I hold my breath, wondering if it’s Jillian or Alanna who has a new admirer. They’re both in college and while they don’t have regular boyfriends- at least I don’t think they do- they’ve never got flowers here either.
“These are for Leandra Cromwell,” the lady says. She sweeps her long red hair off the back of her neck and brushes at her forehead. She’s flushed from the heat outside. I can’t imagine having to work outside in the worst of the heat, and in NOLA, it gets really, really hot.
“Oh. That’s me.” I stand there feeling like the hugest nerd, but the lady just holds out a clipboard with a page and a pen and tells me to sign beside my name, which I do. Woodenly.
Because who in the ever-loving love of Pete sent me flowers? Flowers. Seriously. I’m just lucky that none of my brothers or my cousins are here, because I’d never hear the end of it.
As it is, Luna raises a brow after the flower lady is gone. ‘Uh, I thought you said you were taking a break from dating. Not that you have to. You certainly don’t have to. I just- you’ve had a hard year. The curse is being a real bastard for you. Or all the guys you’ve dated have been, at any rate. I know that the guys all think that you’ll fall in love and that will be that, the curse will have got you all, but you actively went looking for it and all you got was heartache and that sucks. I know you said you were done, but are you- you’re really done, or you were just saying you were done to throw us off?”
“No,” I huff, feeling utterly ridiculous even though Luna is sweet and concerned and means well. She’s not saying any of that to be hurtful, but it is true. After the year of hell, I was supposed to be on a more than permanent pause. None of the guys had to go out looking for the curse. It got them when they least expected it. How lucky for them. “I’m really taking a break. For real. For good. Forever. Farging men.”
“Farging men,” Luna echoes, even though she’s happily married to my brother. They’re actually sickeningly in love. Both my brothers and both my cousins are. They all are with great women who I couldn’t be happier to call family.
I’m glad for them. Really. I am.
“Will you open it?” Luna holds up the small package that came with the flowers. It’s wrapped in brown paper. “Or maybe the flowers have a card? If you have a secret admirer, I’m seriously going to shit bricks.”
“Right here? Right now? I don’t know if it would be good for the store, but is it wrong that I’d actually like to see that happen? If actual bricks come out?”
“Very,” she says dryly and shoves the package at me. “Open it.”
She tackles the flowers, searching inside the wrap for a card, while I open the package with the letter opener I usually use for the store’s mail. My heart is pounding all over the place and I feel like a hot, buttery mess even though I have the AC blasting in here. I’m hot from the inside out. Because who the ever-loving lover of love sent me this bouquet?
The wrap comes off the package and it turns out it’s a small, hardcover book.
“The Victorian Language of Flowers Dictionary and History?” Luna exclaims, more like a question, as she reads the cover before I do. “What the heck does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” It’s weird. It’s very weird. I crack the book open and on the inside, between the first page and the thick cover, there’s a folded up piece of paper. I have to open it now that Luna’s seen it. She’ll never be able to contain her curiosity otherwise. I don’t know if I feel curious. What I feel is closer to dread.
I read the note quickly to myself, turning a little more buttery with relief, and then with a warmth that I don’t want to acknowledge, as I skim the words. I don’t want to be warm and gooey. I don’t want to think about him. My mysterious man from the ball. It turns out he has a name. Daniel. His name is Daniel. Somehow it seems like a nice, safe, sweet name for a man who is all black suits, black eyes, hard layers of muscle, nights of steamy pleasure, and with a whole bottle of mystery layered one over another.
“What’s this?” Luna produces a small envelope from the bouquet of flowers. I already know what it is before she opens the flap and tips my earring out onto the counter.
All this time he had it.
I’ve looked everywhere. I had no idea where I had lost it. I was sweating, thinking that out there, my cursed earring was in the hands of someone else, someone who might potentially be my soulmate. Maybe there was a part of me that hoped that I’d lost it at Daniel’s house. Maybe. Maybe there was the smallest part that hoped that he’d find it and find me and that I’d see him again. Fuck a cluck with a side of muck fuck. Because now he doesn’t have it. It’s here. He returned it. Not in person either.