The Azaleas and I

Night turned to day when I first met him.

That is to say, in only the most literal sense.

Night fell in the Garden—lazy shorthand for an oddly-placed communal hub of greenery and flowers next to my apartment building. I was making my solitary midnight rounds about the hydrangeas when I witnessed the Light. Well, a light. A foreign, flashy assault of wattage and fluorescence burning into my retinas, very certainly inflicting irreparable damage. This was no natural source of light, I knew, though it burned like the summer sun. I squinted in a shoddy attempt to trace the source. 

The offensive beam came from a flashlight, which came from the extended arm of a man.

The man was a little more than two lemur-like pupils dilated in the dark. Blinded and frightened as I felt, he was all the more alarmed. He quickly angled the burning bulb toward the sky above, where the stars laughed at us. I eyed the gravel beneath my feet and waited for him to introduce himself or to explain what he was doing in the Garden. Instead, he offered an observation:

Not many besides botanists have a reason to be wandering through the Garden at night, he said coolly. His face was twisted into earnest curiosity mixed with colored amusement. 

Not many besides botanists and baristas, I corrected with a quicksilver grin on my lips. 

His eyebrows raised in confusion before settling into understanding. He asked if I was some sort of artist, and I said yes. I was a poet, but I could not call that my job because, technically, I did not make any money from my poetry. He laughed and asked what difference that made. I liked that he thought it made no difference, as I try so desperately to convince myself sometimes.

What is your name? I asked.

Otis, he offered with a hand extended out of reflex. I accepted, and we shook like partners foreclosing on an estate sale and not two young people standing between withering petunia bushes at 1:02 in the morning.

Amelia, I said, though he never asked for my name. It’s nice to meet you, Otis. And, uh, what are you doing here?

Otis smiled, or at least he seemed to, with half of his face illuminated and the other half blending into the pitch-black of midnight. He offered me an answer of sorts: You’ll laugh. 

I nodded, motioning for him to continue and blinking froggishly in the moonlight. Otis shut his great, brown eyes and sighed. I’m a floriculturist.

A— A— Sorry? I asked. A horticulturist?

No, a floriculturist. It’s part of a subgenre of horticulture that focuses on breeding flowers.

A subgenre of horticulture, I mused aloud. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it.

Otis offered me a sheepish grin and a wave of his arm. We walked together in that funny old garden with its half-wilted plants and ill-maintained pathways. Otis flicked off the flashlight and contented himself with the mystery of it all. Moonlight shone down, softened by an unseasonal layer of fog. It had been a long time since I felt the way I usually did in the Garden—finding poetry without looking for it. 

We ambled around, talking little but finding comfort in our soft breathing. For the most part, Otis would stop at a different plant, switch on the bright light, and murmur his incoherent fascination at it. I watched quite cautiously, afraid that I would somehow spoil the magic. We walked along the perimeter and then the center of the Garden, tracing a figure eight. We walked and walked until the stars started to fade into a brightening sky. 

And then we walked separately back home to our miserably, ill-ventilated studio apartments.

***

As interesting as my interaction with Otis had been, it occurred to me that I would likely never have another reason to see him again (save for the off chance I was out on one of my poetically-charged night walks, or he was out investigating late-blooming flowers). I am certain that Cinderella was not a broke writer with a neurotic manager to appease and half-decent chapbook ideas to develop. 

So I tucked the memory of Otis into the corner of my mind where dreams and deja vu exist, and I kept trudging along. My world was all fifty-cent tips and a dream of landing the Sanford-Jean Fellowship. Living on fumes, surprisingly, is more sustainable than you would think.

Imagine my humdrum artistic surprise when Otis came by the coffee shop one day. 

It took me a few minutes to realize who he was. I hadn’t gotten a great look at him when we first met. And now, to see him in broad daylight, it was surreal. His chin was as square as a pizza box, and he had a wonderful, long nose and a soft, pensive smile that reflected in the darks of his eyes. Together, he was more handsome than his individual features suggested, and he was evidently unaware of his effect on me. My skin twinged inside itself. I smothered out the sensation like I would to a catching flame.

I asked, in the most normal-sounding voice I could muster, what he was doing here.

Otis wasn’t a coffee guy (or a tea guy, for that matter), but a nearing deadline at work kept him up these days. Something to do with a rich client concerned about the toxicity of lilies to her cats—I wasn’t listening closely because my hands were busy fidgeting with the buttons on my work tablet that didn’t really do anything. Otis pushed a great flop of chestnut curls to the side and asked what I suggested he should order. Relieved by this imperative to speak, I rattled off my list of go-tos:

Caramel macchiato sans vanilla, London fog, but with honey instead of sugar, our house dark roast best enjoyed without a speck of cream or sugar.

These were my battle-tested products of many failed manuscripts. 

Attempting to cover up his confusion, Otis paused before deciding on the first one, and I made him a caramel macchiato sans vanilla in a warmed cup. Otis stared warily at the cup before tentatively trying a mouthful (all foam and delighted surprise). He said I had good taste and that he should seriously contemplate becoming a serial coffee drinker. I thanked him. Then he asked if I would like to walk around with him after my shift. I thanked him and considered.

The alternative, at best, was an early dinner with whichever friend I could rope into joining me, then aspirationally attending the gym, and finally, rotting myself through a made-for-television-movie at home until I drifted off to sleep. 

Sounds great. I get off in an hour, I replied with a fake military salute. Otis chuckled and excused himself. 

At four o’clock, Otis returned tastefully late, whistling a familiar tune that I could not name. I met him outside the shop, and we walked together in the early evening haze. We figured it was best to introduce ourselves a touch more formally than when we had first met. Full names. Job descriptions. Education. Childhood. All the things that do not seem important for two strangers gallivanting beneath the silvery moon to discuss, though they are, in any other circumstance, actually sort of important to discuss.

Who we were became incrementally clearer to each other over the evening. Otis told me his mother was a librarian when we passed the candy-colored children’s section in my favorite bookstore. When Otis suggested we stop for Vietnamese food, I explicated my year-long obsession with bahn mi as a college sophomore. He had thought he would become a doctor because of his fascination with living things, but, in the end, it was plants that he found more interesting than anatomy or biochemistry—the root system of a sunflower was poetry in itself. Otis spoke with an earnest intensity—equal parts responsibly humble and unabashedly knowledgeable—that I found altogether likeable. Here was someone who was hungry for knowledge and beauty and truth and egg rolls with vermicelli. Someone like me.

It was easy to talk to Otis because it was easy for him, too. He asked questions about my work and rhyme schemes, listening intently with a small smile twisting at the corners of his lips. We found each other mutually fascinating. By the time we had finished two Thai teas and our orange-stained tongues had exhausted themselves from speaking, he walked me home. His nose was pink and cold, but the peaceful expression on his face made the silence between us all the more lovely. 

Speaking without the need to perform or fabricate parts of myself to seem more interesting was a rare, thoroughly wonderful thrill. Otis chirped happily about his project at the lab, and we lurked in the hallway of my apartment building like two busy bees pollinating a meadow of perennials. Knowing you are significant to someone the way they are to you is nothing short of Eden.

An electronic beep from Otis’ pager went off, calling him away. He stammered in his too-tall, awkwardly boyish way and said he needed to go. I leaned in to hug him goodbye, duly relieved my perfume had not yet worn off. 

But then Otis fist bumped me.

He. Bumped. My. Freaking. Fist. 

It was in that instant, as I blankly stared at the grin on his face while he strode out the door, that it became clear to me: Otis had absolutely zero romantic feelings for me. 

***

Cognitive dissonance played a one-night-only farewell finale every night following that regrettable fist bump. Make no mistake, my faulty psychology is to blame for everything else. Otis made it abundantly clear that our connection was strictly platonic. Between fist bumps, asking for good date-night spots, and actively setting me up with his friends, Otis established me as someone strictly within the parameters of Trusted Female Friend. 

Except, I was in love with him despite myself.

I loved him in the agonizing, silent way a houseplant wilts after days of neglect and too much sun exposure. It surprises me that I could even function at all beyond wondering what he was doing that day and whether he wondered about my day. Attempts to stop my eyes from shining when we met up on weekends in the park failed to hide my feelings for him from him. Otis was, in the most annoying Victorian romantic protagonist sense, utterly sensitive. 

I never worked up the courage to verbalize how I felt, for fear of inevitable rejection. Plus, I didn’t want to lose the part of Otis I already had in my life. And so my silence led to many interesting conversations about ecology and philosophers and dinosaur conspiracy theories with an undertone of pity. Pity that he held for me. 

Otis warned me that he was no saint. He would constantly point out the flaws and blunders he made, gently nudging me away from the affection I would not acknowledge aloud. I’d laugh and nod knowingly, but I was a terrible, terrible actress. In any given moment, the mask would slip, and anyone could see the sadness when he was with me. 

The day he got the call, Otis summoned my wise counsel. It was his dream job: a flight away to an Amazonian rainforest. It was everything he had ever wanted, sooner than he had ever imagined. I elbowed his rib good-naturedly, asking what in the world he was still doing standing in the Northern Hemisphere. Wisdom pains me sometimes. 

With my blessing, Otis packed and left the next week. I was careful to make sure I was busy the day of his flight. Coincidentally, the latest iteration of my chapbook manuscript caught the attention of an agent that same day. We discussed details of retail releases, contracts, and interviews, with him in a starched collar and me trying to sip a mug of tea without smudging my drugstore lipstick. I came back home that afternoon feeling light, inconsequential, and in desperate need of a nap.

When I reached my front door, I turned my janky key in its loose-fitting lock, flung open the ancient door to my apartment, and flicked on the kitchen lights. The lights flickered on, off, and then weakly on again. A flash of pink stared me down from my kitchen countertop.

Azaleas. 

I recognized those flowers in a memory buried deep underneath my “Immediately Necessary” section. Otis liked their paradoxical nomenclature: Azalea means “dry” in Greek, but the plant needs to be watered consistently. He said the word, azalea, sounds like Amelia if you’re drunk or not paying attention. 

And there he was. I smiled in the face of those fuschia flowers who reminded me of a wonderful man already halfway to Brazil. He was haunting me through botanical means, immortalized perfectly in my rose-tinted dreams of self-delusion. And still, I couldn’t bring myself to be mad at Otis for not loving me—what crime is it to treat a woman well without the slightest hint of self-interest? The love that he gave me was a love I was not worthy to receive. A love he gave me in too pure a form—a form I did not want.

My poetry collection, Le Langage des Fleurs, was inspired by a grand 19th-century anthology Otis had bought me for my birthday. I always tell everyone the same thing when they ask what my collection is about: “A meditation on the meanings we attach to beautiful and perfect things—the way we see them in spite of what they actually are.” For instance, irises signify wisdom, while asters indicate patience or elegance. 

I was surprised my agent would take on such a cheesy, childish topic. But I suppose it is, at least, something honest and authentic. I find myself more cheesy and childish than ever these days.

One day, out of sheer curiosity, I looked up the meaning of azaleas.

Azalea (Rhododendron):

Take care of yourself for me. 

Riley Shin is a dorky kid who enjoys writing dorky stories and poems for other dorky kids. She is the author of a sci-fi novel, Oh, the Marvelous Fabric of You!, and has been critically recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. Riley sincerely thanks you for reading her work and hopes you find something beautiful in these weird words of hers!