A Love Like the Sun

Chapter 23 Arguably the Most Gruesome Final Destination

We lock the doors around two to eat lunch and catch our breath. Mom is beaming with pride while showing me the picture she took of the line that wrapped around the door during lunchtime rush, but it was almost too busy for three people to handle. I spent the day half distracted over imagining the store blooming to something bigger, and half successfully fielding the more intense questions about Issac and about Shida’s party. For the first time, I wasn’t as anxious when people asked me.

Lex comes back with our food, and we all sit on the floor with our backs pressed up against the counter to dream up what the shop experience could be like. We’ll move the shelves on the left side and have a booth there. A cute stand in the center of the shop for fragrance oils, jars with fresh herbs, blocks of shea, cocoa, and mango butter. The products will sit on slatted shelves at the bottom of the booth. Toward the back of the shop, we’ll open up the area near the sink, lay contact paper over the old wood to make it pretty or hire someone to come in and give us a new vanity. Lex has a picture in his phone of two cute chairs and a beautiful mirror we can hang fairy lights on. We’ll have plants everywhere, ones we could pick leaves from if we need them for recipes. I’m sure customers will love being able to pick flower petals for their mixes. There will be sign-ups for the experience, and we’ll limit how much we do in a given week, which will make the service more desirable.

Planning makes us high on excitement. For the rest of the day, we’ll be running on dream adrenaline. But first, I have to make sure Mom’s alright with what this all means for our finances so I don’t drag her into something she’s not mentally prepared for like I might’ve done the last time. I must make sure I’m clear too. I can only expect one more paycheck from the hotel to help carry me through. But Issac went to Cali with nothing. Bridget used whatever she had from her aunt’s life insurance to grow a business from scratch while raising kids. We’ll never know how great Wildly Green can be if we don’t bet on ourselves.

“Are you ready for this?” I ask her. “You were right about the cost. We’ve just started breaking even again, and from my calculations we’ll be taking quite a loss shutting down while remodeling the shop.”

“I’m scared,” she admits with a sigh. “But…I love Wildly Green. I want this to work. What about you, Lex? Are you ready to ride this out with us? There may be a lot of bumps.”

Hearing the clarity she has brings me relief, and then Lex smiles and pulls us in for a hug, saying, “There are no two women I’d rather spend my time riding with.”

We clean up our food, and Lex goes to use the bathroom. While he’s in the back, Mom’s phone rings. She doesn’t answer the first call because she’s too busy straightening things on the shelves for when we open back up, but when her phone rings again she sucks her teeth and pulls it from her pocket.

“Whoever is calling me has time to hear my mouth today.”

“Maybe it’s an emergency,” I say.

She mumbles something under her breath before, “Oh, It’s Issac.”

His name rings through my body. My chest tightens at the thought of him calling her for an emergency.

I stop sweeping and walk over to her. We’re both nervous when she picks up the phone.

“Is everything okay?” Mom asks, and when the muscles in her face relax and she laughs, I breathe better. “Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ohhh, that would be great. Thank you for…okay, okay. I won’t, but you better come home soon for some of my chili. I saw your newest photo shoot and you’re looking too slim. I don’t like it. Of course, boy. I know I make the best chili out here. But keep telling me. I love to hear it.” Mom giggles like a fan. I roll my eyes, and she sticks her tongue out. “Alright. I love you too, Issac.”

Instead of hanging up the phone, she passes it to me. I turn away from her prying eyes.

“Hey, big head,” I say, walking toward the window. “You had me worked up with worry.”

There’s no Hi, hermit back, just a soft, “You were worried? I was half sick.”

“What? Why?”

“I couldn’t get in touch with you. Your phone…”

“Shit.” I shake my head like he can see me. “I changed my number last night and forgot to text you with it. I’m sorry. But why were you worried? It’s only been—”

“Eighteen hours since your plane landed,” he cuts in. “You sent a Laniah-style text letting me know and that was it.” He laughs, but I can tell he was seriously worried. I sit on the windowsill and wait for him to say something else. “Just leaving your man out here ready to take a red-eye flight and track you down.”

I snort. “You’re dramatic. But you know what, maybe I should turn my phone off all day tomorrow, call your bluff. If it does get you over here, that just means more time with you.”

“Mm.” He’s smiling; I can hear it. “So, what you’re saying is you miss me already?”

“Quit it,” I reply, but I’m smiling too.

Until I realize how different it feels to have a simple conversation with him now. We’ve shared our affections and worries before, but this feels romantic in a way it hasn’t before. Or maybe it just feels romantic to me.

He lets out a deep breath. “Nah, but for real, Ni. I’m happy you’re okay.”

“What’d you think happened to me?”

“Thought maybe you were done with me because I’d leaped over our boundary line mentioning the Brent song,” he says. Then, “Or you slipped in the shower, or you got behind one of those eighteen-wheelers with the logs. You’ve also been getting them headaches and what if…I don’t know, Ni.”

“Damn,” I say. “The Final Destination worst-case scenarios, huh?”

“Movie-number-two-type gruesome. I was about to tell Franklin the crab Mommy wasn’t coming home.”

“Arguably the most traumatizing movie in the franchise.” I laugh. “But I think Franklin would be just fine without me. So would you. Though I suppose I can keep my phone on and make sure to touch base whenever I can, if you promise to do better with yours too. I worry when you disappear for three days. You know?”

He doesn’t respond for a second, then, “I’ll have Bernie put your call on speaker in the middle of a shoot. How’s that?”

“I doubt Bernie would enjoy it very much, but it sounds fantastic, my sweet king.”

He laughs. “You’ve got jokes.”

“Better than yours.”

“I’ll let you have that, babe,” he says, and the endearment coming from his mouth after the weekend we spent together makes my heart soften in a scary way. But then he drops his voice to tell me, “Bernie was walking by, and I wanted to try it out in front of someone. How was it?”

“Maybe we don’t do that one? Crossing more lines than the Brent song, I think.”

“Really? Okay. Sweetheart?”

“Um…sure.”

“I thought babe was a little much right there,” he says. “But, Ni, I gotta run. Don’t forget to text me your number or we’ll have middle school–style beef.”

“You don’t want beef with me,” I tell him. “I know jujitsu.”

“You’re such a punk,” he says, and hangs up.

Mom was waiting until the phone call ended just to clear her throat. I’m surely blushing when I turn around, trying not to smile. She’s closing the lid on a jar, and she’s got those perfectly drawn eyebrows arched high.

“What is it, Mom?”

She skips straight to it. “Were you two…flirting?”

“Don’t even…of course we weren’t.”

“Sounded a whole lot like flirting, you didn’t even tell him about our plans for the shop.”

Oh. I was excited thinking of talking to him about it this morning, but the conversation just now caught me off guard. “It was a quick call; I’ll tell him later,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I’ll drop it, but don’t come to me crying when you’re falling in love…” She trails off, but butterflies are already beating their wings in my belly.

Falling in love? Crying…over Issac?

Suddenly an image of my mother weeping at my father’s bedside breaks through and squashes any butterflies inside of me. Because falling in love with Issac might be like riding behind a rickety old 18-wheeler that’s swerving and carrying cut logs, and that’s absolutely not the position I want to be in.

“We’re all family,” she says. “Don’t get caught up in this and hurt each other.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. And you’ll never see me cry over any man.”

I say it jokingly, but something curious flashes in her eyes.

She frowns. “If you say so.”