Prologue #2
“I love it,” I say. “I love everything about it. The early mornings and the cold coolers and the way my hands smell like roses at the end of the day. I love making something beautiful out of nothing, taking a bunch of stems and turning them into something that makes people cry at weddings.” I shake my head, suddenly self-conscious.
“Sorry, that’s, you don’t need my whole life story. ”
“I asked.”
“You asked if I like it. That was a yes or no question.”
“It was an open-ended question.” He’s smiling again, that soft smile that makes him look less like a stressed-out business owner and more like someone I’d want to know better. “You answered it exactly right.”
I feel heat creep up my neck and focus very intently on the dahlia I’m placing. “What about you? What made you want to open an event venue?”
“I like the idea of creating a space where important things happen.” He’s still stripping eucalyptus, his movements getting more confident now. “Weddings, anniversaries, milestone birthdays - the moments people actually remember. I wanted to be part of that.”
“That’s a good answer.”
“I’m a good answerer.”
I snort. “Is that a word?”
“It is now.”
We fall into a rhythm after that, me building arrangements, him processing greenery and fetching supplies when I point at things.
He’s terrible at the actual flower work, mangling every stem I let him touch, but he’s good at following directions and he doesn’t complain about the tedious parts.
Around ten-thirty, my stomach growls loud enough that we both hear it, and Rhodes immediately pulls out his phone.
“What do you want? Chinese? Indian? There’s a pizza place that delivers until midnight-”
“You don’t have to-”
“You’re saving my entire career right now,” he interrupts. “The least I can do is feed you. What do you want?”
I want lo mein, want it desperately and all at once, the way you only crave something the second someone offers. “Lo mein. Extra egg rolls. And a Coke.”
He orders, and forty-five minutes later we’re sitting on the floor of the workroom, takeout containers between us, surrounded by half-finished centerpieces and piles of discarded leaves.
“Okay, real question,” Rhodes says through a mouthful of chow mein. “If you could have your own shop, not your aunt’s, yours, what would it look like?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m interested.” He gestures with his chopsticks. “I told you about The Sinclair. Fair’s fair.”
I take a sip of my Coke and consider the question. I’ve thought about it so many times, sketched it in notebooks, imagined it in my head while falling asleep. But I’ve never actually said it out loud to anyone.
“It would be bigger than this one,” I start slowly.
“A real dedicated workspace for events, not just a back room I have to clear out every time I need to build something large. More cooler space, I’m always running out of room here, especially during peak wedding season.
I’d want big windows in the front, so people walking by could see the flowers from the street. ”
“What else?”
“A consultation area. Somewhere comfortable where I could sit down with brides and show them samples, talk through their vision. Right now I do that at a folding table next to the register.” I’m warming up now, the words coming easier.
“I’d want to do more events, more installations.
Not just arrangements people pick up, actual design work, where I get to transform a space.
That’s what I love most. Taking a blank room and turning it into something that takes your breath away. ”
I stop, suddenly aware that I’ve been talking for several minutes straight. “Sorry. I’m rambling.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I’ve literally never told anyone that much about it.”
“I asked what you wanted,” Rhodes says simply, and the way he’s looking at me, like what I said actually mattered, like my dreams are worth hearing about, makes my breath catch in my throat.
I look away first, fumbling with my chopsticks, suddenly very interested in chasing a stray noodle around the bottom of my container. “We should get back to work. These won’t finish themselves.”
We work until almost two in the morning.
I’m on arrangement seven when I feel my eyelids getting heavy, the exhaustion of a full day of work plus five hours of emergency flower arranging finally catching up to me.
I tell myself I’ll just rest my eyes for a minute, put my head down on my folded arms on the worktable, and promptly pass out.
When I wake up, there’s something warm and heavy around my shoulders.
I lift my head slowly, blinking in the dim light of the workroom.
Rhodes’s jacket is draped over me like a blanket, still warm from his body.
The clock on the wall says 4:23 a.m., and across the room, Rhodes is hunched over arrangement nine with the kind of fierce concentration usually reserved for bomb defusal.
“Oh no.”
He looks up, startled. “You’re awake.”
“What did you do?”
I push to my feet and cross the room, Rhodes’s jacket still around my shoulders, and look down at his work. It’s… well. He tried, clearly tried very hard. But the proportions are all wrong, the focal flowers are buried instead of featured, and he’s somehow managed to put three stems in upside down.
“You’re murdering that rose.”
“I’m helping,” he protests.
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
But I’m laughing as I say it, and he’s smiling, and somehow the disaster he made doesn’t seem so bad when he’s looking at me like that.
“Go make coffee,” I tell him, shooing him away from the worktable. “There’s a machine in the office. I’ll fix this.”
He goes, and I get to work salvaging what he did.
It takes me another three hours to finish all twelve arrangements, with Rhodes bringing me coffee and fetching supplies and generally staying out of the way.
By eight in the morning, they’re done, twelve matching centerpieces in shades of burgundy and peach and cream, each one balanced and beautiful and exactly right for the photos he showed me of his venue.
“I’m delivering these myself,” I tell him as we load them carefully into the back of my van. “I want to see them in the space.”
He doesn’t argue.
The Sinclair is even more beautiful in person.
The photos didn’t capture the warmth of the wood, the way the light comes through those tall windows, the sense of possibility in every corner.
I place each centerpiece myself while Rhodes hovers nervously behind me, and when I’m done, I step back and look at the room.
It’s perfect. My flowers against his venue, two visions fitting together like they were always meant to.
“Maren.”
I turn. Rhodes is standing by one of the tables, and he’s holding something, a ranunculus I almost threw away earlier, one with a crooked stem that wouldn’t stand up straight in the arrangement.
“What are you doing?”
“Keeping it.” He grabs an empty champagne bottle from behind the bar and slides the ranunculus into it, where it lists slightly to the side, charmingly imperfect. “As a reminder.”
“A reminder of what? Your first successful event?”
“A reminder of the woman who saved it.” He sets the bottle on a shelf behind the bar, adjusting it until the ranunculus is facing just right. “So I never forget.”
“That’s very sentimental,” I say, and I mean for it to come out teasing, but my voice is soft.
“I’m not sentimental.”
“You’re keeping a broken flower in a champagne bottle.”
“It’s not broken.” He turns to face me, and there’s something different in his expression now, something more intent, more certain. “It’s just crooked. There’s a difference.”
I don’t have a response to that.
“Have dinner with me,” he says.
“I, what?”
“Dinner. Tomorrow night. Or tonight, if you’re not too tired.
” He’s smiling now, that smile that softens his whole face, that makes my heart do something inconvenient.
“I owe you for saving this event, and I’d like to actually sit across from you at a real table instead of on the floor of your workroom. ”
“We had takeout,” I point out. “On the floor. That could count as a date.”
“Did it?”
I consider him, this exhausted, determined, slightly rumpled man who stayed up all night destroying flowers while I slept, who asked about my dreams and actually listened to the answer, who’s keeping a crooked ranunculus like it means something.
“Ask me again,” I say. “After your event tonight. When you know if it worked.”
His smile widens. “Is that a yes?”
“That’s an ask me later.”
But I’m smiling too, and we both know what my answer is going to be.