Epilogue
Strike a Pose
Two Years Later
I’m arranging a bunch of lilies into a crystal vase for a gorgeous wedding arrangement when Regan rushes into the store, tightly
gripping the latest issue of Vogue.
I roll my eyes.
I sent her to the grocery store on a fake errand in the hope of getting rid of some of her nervous energy—or at least keep
it from spilling over onto me while I still have work to do.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
“Look what I got,” Regan chirps in a little singsong voice. If she thinks that’s going to make me any happier about the magazine
in her hand, she has another think coming.
“If you want me to finish this order, then I would put that away and pretend it never happened,” I say, pointing my floral
shears at the pages and snipping the air a few times.
“Don’t lie. You know it’s for a very important client,” she says. “You’ll finish either way. When have you ever blown off an order, little miss Anderson . . .
in Bloom.”
She practically squeals that last part and I sigh, pulling the magazine out of her hand and shoving it facedown on the shelf
beneath the counter. Of course, that lasts for all of two seconds before Regan’s pulling it out to slide her finger across
the high gloss cover.
“‘ANDERSON IN BLOOM,’” she reads.
She trails her finger down to the subheading. “‘Sometimes happily ever afters do exist.’” She lets out a dreamy little sigh
at that and then hops up on the stool beside me. “Awww, that’s so sweet.”
“Don’t remind me,” I groan.
“Oh, I’m reminding you of this forever. It’s going on the wall of the shop. Framed and everything. Maybe I’ll blow it up onto
a giant billboard and—”
“I will stab you,” I say, punctuating my sentence with the snip of a stem.
“No, you wouldn’t, because that wouldn’t be very maid of honor of you,” she laughs.
Yes, it’s true, the very important bridal client that I’m making these floral arrangements for is indeed sitting right next
to me at this very moment.
Johnny and Regan are finally making it happen.
They’re having a stunning summer beach wedding tomorrow. One of the local hotels rented out their private beach and ballroom to them for a fantastic discount, on account of how Regan has been supplying them with event flowers for years at such reasonable prices.
It’s a happy coincidence that their wedding date lines up with exactly when I wanted to be out of LA anyway—yes, I do split
my time, coming back here whenever Nikki is filming. I don’t think anyone can blame me for wanting to get out of LA when the
cover hit. I can barely keep up with orders as it is, and half the people who come into In Bloom Too—our LA-based satellite
shop—are just there hoping to catch me working or trying to catch Nikki stopping in with coffee, a morning routine she has
taken it upon herself to keep up with on both coasts.
“Plus,” Regan says, holding the magazine back up to my face, “you look hot.”
I stop working long enough to examine the cover in more detail. I’ve been so worried about the things that I perceived as
going wrong—a flower on my gown that slipped out of place in the cover image, my obviously photoshopped breasts that look
a little too perky for someone braless and covered in rose petals, not to mention the fact that they used the photo of me growling and
biting a carnation as a joke on the third page of the spread.
Somehow, despite all those little oddities, Regan is legitimately vibrating with excitement as she looks at it. It’s maybe
a little bit infectious. After all, it’s not every day a florist sees their designs on a magazine cover, much less gets to
be the one wearing them.
Regan flips through to the actual article. “‘From red carpets and runways to the top of bestseller lists, Anderson Ducharme
is having a year,’” she reads, pausing to look up at me. “I’ll freaking say!”
I shake my head, struggling to focus on the arrangement in front of me in the face of her excitement. The wedding is tomorrow, and I want it to be perfect. I can’t get distracted by—
“‘Anderson walks into the hotel bar carrying a delphinium bouquet, which means pure happiness—something I learned while studying
for this interview, knowing how important the meaning of flowers is to all of her designs.’” Regan pauses. “You did not bring
flowers to your Vogue interview, you absolute dork.”
“How could I not?” I ask, genuinely baffled. “If I didn’t the first line would be ‘Anderson showed up empty-handed like a
monster.’”
“Oh my god, no wonder LA ate you up the first time,” she laughs, because yeah, with the benefit of hindsight—and getting back
in with regular sessions with Janet both virtually and in person—my past has been defanged enough that we can joke about it
now.
It’s not all funny, but . . . some of it is.
To say these last two years have been a period of growth for me would be the understatement of the century. Nikki’s agent
was able to finagle her publisher into scrapping the original idea and letting us cowrite the book together. They were over
the moon to find out that they were getting both of us now, especially once they clarified it meant that we were splitting
the same advance. Apparently, they already had such high projections for the book, they were maxed out on what they were offering.
I heard Britney’s memoir got more, but, fine. I guess that’s fair. She is the queen of pop. Or wait, was that Madonna? Either
way.
Plus, Nikki didn’t care that it meant she would get half as much—thankfully her finances are in a much better place than they were before. God knows that half of her advance is still way more than I’ve ever made in a year, even when I was on one of the top kid shows.
Our book, The Nikki and Andy Story, finally came out a couple of months ago. It turns out publishing time is way slower than regular time. Who knew? After it finally hit shelves, we did a little bit of press and touring together, which
was fun . . . but my new team knows that kind of stuff isn’t really my thing.
Surprisingly, the hardest chapter, and the one we get asked about the most, is about Nikki’s Oscar speech.
The first time we watched it together was about a month into the “reboot of our reboot,” as Nikki calls it. I asked if we
could and was not prepared for Nikki to immediately burst into tears at my request. It was hard for her to go back to the
best and worst night of her life. It was also hard to watch, knowing she was at her lowest and loneliest that night. I wrapped
her in my arms, her back pressed to my chest and my legs tight around her torso, as she held my iPad with shaking hands and
pushed play on the old YouTube clip we dug up together.
Someone had turned it into a fan edit with an upbeat pop song playing quietly in the background. The juxtaposition of the
song and Nikki’s sad eyes as she thanked the Academy and Eliza and her director and castmates was jarring. She squeezed my
arm tight as we got to the end of the speech, and the version of her on the screen said, “And to the person who couldn’t be
here tonight, I miss and love you. Thank you for all the flowers.”
Nikki turned to me with wet eyes, setting the iPad aside to pull me into a hug.
“They thought I had a secret girlfriend,” she said, burying her face between my collar and jaw, and I nodded, remembering the headlines.
“I was talking to you, Andy. I was always talking to you. You are the flowers. Your time, your energy, your love . . . all of you. My world wilted when you went away.”
“I’m sorry I never watched,” I said, pulling her back gently to kiss away her tears.
“I don’t care about that. I don’t care about any of that,” she answered, laying me back on the bed. “We don’t need the emails
or the speeches or anything like that anymore. We just need each other.”
We left what happened next out of the book, but . . . that doesn’t stop people from asking questions and trying to guess.
Which is why, once we fulfilled what we were contractually obligated to, we took a break, sneaking off to another coastal
town in a country where nobody knew our names just for a little while. Just to catch our breaths.
And now we’re back to the real world. Nikki is scheduled for a bunch of solo stuff next month when she has time off from filming,
and she has my enthusiastic consent. I’m all peopled out for the foreseeable future. Besides, I’m still the only one Gouda
lets pet her.
I have to be honest, though, it felt weird having the book out in the world at first—especially once it hit all the lists and I realized just how many people were reading our story.
I think in the past it would have freaked me out as bad as that brussels sprouts picture (which thankfully has been shoved way down in the search results).
Now, I’m embracing it.
I chose to put it out there. Me. On my terms. There’s something powerful about that.
When the news first broke that we were doing the book together, people started digging into where I’d been a little more.
Was it invasive? Yes. Was it also great for business? Hell yeah. In Bloom now has five employees to keep up with orders, plus
our satellite shop has another four. I’m still the “master florist” here, even though I think it should be Regan. I don’t
really get a lot of time to do small, personal arrangements anymore . . . which is also why it feels so special to be able
to make these for Regan’s wedding.
Nikki’s to blame for the red-carpet flower thing. Sending all of my work to her friends back in LA certainly helped get the
ball rolling with things, but when she wore a flower gown I made to the premiere of her last film—a hilarious and biting movie
where she was cast as Emma Stone’s sarcastic sister—it really catapulted my work into the stratosphere.
Fashion houses started bringing me into their fold—first to accent their runway looks, and then to work with their designers
to create living dresses, like the one I did for Nikki.
It’s been overwhelming at times.