadn't noticed before warm yellows and soft greens that somehow captured the feeling of sunlight through bedroom windows and lazy Saturday mornings that stretch into afternoon.

"What's it called?"

"'During,'" Maya said. "I'm hoping to paint 'After' soon."

Claire smiled, thinking about roses that needed someone who understood heartbreak to bloom, about the difference between going through motions and meaning them, about the way Maya's laugh would sound first thing in the morning when Claire didn't have to pretend she wasn't listening for it.

"I'd like to see that," Claire said, and meant it in every possible way.

Outside, Mrs. Henderson's roses nodded in the evening breeze, tended by hands that understood that sometimes the most beautiful things grow from the most honest places.