“I work in a garage all day. I think I can handle this.”
“Did I say you couldn’t?” Handling it isn’t going to be an issue. The actual transaction of the flowers he’ll be able to do with his eyes closed, but when people start asking about symbolism and which are the best for a dinner party and which will impress someone with understated elegance is when he’ll struggle.
But hey, at least I can take a piss break this week without having to close everything up.
We load up the carts with buckets of flowers and head inside.
The other vendors are trickling in nice and early, getting their stalls ready for when the doors open at seven. Conversation and laughter filters through the brewery, along with the occasional thud of stock being shifted and whir of machines coming to life. This has been my every Sunday for years now. It’s outside of a corporate nine-to-five, outside of me desperately counting calories to keep the only job I’d been able to hold down during my spiral—this is where contentment lives.
I smile at Amber and Steve, who are setting up their produce stand next to mine, and drop the buckets off. It takes us a few trips with the carts between the van and the booth to get everything, but having Ford’s help makes the process much faster.
“You only came in once this week,” I say to Ford as I get to work setting up my display. “Running light on events in Kilborough?”
“Got my receptionist’s daughter’s teacher chocolates instead. Had to give you a chance to miss me, after all.”
“Chocolates? Wow. Why do I feel like you’ve cheated on me?”
“Now probably isn’t a great time to mention the balloon bouquet I’ve ordered, then, huh?”
I pretend to shudder. “It’s like you don’t even care.”
Ford laughs. “I don’t get up at the ass-crack of dawn for just anyone.”
“Technically, it’s not dawn yet,” I point out, trying and failing not to like his words too much.
“The gooch of day, then.”
I snigger. “Do me a favor and don’t wish anyone gooch morning.”
“You’re going to take all the fun out of today, aren’t you?”
“I’ll let you have fun. I’m just stating up front that I’m banning all mention of body parts.”
“But what if someone says they want balls in their flowers?” He points at a bunch where most of the flowers haven’t bloomed yet.
“Those are buds. The stick part is a stem—if you call it a shaft, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The grin he gives me tells me that’s exactly what he was going to do.
“The prices will be on everything. All you need to do is ring each customer up, and leave the flower talk to me.”
“Now I can’t even talk to people?” He throws up his heavily tattooed arms. “I gave upThe Bachelorfor this.”
“The … Bachelor?”
“Dumbass trash TV is my weakness.”
“I don’t even own a TV.”
My confession is met with silence like it so often is.
“No … TV?”
“It’s never been my thing. If I want to watch a movie, I do it on my computer, but …” I shrug. The bewilderment on his face doesn’t fade.
“So you’ve never been exposed to the seedy goodness of reality show drama?”
“Never.”