“We can start doing push-ups before bed,” I said. I myself could do only one before my body collapsed and I fell onto the floor. “Touchstone can be our coach. He’s actually weirdly strong.” One time he’d helped me and Ros rearrange their bedroom and shocked us all with how easy it was for him to move heavy objects.

“Perfect,” they said.

They paused to study a handwritten sign that was taped to the back door. Someone had taken a Sharpie to cardboard and written:

THIS WAY TO THE FERNERY –>

“Should we go? Or do we think it’s an elaborate hoax?”

“Only one way to find out,” I said.

We followed the hand-drawn arrow. Up the hill was a small greenhouse, which we guessed was the Fernery in question. We made our way up the slope in the land to the greenhouse’s front door. I wondered whether we were really allowed to open it—the sign marking its existence had been a little suspicious—but Ros swung it open, and we were swallowed by a hot, humid world of green, and I forgot my worries entirely.

If I wanted to spend more time in the bookstore, I wanted to spend my whole life in the Fernery. It was the kind of place you found only in storybooks: a life-size jewel box with ferns carpeting nearly every surface except the path we were on. We started on a small balcony from which we could see nearly everything: the waterfall in the back that tumbled into a reflecting pool, a wooden footbridge that spanned its length, the koi ponds on either side of us, a little grotto scenario that you could walk through. All around us, a multitude of ferns spilled from the walls and sprang up from the beds. It felt like the sort of place that asked you to believe in magic.

“I feel like I’m in one of our fairy houses,” I said.

“Ours were better,” Ros said, and with that, all the awkwardness from earlier seemed to disappear. They looked at me and smiled, and for one measly second, both of us haloed by green, safe in this jewel box of prehistoric plants, I thought that they might take my hand, or—I’m almost embarrassed to admit—I thought that they might kiss me right then and there, on the balcony of the Fernery. That everything I dreamed would come true; it had just been a matter of finding the right place.

“C’mon,” said Ros, “let’s look at these ferns.”