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Zinnia elegans. Max had given Rachel one pot, fully grown, a little over three feet on the day Rachel left for California. It was beautiful, foliage delicate and flowers flushed, bright, healthy. The petals are these tiny things bunched up in piles, balled up like colorful paper lanterns. Fluffy to the touch. Max said she trimmed the grayed leaves herself when she bought it and gave instructions for its care (just water, sunlight, trimming.)
Rachel had never really pegged Max as the type for gardening and plants (except maybe in Lisa's case) but thinking on it, Max fit the kind. The kind to breathe life into things, nurture them, watch them grow.
Rachel herself, not necessarily. The life of the party she is, but that's it. Smiling at plants don't make them bloom.
(Well, complimenting and speaking to them helps them grow though, she read somewhere once.)
The first flowers to dry under her care cut her as deep as leaving Max did. The only remembrance of what's waiting for her in Arcadia Bay, what she's waiting for here in California, wilting, pinks turned brown. Petals crumpled, rough, stiff.
She'd been watering it. She had the pot directly in front of the glass door leading to her backyard, drinking up all the sun it needs. Water. Sunlight. Trimming. She'd been giving it everything. Her throat clenched.
She ran to the nearest garden supplies store she could find. Begged the storekeeper to keep the place open for a couple more minutes past 7, and asked.
"Zinnias?" The elderly woman quipped, smiling with all her white hair and wrinkles, old bones shaking with a laugh. "They usually die come winter, dear, especially when they've matured enough. They're not meant to last long, and they don't do very well in the cold. I'm afraid there's nothing you could do."
"Nothing?" Rachel repeated, tears already pricking her eyes. Fatigue, the long afternoon changing outfits, posing, struggling to keep her posture precise under the condescending scrutiny of more experienced models: the anxiety of the idea of telling Max she killed the plant. She sagged.
But, "Well, maybe there is something," the storekeeper had said, and that's how Rachel found herself pulling the petals off the dried flowers, collecting the arrow-headed seeds at the ends.
December was spent on Skype with Max and Chloe, and supervising the work on the garden bed she had being done on whatever available space there was in the tiny backyard.
When the Zinnia seeds go into the dirt, winter had passed. Horticulture is a totally different planet from couture, but Zinnias are simple plants, like the garden supplies lady had said. When spring burgeoned in full, the sun had returned, the air had warmed, greens were already sprouting from the soil.
Two months later and the first flowers bloomed. Pink, specked with fading purples where the petals meet at the center. Rachel had patiently cut off the wilted ones to make room for more flowers to blossom: watered the flowerbed regularly, carefully, every morning.
Now, there are often butterflies in her backyard and gardening tools stowed away in her closet.
The flowers are like ribbons now. Puffy ribbons, the kind you see stuck on top of gift boxes. All the trimming was worth it. The garden is small but the flora is brilliant, the prettiest pinks flaunting in the sun of California. A hundred tiny petals looking at Rachel, alive and cared for and well.
Gingerly, Rachel reaches for a single flower with its pink starting to dull. She takes it with a pull and a snip, cradling it in her gloved hands to look at.
Her phone rings inside, on the kitchen counter right where she left it after a cup of coffee. She takes off her gloves and boots, leaves them outside near the door and pads barefoot to the small kitchen. Her hip bumps the counter and she manages to answer her phone before the call could end.
"Hello?"
"Rachel," Max says on the other line after a tentative pause. There's sheet rustling, drowsiness in Max's voice so heavy that it has Rachel smiling. "Good morning. Sorry, I slept in. Wowser, I can't believe this, I had an alarm, I swear -"
"Max," Rachel says, a half-laugh in one syllable. "It's cool. It's the weekend. If you didn't sleep in, then I would be upset."
She ambles back to the backyard, phone bunched between her ear and shoulder. She slips back into her boots and gloves.
"Right, I'm still sorry though. I mean, I should've gotten up a little earlier to call."
Rachel glances over her shoulder. Looks back into the house, squinting at the wall clock she can see. 10:35am. "Oh. Well, yeah, I guess you should've. But you know I don't mind waiting how-long-ever for your call, Max. As long as I get to hear your voice."
A breath on the other line. Rachel can imagine Max's flush, the cutest red that starts on her throat and crawls to her entire face, freckles lighting up like Christmas lights. Rachel laughs.
"I keep forgetting that," Max teases, chuckles. She clears her throat. "So uh, what are you up to today? Are you booked for a shoot or something?"
Rachel kneels by the flowerbed. She picks up the snipped flower off the dirt, examining it idly. "No," She says. "Today I'm booked for you."
That breath again. They share a laugh. "Right. Booked for me, or your gardening?"
"Can't it be for both?"
"Wow, okay, now I'm kinda jealous. If I could turn back time maybe I'll give you something other than a plant for when you go."
"Jealous? Of these beautiful things called flowers? Of these magnificent little bulbs of life and wonderful color? Now why would you be jealous of them?" Rachel asks innocently. Max snorts, feigns an offended huff. Rachel grins. "Oh, come on, Max, I loved that plant. And you know you're the prettiest flower."
"So you say," Max says, and Rachel is about to answer with the most flattering thing ever by equating Max's freckles to flower petals, when Max follows quickly with, "Hey, so how come you haven't shown me your garden? Like, you tell me about it all the time but you don't let me see. Even Chloe wants a peep."
Rachel smiles, turns the drying flower over on her palm. "Oh, you know," She chews her lip. "For... incentive. Like, it's almost summer, and if you wanna see, then..."
She trails off, grins to herself and at the garden, the pinks and greens of her hard work. She laughs under her breath because who knew she had a green thumb? When Max answers, Rachel hears the lilts of a smile.
"I've been saving up," Max says, in that breathless way of hers that makes Rachel breathless. "We have been. Me and Chloe. We're gonna drive up there soon."
California sun is beating down on Rachel's back. The Zinnias catch sunbeams in their petals, shadows in their leaves. Two butterflies are hovering close by and Rachel smiles, looks down at the flower on her palm.
When it fully dries, she'll take the seeds. More seeds for more flowers. More flowers for Max.
Zinnia elegans. The reminder of what's waiting for her in Arcadia Bay, what she's waiting for here in California.
"Make it real soon, Max."