Cooking breakfast is a meditation. A chance to review the past day and to prepare for what’s to come. But this morning my only mantra is Sophie, the smell of her, her taste. The hopeful way she smiled at me when I came out of the bathroom last night, and how it seemed completely normal to want to rip my heart out of my chest and put it in her hands for safekeeping as long as it meant she’d always smile at me like that. The sickness in my stomach as she left, looking as confused as I felt, though likely for a wildly different reason.

I eat, not letting myself ruminate on the hurt on her face when I acted as if she doesn’t distract me at all.

The location scouts come today.

I have no clue what they’re scouting for, but I want the restaurant to look its best. I’m not as excited as I thought I’d be, though. Sophie’s warning rings loudly in my head. How my privacy won’t be my own and the producers might exploit something like my identity for the sake of the show. It tarnishes the shine.

I clean up and wash the dishes, then fill my watering can.

“What do I do?” I ask Hazel, my string of pearls succulent, and I don’t know if I’m asking about the knot in my stomach, about the show or Sophie. I move to my next plant, a little morning glory working its way up a trellis I fashioned out of skewers. This ritual is like the moon last night, grounding me against this dizzy, nauseated feeling, filling me fuller than breakfast did.

“The thing is, Fern.” I trim dead leaves from the sword fern that was my mother’s. “Sophie is a new baby queer.” My plants have never responded to me—thank god—but they’ve grown bigger, thrived because of these conversations. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. I get to barf my feelings all over an impartial third party who can’t tell anyone, and they get great care.

“And from the way she was looking at me, last night was not enough of a distraction. But she should spread her wings. There’s a whole world of people out there,” I say quietly. I would know. I’ve slept with a lot of the queer ones.

“Would I have loved to bring her back here and lay her out on the bed and take my time with her? Obviously,” I tell the snake plant Wes gave me as a moving gift. My stomach drops again, that sick feeling returning. “It’s better that I bow out,” I say. “She deserves someone who can spend all their time on her. I’ve got distractions of my own.”

The plants don’t respond. Which is still good. But this is the first time that I kind of wish someone had heard me. More than anything, I wish my mom—the eternal optimist—would remind me gently that if anyone could understand my distractions, the crazy hours, the way I absolutely saturate myself in work, it would be Sophie.