greenhouse ✿ l.h

3// sunrise

A pinkish glow overtook her room and she glanced at the clock. It was 6:45 and the sun was already rising. Lo stood up and stretched. With a glance in the mirror and a grunt, she tucked her mousy hair behind her ears and slid on her glasses. She grabbed her phone and began to make her way towards the kitchen.

Her heart nearly stopped when she saw a man passed out on her couch. She'd completely forgotten about him.

Lo shook her head. She grabbed her picnic basket and began to pack up the muffins. Suddenly, a heat took over her cheeks as she thought back to the night before.

"These muffins are fantastic, Lo." That beautiful man knew her name. The two of them sat in front of the fire and chatted while they ate the baked goods.

"They're blueberry and banana," she told him. "Pearl gave me some blueberries the other day, so I decided to make the best of it." She remembered him smiling at her. Her cheeks burned like the sun.

That's when her phone started ringing. Lo nearly jumped straight out of her skin. There was a sleeping man on her couch and her phone was ringing at full volume. She cursed quietly and answered the call.

"Hello?" she whispered.

"Lo?" It was Pearl. Lo hadn't even checked to see who was calling her. "Why are you whispering?"

"Well, I'm in the kitchen and Luke is asleep on the couch," Lo said, her cheeks flushing as she said his name. He'd told her what it was last night.

"Your name is Lo? That's...I like it."

"Luke? So it's a man, then?" Pearl asked, pulling Lo from her memories.

"Y-yeah. He's, uh," Lo hesitated, "he's nice, I guess."

"Nice? For goodness sake, this man was sleeping in your greenhouse."

"So?" Neither of them said anything for a second. Pearl sighed.

"I'm coming over."

"No you're not. I'm coming over there." Pearl didn't say anything and Lo's eyebrows began to furrow out of frustration. " Didn't you buy some new tea that you wanted to try together?" Lo just heard heavy breathing. She rolled her eyes and hung up.

"Was that Pearl?" Yet again, Lo felt her heart stop as she looked up and saw a sleepy Luke rubbing at his eyes. She smiled. He looked like a sleepy tyke.

"Um, yeah, it was. She's coming over." Luke's eyes got wide and Lo feared for the worst.

"Is that my cue to leave, then?" he asked.

"What?"

"Well I can't exactly stay here." Luke was very calm about this. Lo wondered if he'd done this before.

"Why not?" Luke gave her a skeptical look and shook his head.

"I'm...a damn criminal." Luke shook his head. Lo suddenly remembered him telling her that he was, "on the lam" last night. She wondered what it was that he'd done. "And I'm going to leave now."

"No!" Lo shouted, startling the both of them. "I-I mean, uh, please stay." She tried to calm down, but her cheeks turned cherry red. She could've sworn that she saw Luke's eyes glimmer as he smiled at her. "W-well it's not like you have a-anywhere to go." There was a silence for a second and Lo realized that she might've put her foot in her mouth. "W-wait, t-that's n-not w-what I m-meant! I-I—"

"You stutter when you're nervous," Luke said, a smirk on his face. Lo's face looked and felt like the center of a campfire. "But you're right." He sighed, moving closer to her and leaning on an adjacent counter. "I've got no where else to go."

"Stay h-here and work as a farmhand," Lo suggested, fighting hard to calm down.

"Farmhand? You don't even have livestock. Just a lot of land."

"W-well still. I have a lot of plants, and the spring harvest is coming up, and I could use all the help I can get." Luke looked at the ground and crossed his arms. He looked up as if about to say something, but suddenly there was a rat-tat-tat on the door. The pair looked towards the glassy screen-door. And there stood Pearl, a striped sweater and jeans on under a Member's Only jacket. The rain boots on her feet looked similar to the ones Lo wore last night.

"I brought tea for three," Pearl said, peeking inside around Lo's wide frame. "Where is he?"

"He's just inside." Pearl raised her eyebrows suggestively and stepped into the house.