Dani
The sprouts are pretty high, but Jamie still pores over the little green stems and leaves with such careful attention, that Dani can’t help but watch with the same rapt interest. She also can’t help but notice the way the florist’s brown curls fall in her eyes ever so often, and her palms itch to brush them behind her ears. Jamie just blows them away, her bottom lip puffing outward in frustration at the tendrils.
It’s been six weeks, six weeks since the sprouting, and there's a gentle familiarity in which Jamie greets her, a little grin, a slight uptick in the corners of her lips, and a fondness in their interactions, that comes with time. Dani feels it in the simple graze of a hand over her shoulder, or the small of her back, when the shorter woman needs to get by, careful, though, never to linger, never to press.
“How is it that you can eat like that and never gain any weight? It’s not fair.” Dani groans, after swallowing a bite of her painfully boring spinach salad. She looks enviously at the burgers on Jamie’s and Flora’s plates. Jamie just chuckles, laying an arm over the back of Flora’s chair in the back room. Her lunch breaks, as well as Dani and Flora’s visits, have gotten awfully longer, but neither parties mind, having admitted both as much.
“Poppins, you could eat as much as you wanted, and you’d still be the cat’s pajamas. Besides, I get my exercise in here and there.” Dani smiles coyly at the compliment, and Flora just giggles at the cat’s pajamas.
“Yeah, Poppins.” Flora’s new habit rears its head, once again, copying Jamie’s every move, having decided she was, in fact, the coolest.
“God, not you too. The kids in America didn’t give me this much grief.” She rolls her eyes fondly, and is about to open her mouth again, when-
“Hello? Jamie? Anyone here?” Jamie’s eyes widen in recognition at the voice, and she gets up suddenly, her chair scraping against the tile floor of the back room.
Dani twists in her own chair to catch a glimpse of the owner of the voice, and is surprised when her eyes land on a tall, onyx-haired woman, about her own age, with thick eyeliner, and a devious smirk on her lips.
“Hey, Liv, what’s up?” She glances nervously back at Dani and Flora, who both swivel their heads back around at being caught.
Liv has an Italian-tan, her skin smooth and soft, and Dani looks at her own skin, pasty, really, in comparison, before shaking her head. No, she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t think that.
“I haven’t seen you since last week, I wanted to know how you were doing. Is that so wrong?” Despite the words, her voice isn’t angry, it’s sultry, and when Dani sneaks a glance over her shoulder, she notices a smooth, tan hand running up the length of Jamie’s arm. Her chest tickles at the sight, and she coughs into her fist shortly.
“Hey, Flor, we’d better get going, huh? I think Miss Jamie’s lunch break is over.” She gathers her trash, and dumps the rest of her salad in the bin, and takes Flora’s hand, who pouts up at her.
The black-haired woman, Liv, Dani remembers, is looking at them now, and Dani avoids Jamie’s eyes, looking at the shorter woman’s forehead instead, a common sales trick, she remembers Eddie saying, and waves a short goodbye, mustering up a smile, before pushing the door open for Flora to step through.
“Bye, Miss Jamie!” The seven year old smiles happily, squeezing her little arms around Jamie’s hips, before skipping out the door to meet the au pair. Dani lets go of the handle, and they’re on the sidewalk before they can hear Jamie’s response.
There’s a quiet place, on the grounds of Bly, that Dani walks to after dark. A small greenhouse, across from a small lake, abandoned and overcome with greenery, but Dani likes it. She likes the serenity of the nature, the break from the ornate and at times overwhelming luxury of Bly Manor, to be around the plants and the fresh air.
Tonight, she lights her first cigarette in five years, and tries to analyze what she felt earlier today. Something her old therapist taught her, in the first year after she broke up with Eddie, to really know her emotions. The first drag is painful, it grates against her lungs, but after a while, it’s like riding a bike. She won’t smoke another one, she’ll put this one out, and leave the pack in the greenhouse. But the nicotine calms her brain enough to figure it out: jealousy. She’s jealous, of those tan hands that get to touch Jamie freely, she’s jealous of those brown sugar caramel eyes that raked over the shorter girl’s body shamelessly, of the knowledge, the feeling of Jamie, but most of all, she was jealous of Jamie’s experience.
She and Eddie had both agreed to wait until marriage, and, consequently, when marriage didn’t make the cut, neither did whatever intimacy she had planned to consummate with her fiance did either. Sure, there was some heavy petting, but none where her hand wasn’t guided, none where she felt an ounce of what Jamie made her feel with just a ghost of a touch.
Suddenly, on an inhale of smoke, something in her throat catches, and she coughs violently, the itch only intensifying with each short draw of breath. She trips over the entrance of the greenhouse, stumbling over to the lake, where she scoops up greedy handfuls of the clear water, and it’s only when the coughing stops, that she notices the pale white petals rippling across the surface, mocking and shiny with water.
There’s no flowers around to blame them on, and her suspicions are only confirmed when she feels the filmy petal crush in between her incisors, releasing a perfumey taste across her tongue.