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Garth had to create his own opportunity to be able to talk to Daisy.
Something had happened between Becka and Agnes, something that had had Becka retreating to her room and going back to the way she was in the first few weeks in light of her mother’s execution. Quite frankly, he was concerned. It was one-syllable answers and hardly eating and always sleeping again—he’d diligently checked for anything that could be turned into a blade and instructed the Martha to keep watch in the kitchen.
Despite his guilt, he’d started locking her door at night and unlocking it in the morning just before work again. He hadn’t admitted this to anyone, wasn’t entirely sure if Becka had ever told Agnes about it because surely, she’d have noticed. He thinks that she hasn’t confided this titbit of information, or else Agnes would’ve been knocking his door down and questioning him furiously in the dead of night again.
He could understand that. But he was also afraid of what Becka could do, especially when she had such a propensity for violence…
So, yes, he had arranged for Daisy to come over in the guise that she and Becka were close friends, using one of his contacts from the barracks who had more sympathy for his plight, to discreetly escort her here out of worry for his new young wife who was clearly struggling, and had made certain that the Martha would be busy running errands while Becka was upstairs, unlikely to try to show her face with what turbulent emotions she was going through.
It would’ve been better had Agnes arrived with her to try to sort this mess out, but alas, Agnes had been steadily refusing for a fortnight.
“We don’t have long,” Garth whispered, having taken Daisy to his office, and after locking the door behind her so they had no surprises.
Daisy turned to face him, her eyebrows furrowed slightly. “We never do. I also know that you’re taking a risk doing this; only inviting me… So, what’s going on?” she asked the question demandingly.
Garth jerked his head to the seats to be found facing each other on a rug in the middle of the room, and he didn’t understand why, but Daisy raised her neck to stare with an unflinching gaze, not wanting to budge.
He sighed, resigned to the way she wanted to do things. “What has Agnes told you? Why isn’t she visiting anymore?”
Her eyes flashed with recognition. “She’s been saying that her Guardian is suspicious of the routine. That he wanted to take his perusal last time but she held him off, which is why I thought it was a good idea to have a break between visits.”
“Is that true?” Garth asked, a flare of worry in his breastbone. He wouldn’t have thought that his old bunkmate at the barracks would have any reason for suspicion, and they’d been careful with making sure Agnes didn’t overstay her welcome.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Daisy asked, curious.
“I think Agnes and Becka had an argument. That’s why she’s not been visiting, but… You have to talk to her. Becka’s going downhill,” he told her, his mouth pursing, “she needs to see her.”
Daisy nodded slowly. “That… does makes sense. Agnes has been cagey whenever Becka’s been so much as mentioned; I mean, that’s been for a while now, but it’s been different. It’s like she doesn’t want to think about her at all. Shu’s been asking about her since she’s not allowed to visit; her parents said it wasn’t a good look. Which, well, it isn’t. It’s not a concern for Agnes, though, since…”
She was a fallen woman, Garth ascertained Daisy wanted to say, by the way her eyebrows had screwed up all the way, her lips pressed together firmly like the words alone were too vile to breathe. Garth remembers, suddenly, that the term itself must seem archaic to her, demeaning. It was a reminder for why they were doing all this in the first place, why they were both so committed to the mission.
“Talk to her,” he decided. “You’re good at that.”
Daisy appeared surprised by the admission.
“What? It’s true. Somehow, you’ve made these girls your friends when usually they wouldn’t give a Pearl Girl the time of day.”
“Not a Pearl Girl,” Daisy corrected blasély.
A familiar uncomfortable twist in his stomach arose at that. He hated to be reminded that she was in a more precarious position than before; that maybe, in the next season, even Daisy could be matched off. And Commanders were so very unlikely to want a former Pearl Girl.
It was partly why he was so beholden to Daisy’s new plan, to speed things up a bit. It would be good to get Daisy out of Gilead before the chance for her to be sent to the colonies in a more unpreferable match could become an inevitability.
“Yes, because you’re such a darling Plum,” Garth said, all teeth in a smirk that could be passed off as a smile, trying to hide his discomfort.
“I don’t think my boyfriend would’ve liked you,” Daisy said, clearly hypothetically envisioning a meeting between him and this mystery person. Garth almost immediately objected, but what was a boyfriend? Another male friend of hers she hadn’t taken to mentioning yet? “You’re too smarmy for his liking, I think.”
“Smarmy,” he instead chose to highlight first, not wanting to again remind her his lack of knowledge of the outside world. She should already know by now that he wouldn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“Yeah,” she started sarcastically, “like when you pretend to be polite in that very annoying way that you—”
“I know what smarmy means, but thanks,” Garth interjected, smiling tightly.
Daisy laughed, “Do you know that you’re kinda proving my point?”
He frowned. “I thought it would hypothetically be your… boy-friend’s point?” he said the word in a clunky way, what with it being unfamiliar terminology.
“Didn’t say I wouldn’t have agreed with him,” Daisy replied succinctly, her eyes sparkling and her lips tugging into a smirk. Though, her expression faltered. Garth catalogued it away for future recollection…
She always wore her heart on her sleeves, as much as she’d have hated the very thought that he’d noticed. It was usually only around him anyway, when she felt safe enough to do so. Usually. It didn’t mean she didn’t have her slip-ups, which was why his sanity was almost constantly fraying.
“And uh, well, ex. Ex-boyfriend,” she clarified, conflicted. “I guess we never officially ended things, but things are too different now. I’m too different.”
“Ended things?” Real horror was scorching up his throat. “Wait, a relationship? You were in a relationship?”
Daisy raised her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me…” She laughed again, but this time it was jubilant, her eyes dancing. “You haven’t heard of girlfriend and boyfriend before?” she asked incredulously. “I’m pretty sure even the girls understood that concept.”
He folded his arms in his embarrassment, hoping the heat in his face wasn’t giving him away. “I’m entirely sure that that’s your fault, or the Pearl Girls’ faults in general.”
Daisy considered this thoughtfully. “You’re probably right. They talked about it like it was forbidden knowledge anyway.”
“Right,” he said quickly. "Then, you can forgive my lack of understanding. So, what am I meant to say here? ‘His loss’, or something?”
Daisy’s eyes widened, her smirk settling into something softer. His heart started racing in his chest, his eyes fastening to the fascinating new curve to her mouth. “Actually, yeah. You guessed it in one. His loss.”
She cleared her throat when the silence descended over them for too long, and she looked away. She kept doing that, lately. Something seemed to sink inside him whenever she did. Did she not fully trust him yet? Had his past mistakes regarding her really fractured their relationship so much that she—
A noise slipped past his lips, unbidden.
Not, uh, relationship. Not in that sense. That would be absurd. He was her Keeper. Reluctantly, because all she managed to do was get herself into all sorts of trouble.
“Good,” he said roughly.
Her eyes snapped back to his, and was he imagining it, or were they darker than before?
“I should…” Daisy stared, her eyes flickering down.
“What?” Garth asked her, his voice coming out slow and hardly heard over the heartbeat drumming in his ears. Why did he feel so nervous? Because of their discussion of the outside world? Of course, he’d realised it was possible that she had… that she…
“I should get—"
“Was he good to you? Kind?” He was suddenly eager to know everything. Although eager didn’t seem like the appropriate word, it was more like he hated the entire idea but needed to know every detail anyway. It was vital that he understood everything.
Daisy blinked. “Yes. I mean, yes, he was… Obviously, we had our arguments, but they were normal. Normal arguments.”
“Arguments,” he whispered, “But he never… he never struck you?”
Flashes of his mother, and then Daisy, crumpled on the floor flooded his vision for a stray second.
“No, of course not!” she said loudly, horrified. Too loud.
He put a quick hand to her mouth, stepping closer. “Daisy,” he admonished.
Her hand whipped up to meet his, curling around his fingers, slowly tugging his hand down. The touch lit him up like electricity, a rapid-fire sensation that made it increasingly hard to breathe normally.
“Sorry,” she murmured, and there was a quick swallow in her throat. “He didn’t. He was kind.”
He squeezed her hand as though in comfort. “But you were too different…?”
“He didn’t understand,” she said simply, and it was clearly difficult to remember. In a sense, he wanted to wipe every memory of this… ex-boyfriend away. He didn’t like the look on her face. The reminiscence, the sadness. “He couldn’t. My adoptive parents were murdered, Gilead wanted me. I asked him to run away and he…”
“He was a fool not to,” Garth told her, the words cloying to the roof of his mouth as though he knew they were stupid to say, but he couldn’t stop them even if he tried.
“If he had, I wouldn’t have ended up here,” Daisy said, a new resolution steeling her words. “I’m glad we broke up." There was a long, contemplating pause. "Garth, I was meant to be here, I was meant to save these girls.”
And that, if anything, was a cool solace.
He turned his hand slightly, so that their hands fitted together properly. He struggled to reconcile what he was seeing with what he was feeling. That nervous drumbeat in his chest, the way he felt hot to the touch, burning up, that static excitement that he felt with her so close.
Daisy was looking too. “Maybe I was even meant to meet you,” she disclosed, and he almost mistook it for her teasing, a sarcastic quip before she would inevitably tug away and make off like the past hour had never happened.
Their eye contact felt like a surge, a long moment of realisation between them; a reckoning one.
His lips parted.
She snatched her hand away, flushing wildly, her striking blue eyes wide with an unfamiliar emotion. “Um, sorry. I should go. It’s been too long,” she muttered, rattling off the words and reaching for the key on the door.
“Daisy,” he urged, tugging her shoulder.
She gasped, “Garth.”
The way her mouth curled around his name. He shuddered. How did he not see this before?
His grip tightened. “You should go,” he said hoarsely. He couldn’t help the want—because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?—that tugged sharply in his stomach, drawing him closer.
“Garth,” Daisy repeated heavily, still turned away for a moment, before turning slowly around, his grip on her shoulder slipping, but not entirely. It seemed he couldn't quite will himself to let go.
He swallowed, felt unsteady with indecisiveness. This was dangerous.
When he did let go, it was with supreme difficulty, to which she seemed to understand as clear as day. “Go.”
Daisy seemed struck with the same idea, to reach up, to thread her fingers in his collar and tug—
They couldn’t.
“Go, Daisy,” he repeated, his voice strangled, and thankfully, with what little self-control she possessed at the best of times, she did.
And he was left, the room silent except for his ragged breathing, with a revelation that floored him. “Fuck.”