26. Aaron
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AARON
The sun is too bright, causing me to blink and blink and blink. Emma’s words don’t help. No, not her words.
Her accusation.
“Say something!” She throws her hands up in the air and spins away from me with a semi-roar. “Freaking forget-me-nots!”
She stomps away, and nothing but pure guilt guts me. The morning started with so much hope—Emma’s floral sundress, her confidence in leading the council through our vision, the way she effortlessly charmed everyone.
But she’s right—I froze. I let her down. She had to step in and carry us both. Again.
I was supposed to talk about the bench and the picnic table. I was supposed to welcome everyone. I groan as I look up into the sky. “Why am I so bad with people?”
I stood there like a frozen lump of a man, and Emma had performed effortlessly. Just like she is now.
I kick myself into gear and go after her. “Emma, wait.”
She turns back to me and plants her hands on her hips, clearly waiting for an explanation.
My mind was a jumbled mess—it still is—with too many thoughts colliding at once. I couldn’t grab hold of a single one, and I still can’t. The council’s eyes felt like lasers, and my brain just stopped.
But I can’t tell Emma that. Not right now. Not when she’s looking at me like I’ve personally sabotaged everything she’s worked for.
“I’m sorry,” I manage, my voice low. “I didn’t mean to?—”
“You didn’t mean to?” she cuts me off, her tone rising. “Aaron, this isn’t just about you . This project is my business, my reputation, as well. We were a partnership.”
Her words hit me like a hammer, each one driving deeper into my chest. I take a step back, trying to put some distance between us. “You think I don’t care about this project? About you?”
“I don’t know what to think.” She turns around and starts for the parking lot again. “I have to get back to the shop. Some of us don’t have dozens of employees to keep our shops running when we have something like this.”
“I said I was sorry, and I told you to do the whole presentation anyway.” I catch her and match my stride to hers. Wow, when she’s angry, she can move . “You’re the one who can speak so effortlessly.”
“I wanted you to talk about your pieces,” she says. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“You handled it fine.” I suck at the air. “It went fine.”
“If you say fine one more time…” She glares at me, and I give it right back to her.
My frustration feels like it’s at a boiling point. “It was more than fine. It went perfectly. The pieces, the flowers, the speech, all of it.”
“No thanks to you.”
I stop completely. “No thanks to me?”
She keeps on walking, and I let her go. She throws me one final death glare as she gets in her car and leaves the parking area, but her words have rooted me to the spot. “No thanks to me.”
I only built the two pieces in our plot. I laid all of the cobblestone—with all materials donated from my hardware store. I spent hours with the proposal while she prepped boutonnieres and bouquets for her friends’ weddings.
I met with the artist doing our rendition, and the amphitheater was my idea. I may not have been very vocal during the presentation, but I deserve a lot of thanks.
“She doesn’t trust me.” The words tumble out before I can truly think about them. But I know they’re true. And to be completely fair, I went mute on her when I should’ve had a perfectly prepared speech ready for the Community Council.
She doesn’t trust me and she has to have things her way. Every step of this project, she’s second-guessed me, bossed me around, nitpicked the color of the stain, all of it, as if I’ve never stained a piece of furniture before.
I stomp over to my truck and slam the door behind me. She’s unleashed the Doberman, and there’s no way I can go back to the hardware store without massive repercussions. I’ll say or do something awful to the people I need on my side, so I can’t go there.
I also don’t want to go home, and I simply drive around town for a few minutes, then find myself pulling into the park behind the hardware store, and I walk over to the leaking gazebo where Emma and I took shelter in that spring rainstorm a few months ago.
The day after she kissed me. The day after we found out about the park renovation and contest.
The day I told her I wanted to be more than friends.
I step up and into the gazebo, the wooden floor creaking under my weight, and sit on one of the benches. The roof above me is warped and weathered, and I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
I look over to my hardware store, with the huge loading docks in the back. Right next door is Emma’s shop, and her car sits in its usual spot. So she’s there. My pulse skips a beat when I think of walking down the fence and to the back door of her shop.
I’m a handyman, and I’ve literally been hired to fix everything from a plumbing issue to a doorknob to adding a whole new level to someone’s house.
But I’m not sure I can fix this break between Emma and I. “Last night,” I muse, and I wonder what was really in her head. She claimed to be nervous about today’s presentation, but I know there’s something more there. I just don’t know what, and I didn’t want to push her to tell me in front of all of her friends.
“They’re your friends too,” I mutter to myself. If Emma and I break-up, I’ll lose all of them—except maybe Liam. We were friends before, so I’ll probably still be able to convince him to meet me at the sports bar to watch rodeo reruns.
I get to my feet, determined to find out what’s really in Emma’s head. Something happened last night, and I need to know what if we’re going to keep moving forward. Every step toward Pretty in Petals screams, Maybe Emma deserves better.
And maybe she does. Maybe she deserves a man who doesn’t get overwhelmed by a simple presentation. Who can organize his thoughts. Someone who can give her everything she needs without making a fool of himself.
The thoughts settle in my chest like a stone, heavy and unmovable. Maybe I’ve been deluding myself, thinking that we can work, that I can somehow be The One for her, that we can make each other happy.
Maybe that’s all just wishful thinking, and maybe the best thing I can do for her is to let her go.
I arrive at the back door of the flower shop, somewhere I’ve been at least a hundred times. I usually just go in, but today, I knock and ring the delivery buzzer.
She’ll be annoyed at the interruption, especially after having to open late. I know that, but I’m unprepared for the storm that accompanies her when she finally opens the door. “Why didn’t you just come in?” She turns and walks away, leaving the door open. “I’m busy, Aaron.”
As if I’m not.
I follow her to the cusp of her walk-in refrigerator. “I wanted to say I’m sorry and have you hear it.”
“I heard you,” she says, throwing me a daggered look.
“I wanted to—I’m not sure we’re meant to be.”
She pauses with a bright orange daisy in her hand, her long eyelashes blinking fast.
“You don’t trust me,” I say. “You’re just waiting for me to mess up the way Tucker did, so that you can be vindicated in your reasons for holding me at arm’s length.”
“I do not hold you at arm’s length.”
“You don’t let me close,” I say. “I just feel—I—no matter what I do, it’s not going to be good enough for you. And that’s fine. It is. You deserve the world, and a man who can give it to you, and I just don’t think that’s me. So.”
She wears a flustered expression, her cheeks pink and her eyes wide, and for a brief moment, I consider turning around and walking away.
Her mouth opens, then closes, and for a moment, there’s nothing but silence between us. The kind of silence that feels thick and heavy, pressing down on my chest like a weight I can’t lift.
All I can think is, Three months. I still can’t keep a girlfriend for longer than three months.
And I say, “So…I think we should take a minute and see how we feel. See if we really think this can work, because right now, I’m not convinced it can.”
She doesn’t contradict me. She doesn’t say anything.
So I lift my hand in a lame wave and say, “I’ll get out of your hair.” And with that, I turn and walk away, somewhat stunned and completely heartbroken that the events of this morning have led me here, leaving my now-ex-girlfriend’s flower shop.