Decameron: The Basil [IV/5]
The relationship ended at the worst, and maybe the best possible time.
After a year of cohabitation, the apartment had just enough time to transition from “distinctly Austin’s” to “Tyler and Austin’s” even if all the fundamentals in the place — the larger furniture, the table, most of the art — belonged to Austin. Most of their friends had met through an app, and dated people with a shared connection or through work. Tyler and Austin were the rare couple who met in-person, in a park on a whim. Austin came from enough money that his corporate job more than handled the rent, while Tyler worked with his hands, working for the city. As far as apps were concerned, there was no friend-of-friend-of-friend that would have made their compatability fathomable, but it worked, and well.
Austin had stuff but Tyler grew things, nurtured them, a spice garden on the windowsill and houseplants that grew better than any Austin had seen before. He had skill and drive and knew how to make things where there hadn’t been things before. Austin was a little frustrated — he liked things neat, and all the cubic feet of dirt in his apartment for plants wasn’t his idea of decor — but put up with it, because he was in love and that’s what you do.
But Tyler had a visa situation, and was always on borrowed time, and eventually the applications piled up and he had to go home for just a little while, but maybe it was a chance to take a break while the legal situation got ironed out. Austin offered to help — it was too early but if it helped they could do a domestic partner thing — but Tyler wouldn’t have it, they’d do it right and he’d be back soon enough and they’d start it back up again.
So he left. And he left the plants. And Austin felt awful. And a week later, everyone else started feeling awful too, for unrelated reasons.
The short break wasn’t going to be short, he realized. It might not even end up being a break.
One by one, the plants began to falter. Identifying plants online was harder than he’d anticipated, and Austin lacked the vocabulary to describe the kind of serrated part on the pointy part of the frond thing. And bit by bit, the plants that needed water dried to dust, and the ones that liked it dry drowned, and the fragile ones melted in direct sunlight, but the greedy ones never could get enough. He was alone, in an apartment for two, surrounded by dead plants.
Except the basil.
“Basil is basically impossible to kill,” he remembered Tyler saying, “we planted some in my garden when I was a kid on a lark, and even years after we ripped the garden out the basil still comes back every year.”
He didn’t think he’d mind that.
Decameron is a newsletter recounting the 14th Century set of quarantine tales for 2020. Read the original story.
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