Going to the flower shop is the one indulgence I allow myself, stopping in every day for a single flower.
For that one moment, surrounded by beauty, I pretend I’m someone else. Not trapped in this dead-end town. In this dead-end relationship. In this dead-end life.
For that moment, I pretend I have a thousand possibilities, that I can be anyone, in any flower shop anywhere in the world.
“My food done yet?” Robbie yells, not taking his eyes off the screen. “And get me a beer.”
My eyes fall shut. I take a deep breath in and let it out just as slowly.
Then I go and get Robbie his damn beer.
* * *
Life is just more of the same, like always, until three days later when I walk in the flower shop after working all day at the coffeeshop.
And I freeze in my tracks. Instead of seeing my friend Latoya behind the counter it’s…him. Like him him.
Shak. The beautiful, musclebound god of a man.
He’s just standing there in a T-shirt that is strained and barely containing his muscles, trimming and arranging flowers.
“I told you I’d see you somewhere,” he says with only the barest glance up my way. “Do you come here often?”
“Every day. What are you doing here?” I blurt out. And then I want to beat myself in the face with my own fist because yeah, way to go with the suave opening.
He looks my way and immediately that devilish tongue of his is out and licking his lips. Jesus, does he know what that does to a girl?
“I— I just mean,” I backpedal, “I’m used to seeing Latoya here. Is she out sick or something?”
“She was in good health, the last time I saw her. I purchased the store from her.”
“You— you did?” I take a few more steps inside the shop.
He nods and sets the bouquet of flowers he’s working on aside. His giant muscular forearms bulge and flex with his every movement.
“What species of flower may I interest you in today?”
I can’t help smiling at the way he talks. So formal and with an accent I can’t place. I’m a sucker for an accent. Who isn’t?
God he’s good looking. Just for a few minutes, is it really so wrong to forget about Robbie and my life and all the other bullshit? It’s so easy to pretend that I’m in a flower shop in Paris and this handsome Parisian giant is nice and interested in talking to me. Idle chitchat never hurt anybody.
“So, you been in the flower game long?”
His brows furrow like he’s not sure what I mean. Lost in translation, I assume, so I try again. “You like flowers?”
He looks around the shop, like he’s really considering his answer. “When I was a very young child, I used to play in fields of wildflowers. But then came the long winters. We had to leave and I never saw the wildflowers again.”
He doesn’t bother trying to mask the flash of pain on his face. I can read it so clearly in his bright amber brown eyes. Like he was reliving it this very moment.
“It is one of my last good memories of home.”
Wow. Okay, so this went deep fast but when was the last time I had a real conversation with anybody?
I nod. I remember hearing about some brutal storms in Siberia a few years back. Maybe that’s where he’s from. “The droughts have been hard here in California, but I know we have it so much better than a lot of people around the world.”
Duh, obviously he knows. On impulse, I reach forward and lay a hand on his across the counter. “I’m so sorry. Where did you grow up?”
He doesn’t answer, though. He’s just staring at our hands. When he looks up at me again, his eyes are more gold than brown and they’re full of wonder.
Oh shit. I’m sending mixed signals. Because this isn’t Paris and I’m not single and free to flirt.
I pull back and clear my throat. “Well it seems like all that might be over now. With the new technology. They’re planting trees in the deserts, didn’t you hear? Maybe you’ll see those wildflowers again one day.”
His stare is still intense even though I’ve taken a step back from the counter.
“Maybe the past must be let go to make way for a more beautiful future,” he says. “We cannot cling too long to what was or we will miss out on what can be.”
Mariah’s perfect face flashes through my head. Her limp hand.
And I shake my head, both to dispel the memory and Shak’s words. “It’s a nice thought. But it’s the past that makes us who we are now.” And we can’t escape it any more than we can the present. “I’ll take a purple tulip.” They were Mariah’s favorite, after all.