Chapter 5
Elena
Instead, I sit up on the pull-out couch, blinking in the dark, trying to remember why I set an alarm this early in the first place. Then I hear Nadia moving around in her room, the sound of drawers opening and closing, and it comes back to me: Friday. Flower market day.
“You’re awake?” Nadia calls from her doorway.
“Barely.”
“Good. Get dressed. We leave in twenty minutes.”
I drag myself off the couch and into the clothes I laid out last night: jeans, a sweater, sneakers. I pull my hair into a ponytail and splash water on my face. My reflection in the bathroom mirror looks like something that crawled out of a drain, but at least I’m upright.
Nadia’s already in the kitchen, filling two travel mugs with coffee. She’s wearing jeans and a flannel jacket, her hair in a braid. She looks annoyingly awake.
“You ready?” she asks.
“No.”
“Good enough.” She hands me a mug and grabs her keys. “Let’s go.”
The RAV4 is parked two blocks away, wedged between a Prius and a pickup truck.
It’s at least fifteen years old, maybe older, with a dent in the rear bumper and a driver’s side mirror that hangs at an angle like it’s given up on life.
Nadia unlocks it and climbs in. I take the passenger seat and immediately regret every decision that led me here.
“This thing still runs?” I ask.
“Most days.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s honest.” She turns the key, and the engine coughs to life. “Without this car, I wouldn’t have a business. So we’re nice to it.” A pause. “Also, we might end up living in it if you get fired today, so.”
I swallow hard.
She says it like a joke. It’s not entirely a joke. I know what it feels like to not have a place to go. I’ve known that feeling since I was old enough to understand it, and the idea of it sitting right at the edge of our lives again makes something in my chest go tight.
Nadia looks at me. Whatever she sees in my face makes her soften. “Hey. You’re not getting fired. It’s going to go fine.” She reaches over and squeezes my knee. “Just be you.”
I nod. I don’t say that being me is exactly what I’m worried about.
The streets are empty at this hour, which is the only good thing about being awake before the sun.
Nadia drives with the confidence of someone who’s done this route a thousand times, weaving through Harlem and heading south toward Midtown.
The city looks different in the dark. Quieter. Like it’s holding its breath.
“So,” Nadia says, breaking the silence. “HR meeting today.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“What do you think they’ll ask?”
I take a sip of coffee. It’s too hot and burns my tongue. “I don’t know. Probably for my CV. Or my previous work experience. Or they’ll give me some kind of assessment test to see if I’m actually capable of doing this job.”
“And what will you say?”
“I have no idea.” I stare out the window. “Maybe I’ll tell them I used to be Superwoman, but then I lost my cape in a tragic laundry accident.”
Nadia snorts. “That’ll go over well.”
“Or I could say I was a spy, but I got fired for being too good at my job.”
“Right. Very believable.”
“I could tell them I’m secretly a time traveler and this is all research for my memoir.”
“Now you’re just making shit up.”
“I’ve been making shit up since I walked into that office.” I lean my head against the window. “Why stop now?”
Nadia glances at me, and her expression softens. Just a little. “You’ll be fine. HR is just paperwork. They’re not going to fire you before they’ve even finished setting up your employee file.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know they’re not going to fire you.” She turns onto Sixth Avenue. “Not on day five.”
I want to believe her. I don’t.
We drive in silence for a few minutes, the city sliding past in shadows and streetlights. Then Nadia speaks again, her tone lighter. “I have a date Saturday.”
“Yeah? With who?”
“Some guy from the app. James. He’s in finance.”
“They’re always in finance.”
“Or tech.” She shrugs. “He seems normal. Good conversationalist. Doesn’t have any photos with dead fish.”
“Setting the bar high, I see.”
“The bar is on the floor, and men still trip over it.” She glances at me. “What about you? You thought about getting back out there?”
“I’ve been in New York for six weeks. I’m barely surviving my job. Dating is not on the agenda.”
“That’s not a ‘no’.”
“It’s a ‘not right now’.”
“So, never.”
I turn to look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re really good at staying in bad situations way too long, and then when you finally leave, you act like you need a decade to recover.
” She keeps her eyes on the road. “Ryan wasn’t worth two years.
He’s definitely not worth another year of you pretending you’re too broken to try again. ”
The words sting because they’re true. I look at her profile in the early morning dark and feel something I’ve felt before, something I’ve never quite said out loud.
I’ve always admired this about her. The way she moves on without needing to stay.
The way she doesn’t get attached to people who aren’t worth attaching to.
She doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone, doesn’t need to wait around hoping someone will finally see her the way she deserves.
She just enjoys people for what they are, and when it’s over, she lets it be over.
I don’t know how to do that. I never have.
I don’t want to talk about this anymore. So, I pivot. “What about that guy from last week?” I ask. “The one with the dog.”
“Xavier. He was fine.”
“Just fine?”
“He talked about his ex the entire time. I’m not signing up to be someone’s rebound therapist.” She shrugs. “I have standards.”
“Standards or walls?”
She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, her voice is careful. “Maybe both.”
I know I shouldn’t say this, but I say it anyway. “You know, maybe you never find the one because you don’t stick around long enough to actually know them.”
Nadia snorts. “And maybe you stay way too long after you know they’re not worth it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Elena, you stayed with Ryan for two years. Two years of him treating you like a houseplant. You were there, you were decorative, but did he actually see you? Did he ever ask what you wanted?”
“He asked.”
“Asking doesn’t count if he ignored the answer.” She pulls up to a red light and looks at me. “You give too much to people who don’t give anything back. That’s not love. That’s just you being too nice to leave.”
The words land harder than I expect. I want to argue, but I can’t. Because she’s right. Again.
“You’re kind of an asshole this early in the morning,” I say.
“I’m kind of an asshole all the time.” The light turns green, and she drives. “You just notice it more when you’re tired.”
By the time we reach 28th Street, it’s almost 4:30 AM. The Flower District is a fever dream of color and motion.
Storefronts glow with fluorescent light, illuminating buckets and crates overflowing with roses, peonies, ranunculus, eucalyptus, every shade from blush to blood red to the green of new money.
Nadia parks illegally in front of a hydrant. “We’ve got an hour before they ticket. Let’s move.”
She grabs two collapsible carts from the trunk and hands me one. Then we dive in.
The sidewalks are slick with condensation. Petals and leaves are scattered underfoot, sticking to the soles of my sneakers.
Vendors in hoodies and heavy coats shout prices over the rumble of delivery trucks. Their voices mix with the hiss of bus brakes and the clatter of metal carts being dragged over concrete.
Coffee carts steam on corners, the air thick with the scent of espresso, diesel, and wet greenery. I catch a whiff of something sweet, maybe gardenias, maybe just the city waking up hungry.
Buyers, mostly women, some men, move fast, gloves on, cash in hand, eyes sharp for the best stems. It’s gritty and romantic and a little bit ruthless, the kind of place where you have to know exactly what you want, or you get trampled by someone who does.
The vendors know her by name. “Nadia! Over here!” A man with a thick accent waves us over to a stand stacked with white peonies. She inspects them, squeezing near the base, checking the petals. She rejects half of them before nodding. “These. Twenty bunches.”
“Twenty-five, I give you a discount.”
“Twenty-two.”
“Done.”
We load them into the cart, then move to the next vendor. Garden roses, eucalyptus, seasonal greens. Nadia negotiates quietly but firmly, never taking the first price, never backing down. I just follow her, hauling buckets, trying not to drop anything.
“You’re good at this,” I say as we load the last of the flowers into the trunk.
“I’ve been doing it long enough.”
“No, I mean it. You know what you want. You don’t second-guess yourself.”
She closes the trunk and looks at me. “That’s because I can’t afford to. If I buy the wrong flowers, I lose money. If I lose too much money, I lose the business.” She pauses. “You could learn something from that.”
“What, that I should treat my life like a transaction?”
“That you should know what you want and stop apologizing for it.”
That lands. I don’t answer, but it stays with me the entire ride back.
By the time we get home, it’s almost 6:30 AM. I have an hour and a half to shower, change, and get to the office. I move through the motions on autopilot. Hair, makeup, the black dress, and the blazer I wore on my first day. The same red heels that make my feet scream.
Nadia’s already unloading flowers when I come out of the bathroom.
“You look almost professional,” she says.
“Thanks. I think.”
“Go. Don’t be late.”
I grab my bag and head out the door, trying not to think about spending another eight hours in close proximity to the most beautiful, most intimidating man I’ve ever seen in my life.
This is fine. I’m fine. I can handle a very hot, very angry boss.