The Art of Growing

Sloane Abbott likes her quiet life. She owns a landscaping business, she tends her plants, lives alone, and secretly crushes on her favorite nonbinary garden center employee, Polly. Between anxiety and modesty, Sloane's never planning on telling Polly she likes them. She'll just be admiring from afar while she deals with her demanding family and fulfills her sister's order.

Polly Stanwick loves people. She has the best time working at Blooms, talking to customers, hanging out with the kids, and generally being a ray of sunshine. When they hear their regular, Sloane Abbott, is having a rough day, they naturally sweep in to help.

What neither of them is expecting is for Polly's colleague to suggest her as a fake date for Sloane's weekend with her family. For Sloane, it's the only way to avoid the heteronormative life her parents will push on her, so despite her misgivings, she agrees. It's only one weekend, right?

Fooling the Abbotts into thinking she and Polly are a couple is easy, but for Sloane, handling her own feelings is harder. Holding hands and sharing a bed doesn't make things any easier-nor does Polly being there for her in all the ways she ever wished somebody would.

Sometimes the hardest thing to face is our own potential to grow.

The Art of Growing is a 75k-word slow-burn, friends-to-lovers, fake-dating romance over a weekend full of mutual pining and blurred lines. Content warnings for on-page sex scenes, abusive family dynamics, off-screen references to past abusive relationships, anxiety attacks, and useless sapphics.