Chapter One In Which the Fear of Being Known Results in Free Flowers #2
“It’s not me,” I say, cutting her off, and then lean conspiratorially over the counter. “But can you keep a secret?”
“Probably.”
“Andy is my cousin.” The lie falls off my tongue so easily it feels like the truth, but isn’t that all acting is anyway? Just
a giant lie in a gorgeous production package?
“No way, seriously?”
“Yep, obviously the genes are strong on that side of the family,” I say, waving my hand casually toward my face and then holding
my breath for her reaction.
“So you grew up with Andy, then? The Andy, from The Nikki and Andy Show?”
“Mmmhmmm,” I say, glad that my ruse seems to be working. It’s not often that I get recognized anymore, and I’d like to keep
it that way.
“Do you still talk to her, or did she cut you off like she cut off—”
“All the time,” I say, and force on a smile.
Plaid Jacket’s face lights up and I mentally kick myself. “Then you know where she is?”
“No!” I say, a little too fast. “We don’t . . . we don’t really talk about that. She’s just out there, somewhere, finding
herself.” I mean, it’s not technically a lie.
Disappointment etches itself across Plaid Jacket’s features. “Sounds like she still sucks just as much as she used to then.”
“What?” I jerk back. “No, She’s great. Perfect, actually. I love her.” And then, because I can’t stop myself: “You don’t even
know her.”
“Sorry,” the woman says, holding up her hands. She’s clearly taken aback by my little outburst. “I just meant, you know, there
were all those stories about her online before she took off and here we are, years later, and she’s still ‘finding herself’?
Not even telling her own family where she is?” She gestures toward me. “You are way cooler about that than I would be if it
was my cousin.”
“Can I wrap these for you?” I ask, desperate to change the subject before my rapidly clenching fists snap her carnation stems.
“I’ll even throw in some baby’s breath for free to punch it up a little.”
That’s not all I want to punch up right now.
“Oh, thanks, yeah, that’d be great,” the woman says, momentarily distracted by the allure of a good deal. Most people around
here are. It’s not a very wealthy town, after all, especially not during the off-season.
I force the pathetic arrangement of sad carnations and wispy baby’s breath to look prettier than it has any right to be—while still being careful not to bleed all over it—and then usher the woman out the door with her five-dollars-plus-tax purchase as fast as I can.
I’m still patting myself on the back for the bullet (barely) dodged when Regan steps out of the back room, where she’s been
breaking down boxes from today’s delivery. Gouda, my fluffy gray gremlin of a cat that I rescued from a dumpster nearly seven
years ago, follows right behind her, meowing for food even though it’s not even close to feeding time.
“Did I just hear you give away flowers for free?” Regan asks, arching her eyebrows when she sees me using floral tape to wrap
fresh paper towels around my hand. “Don’t tell me you cut yourself again.”
A tinge of guilt has me biting my lip. “Just a scratch this time,” I lie. “And I only gave her a few sprigs of baby’s breath,
which I’ll cover. Let me just run up and grab my wallet.”
“Relax,” Regan says. “It’s like twenty-five cents. I know you’re good for it. How’d that happen, though? You’re usually worse
than me about the bottom line.”
I snort at that, even though I know it’s true. I guess there’s just something about having everything stolen from me, aside
from the legally mandated Coogan Account and its paltry balance—15 percent of everything I earned as a minor safe and sound
under federal law—that has me checking and rechecking the books here. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .
“Was she cute?” Regan teases, sliding the rest of the roses over to finish them up herself.
It’s almost closing time, and as much as I’m happy to stay here twenty-four-seven, because god knows I have nothing else to do, I know Regan is anxious to get home.
Besides, it would be almost impossible for me to finish stripping the stems now that my hand is wrapped up like a Bounty boxing glove.
“God, I wish. No, she thought I looked familiar,” I admit eventually. “I needed to distract her and send her on her way.”
“Ahh,” Regan says with a sigh. “Did you go with the distant cousin lie or the ‘everyone has a doppelg?nger and it’s so annoying that mine was on TV’ one?”
“Cousin.”
“Good, that one’s way more believable.” She pauses, studying my face. “It’s been a little while since that’s happened. You
okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, not meeting her eyes, because we both understand the answer to that question has been not really for most of my life.
Regan knows the truth of who I am and who I used to be, because of course she does. I still remember working up the courage
to come clean, and how worried I was that it would change something between us . . . but when the time came, it was kind of
underwhelming.
Turns out she had figured it out almost immediately, back when I was still renting cabin six from Mrs. Sanderson and spending
way too long shaking sand out of my clothes. Regan didn’t care one bit, although she did admit to streaming every episode
once I officially moved into her rental upstairs. She said it was part of her “background check,” and I was desperate enough
for a friend that I laughed it off, even though it was deeply mortifying.
Once I realized my secret really was safe with her, I signed a one-year lease and decided I was staying.
The place isn’t much, especially compared to what I was used to on the left coast—barely a one bedroom thanks to a hastily added wall—but I love that it’s just mine.
Well, mine and Gouda’s—who, as if on cue, lets out another yowl before curling up on the heating vent.
Sometimes I wonder if Gouda misses LA, the sounds and smells and sunshine she used to soak up through the window of the fourth-floor
condo we shared with my rotten ex, the feel of real marble and hardwood under her paws, rather than linoleum or laminate,
but if she does, she hasn’t complained in any real discernible way.
Besides, she hated my last girlfriend even more than I did by the end. While I’m sure Gouda could have done without the impromptu
cross-country road trip, and she definitely could have done without me driving straight to the beach the second we pulled
into town, I’d like to think she’s happier here.
I know I am, even if my ex-celebrity status has kind of become a running joke around my friends. Like when I sign the same
printed-out time sheet that In Bloom has been using weekly since it opened in 1980, Regan always says she’s going to take
THE Anderson Ducharme’s autograph and put it on eBay, or when Johnny, Regan’s other best friend and the town mechanic, dressed
up as my old character for our three-person Halloween party last year. It’s ridiculous, sure, but I don’t really mind anymore . . .
Because it means that someone found out—two someones, actually—and the world didn’t end. They’re still my friends, they don’t care about any of the Hollywood bullshit, and I don’t I have to keep my past a secret. I breathed a little bit easier after that.
I probably would breathe a lot better now if I wasn’t still worried about everyone else on this planet finding out, but oh
well. It’s just hard knowing that anyone in the entire universe can google the worst moments of my life at a second’s notice
once they realize who I really am.
It’s why I don’t get too close with anyone else around here. I can’t trust it, not really. Which means that Regan does the
bulk of the deliveries and all of the farmers markets, while I handle the inventory and custom orders. It works out well. She’s an extrovert who gets antsy
in the silence of the store . . . and silence is what I came here for. Isn’t it?
I know what it sounds like—it sounds like I’m hiding, and like Regan and Johnny have been aiding and abetting me these last
few years. But I’m not. I swear, I’m not.
This place gave me a chance to start fresh. A chance to figure out who I was on my own terms, despite everything from my old life telling me that who I was was not enough. That I could only ever be a speck of dust overshadowed by someone else’s light, never standing on my own. Never being seen
for who I truly am.
I had to leave. I had to choose myself for once. So I packed up what little I owned and left, ditching the warm West Coast
for the ice-cold East in the middle of March. I was reborn in those frigid waters—with my cat yowling from her carrier in
the front seat of my car, surrounded by expensive luggage and garbage bags full of my belongings; an odd mix, just like me.
I had walked onto the beach that night in sneakers and leggings and an old concert hoodie I still have in the back of my closet.
I kept going until the water skimmed my hips and then my belly and then my chin.
And when I finally turned and bolted back up the sand, wet and shivering and feeling totally wrung out—I knew I was already becoming something new. Something just for me.
Andy was gone. Andy had to die.
Long live Annie, future florist, instead.