The woman smiled. “Ah, Spencer. I think I’ve heard your name before. I’m Lola. Maizy is at the end of this walkway, working in the original rose beds near the creek.” She pointed down the sloping walkway. “Today we’re just doing light maintenance on the bushes. She can show you where to get started.”
He thanked her, grabbed his tool bucket, and followed the path. He nodded at a couple of women who gave him big-eyed looks and a wide berth as he passed them. He noticed the lovingly tended rosebushes and wondered at the cracked walkway and the age-stained concrete retaining wall.
He turned in a circle and could envision how it could look and started figuring the cost of concrete and labor hours in his head.
He found Maizy at the end of the walkway, kneeling in front of a Souvenir rosebush. Lifting a hand to touch a bloom, she looked serene as she leaned forward to catch its scent. But her appreciative smile faded as she moved on and clipped and dropped a deadhead in her bucket and then kept clipping spent blooms. His heart lurched at the shift in her demeanor.
She’d pulled her silky black hair off of her shoulders with a clip and errant curls brushed her temples and forehead as she moved. Her faded jeans and T-shirt framed her beautiful shape and he enjoyed the view as she rose to her knees, sticking her heart-shaped tush in the air, and crawled to the next bush and kept working. He noticed then that she had earbuds in her ears.
Not wanting to startle her, he approached and set his bucket within her line of sight. A brief smiled flicked across her lips until she looked over and saw his work boots. Her eyebrows furrowed for a second as she looked up.
He knelt down beside her, grabbed his pruners, pointed at the rosebush in front of him, and said, “I wonder how old these rosebushes are.”
She pulled the earbuds from her ears. “What?”
“I said I wonder how old these rosebushes are.”
She tilted her head and looked at him. “You’re here.”
He grinned as he braced his hands on his knees. “I am.”
“Heath said he wasn’t giving up. But then I didn’t hear from him. Does Cody know you’re here?” Her nose scrunched the tiniest bit as she spoke the last words and her brown eyes flared.
That stung a little. “No. Cody doesn’t dictate my actions. He did what he thought was best for you. We all did.”
Maizy snipped a deadhead and dropped it in the bucket. “I wish he’d consulted with me, that all of you had, before he made that choice.”
“We didn’t want you to be hurt, baby.”
Maizy grabbed her bucket and moved to the next bush in the row on his other side and kept working. “It didn’t work. This has been a hundred times worse than when Chaz broke up with me. And then Heath tells me he’s not giving up, which gets my hopes up, but then I don’t hear from any of you so I’m thinking I’m an idiot for getting my hopes up. And here you are, and…I’m not your baby.” She smacked his biceps with her fist and then grimaced and cradled her hand. “Why didn’t you say something, Spencer?”
Fresh guilt swamped him as he thought of how many times he’d asked himself that question. He stopped working and tried to take her hand to check it for injury but she fought him until he grabbed her wrists so she’d look at him. “They’d shred you to pieces, baby. That was all I could think when we realized that it wasn’t going to end well for you at the school.”
“Do you remember that book you gave me? Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”
“Of course.” The way she looked up at him with reddened eyes made his heart ache.
“‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.’ That’s how I felt about what we had, Spencer. That was a choice I should’ve been allowed to make for myself. I’m not a child.”
“You’re right, baby.”
“You’ve been checking on me, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve seen you drive past my house. Why?”
“Because I love you, Maizy. This has been painful for me, too. We were trying to do the right thing but the truth is I want to tell everyone at that school to fuck off, pack you up, bring you home, and never let you leave.” He frowned at the rosebush in front of him. “Call me a caveman if you want. That’s how I feel.”
A slight smile transformed her beautiful face and she went back to work. “It just so happens I like cavemen.”
“Oh yeah?” he replied, reeling from whiplash at her sudden change in demeanor. He’d never seen her upset at him before. She was kind of cute when she was angry, although he still felt guilty for causing her pain.