The Wilde Expedition

25. tough choices

Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.

〮CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE 〮

After the coffee shop, Gavin and I hopped into the Wilde Child and went on our way to our first destination. We parked on the side of the road, and followed the sidewalk to an isolated street decorated by bushels of greenery. I couldn't imagine many gardens surviving the winter, but Gavin reassured me this was the best time to visit. "It isn't so crowded this time of year," he explained. "I mean, we won't see any blossoms or anything, but it's still beautiful."

"Always the optimist," I mused aloud, earning a playful nudge in the arm. I walked a bit ahead while he fiddled around with his camera straps, his camera bag hooked onto his back, and a spare lens latched onto a hook by his waist. We were both wearing sweatshirts, our jackets discarded in the van.

I refused to voluntarily "pose" for any pictures, so I ducked ahead through the massive archways, capped with double eave roofs, red on top and accented with black.

I'd never been to a tea garden, but I figured Mom would want a postcard, so I made a mental note to snag one before leaving.

At once I was confronted with a coy pond, adorned with reeds along the edges, and a bridge connecting one end from the other. I stood over it and followed the shimmering orange tail of a coy fish, speckled with black and silver. Of course, there was always the issue of hearing the snap of a picture being taken, which caused a great deal of paranoia on my part. The last thing I wanted were more pictures of me, but thankfully, he seemed to be absorbed in the scenery.

There were a few people up and about, such as the family crossing the bridge that arched in a half-circle over the water. The steps were steep, and out of curiosity I decided to climb it after noticing that it was no longer occupied. At the very top, I peered over the railing down at the pond and then through the branches of the trees to Gavin, who promptly waved at me from the ground.

When I descended the other side, he was there to prevent me from falling. Thankfully, I'd had enough experience pouncing around, so landing wasn't an issue. He complimented my supreme agility, to which I shoved him back for and said, "Enough dilly-dallying, show me around."

"If you say so, Miss Bossy-Pants," he jested. "But for the record, we have three hours to get through the park, so dilly-dally away."

Man, was I good at dilly-dallying or what? My day-to-day life consisted of bumming around anyway, except for the times when Mom made me do this, Vincent had me to that, dance lessons, homework, studying... But in the end, I preferred bumming around, even if it meant burning away two hours in a park that probably should have only consumed half an hour.

We spent a lot of time by the ponds, and there was one where we hopped around on flat rocks across the surface. That part really got on Gavin's nerves, because he kept panicking like, "Oh my God, oh my God, don't drop the camera, don't drop the camera!" Fortunately for him, he never did drop the camera, and I never dropped the camera for the few times he let me use it to take pictures of him.

Since the park wasn't as busy as Gavin claimed it was in the summer time, we found a secluded area underneath droopy branches and tall grass. There was a stone bench that we relaxed on while he showed me the pictures he'd taken. I tried not to make a big deal about the ones of me by the red and gold, five-tiered building with the classic double-eave roofs. They weren't entirely focused on my face anyway—all you could see was my dark purplish-blue sweatshirt, and my blonde hair.

We made our trip around the tea garden and wound up at the small teashop overlooking the entrance. To get there, we passed a large sculpture of a buddha, standing at least two-times my size. Surrounding it were bamboo shoots, decorating the outskirts of the sculpture and following the path to the gift shop.