5. Rhodes
— ? —
Rhodes
The bourbon is in the wrong cabinet.
That’s how I find it, reaching for the good whiskey and encountering instead a bottle of something I haven’t touched in years, shoved behind a set of crystal glasses we never use.
And behind the bourbon, a champagne bottle.
I pull it out. The glass is dusty, the label faded. Dom Pérignon, empty for years now.
Because it’s not about the champagne.
I tip it toward the light, and there it is. A dried stem, browned and crooked, rattling inside the bottle like a fragile secret I forgot I was keeping.
The ranunculus.
I stand there in my kitchen holding an eleven-year-old dead flower, and I can’t remember how to breathe.
She fell asleep in my jacket. That’s what I think about first, not the chaos of the centerpieces or the way she’d kicked me out of my own venue and told me to make myself useful.
The image that surfaces is Maren at 3 a.m., curled in a folding chair, wearing my sport coat like a blanket while the last arrangements dried.
I was broke, terrified, weeks away from either launching the career I’d dreamed about or losing everything I had on a gamble that everyone told me was stupid.
And this woman, this sharp, exhausted, beautiful woman who’d taken over my disaster like she had a personal vendetta against bad floral design, fell asleep in my jacket, and I thought: I’m going to marry her.
I didn’t, obviously. Not that night. First I had to convince her to let me buy her dinner, which took three separate asks because she was “suspicious of men who barged into flower shops demanding miracles.” Then I had to convince her I wasn’t just some rich kid with a trust fund and a hobby, which was easier once she saw the state of my apartment and my bank account.
The ranunculus was crooked. She’d tossed it aside because it wasn’t perfect enough for the arrangements, and I’d kept it because nothing about that night was perfect except for the part where I found her.
I thought we still had it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered putting it in a champagne bottle years ago, keeping it as evidence that even hopeless things could turn into something worth having.
I forgot it was here.
That thought hits harder than it should.
The magazine shoot was yesterday. Maren left without saying goodbye, technically she said goodbye, but it was the kind of goodbye that felt like a door closing rather than a pause between hellos.
She drove away and I stood in the parking lot like an idiot, calling Rachel back about some crisis that I can’t even remember now.
I just don’t think I know you anymore.
I pour myself a drink and sit down at the kitchen island, the champagne bottle in front of me. The ranunculus looks pathetic. Dried out, breakable, barely recognizable as a flower at all.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever stolen.
My phone buzzes. I don’t even look at it. Whoever needs me can wait. Whoever’s having a crisis can figure it out themselves for one goddamn evening.
I know where I need to be.
Bellamy Blooms is still lit when I pull up, which doesn’t surprise me. Maren works late the way I work late, obsessively, completely, as if the work is the only thing keeping her tethered to the planet.
We used to joke about that. Two workaholics who found each other, destined to either build an empire together or drive each other completely insane.
Turns out it’s possible to do both.
I park and grab the champagne bottle from the passenger seat where I’ve been carrying it like a talisman. The bell above the door jingles when I push inside.
Maren looks up from the worktable, scissors frozen mid-cut. She’s surrounded by roses and eucalyptus, the beginnings of arrangements for whatever wedding is happening this weekend. Her hair’s pulled back in a messy knot, and there’s a smear of pollen on her cheek.
She looks the way she did eleven years ago, and my chest caves in.
“Rhodes.” She recovers fast, going back to her cutting. “It’s nine o’clock.”
“I know.”
“On a Tuesday.”
“Also aware.”
“So you’re aware that normal people are home on a Tuesday at nine.”
“Normal people don’t own The Sinclair.” I cross to the worktable, set the champagne bottle down between the roses. “Or Bellamy Blooms.”
She stares at it. The scissors slip from her hand.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Depends. Do you think it’s an eleven-year-old dead flower?”
She picks up the bottle, tips it toward the light the same way I did an hour ago. The ranunculus shifts inside the glass, fragile and permanent.
“I can’t believe you kept that.”
“You gave it to me.”
“I absolutely didn’t.” A smile flickers at the corner of her mouth, the first genuine one I’ve seen in days. “You stole it. I turned around for one second, and it was gone.”
“It was crooked.”
“It was imperfect. There’s a difference.”
“You were going to throw it away.”
“I was going to repurpose it. And then you put it in your pocket like a weirdo, and I was too tired to fight about it.” She sets the bottle down gently, like she’s afraid of breaking something that’s already broken. “Where did you find this?”
“Back of the liquor cabinet. I was looking for the good whiskey.”
“The good whiskey is in the dining room sideboard.”
“That explains a lot about the last six months.”
She laughs, a real one, short and startled. God, I’ve missed that sound.
“Why are you here, Rhodes?”
I pull out one of the stools and sit down across from her. The worktable between us is covered in greenery and ribbon, the infrastructure of someone else’s happiest day.
“I thought about what you said. At the shoot.”
“Which part? I said a lot of things.”
“The part about not knowing me anymore.” I meet her eyes. “You’re right.”
She goes still. Waiting.
“The stories Rachel told that writer, Pittsburgh, Denver, all of it. You should have heard them from me. Years ago.” I turn the champagne bottle between my hands.
“I don’t know when I stopped telling you things.
I don’t even remember making the decision.
It just… happened. The days got longer, the work got bigger, and somewhere along the way I started editing before I got home.
Leaving out the boring parts. The hard parts.
The parts that felt like too much to unload on someone who’d already waited up for me half the night. ”
“I didn’t mind waiting.”
“I know. But I minded making you wait. So I started shortening the stories, and then I started skipping them altogether, and then-” I stop.
Start again. “Then one day I realized I had a whole life you’d never seen.
Not because I was hiding it, but because I’d convinced myself it wasn’t worth sharing. ”
Maren sets down her scissors. She pulls off her work gloves, finger by finger.
“Do you remember our first date?” she asks.
“Chinese food. You ordered kung pao chicken and then complained it wasn’t spicy enough.”
“You told me about The Sinclair for two hours.”
“I was nervous. I ramble when I’m nervous.”
“You told me about every wall, every fixture, every permit that almost didn’t clear.
About the contractor who tried to scam you and the backer who pulled out at the last minute.
About sleeping in the construction site because you couldn’t afford a hotel and didn’t want to miss the early deliveries.
” She leans forward. “That’s when I knew. ”
“Knew what?”
“That I was going to fall in love with you.” Her voice is steady, but I see the effort it takes.
“Because you told me the boring parts. You let me in before you had anything to show for it. Before the success and the money and the magazine interviews. You let me know you when you were just a broke guy with a dream and a crooked flower.”
I can’t speak. The tightness in my throat won’t allow it.
“I don’t need you to be successful, Rhodes - I never did. I just need you to be present. To let me know who you’re becoming instead of showing up at the end and expecting me to recognize you.”
“I know.” The words come out rough. “I know that. I’ve known it for a while, and I keep screwing it up anyway, and I don’t-” I run a hand through my hair.
“I don’t have an excuse, I don’t have a good reason.
I just have the fact that I heard you yesterday, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. ”
“Thinking isn’t the same as doing.”
“No. It’s not.”
“So what are you doing here?”
I look at the champagne bottle. The ranunculus inside it. The woman across from me who still, somehow, hasn’t kicked me out.
“I’m doing the first version,” I say.
“What?”
“You used to say that. When you were designing arrangements, you’d do a first version that was messy and wrong, and then you’d tear it apart and try again. You said the first version was never for the client. It was just to get the bad ideas out of your system.”
Maren blinks at me. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I remember everything.” I push the champagne bottle toward her.
“This is my first version. I’m not going to get it right tonight.
I don’t even know what right looks like anymore.
But I remember who we were when we started, and I remember why I kept this stupid flower, and I want to figure out how to be that person again.
Not the one who forgot where you keep the good whiskey.
The one who told you boring stories because I wanted you to know all of me. ”
She’s quiet for a long moment. I watch the calculation happen behind her eyes, all the ways I’ve failed her, weighed against the one time I didn’t.
“Have you eaten?” she asks finally.
“No.”
“There’s a Chinese place on Eighth that delivers. You’re buying.”
“I can do that.”
“And you’re staying while I finish this order.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re telling me about Pittsburgh. The whole thing. Start to finish. I want the boring parts.”
I smile. It feels unfamiliar on my face, like a muscle I haven’t used in a while.
“Deal.”
The Chinese food is good. Better than our first date, which Maren informs me means my memory is unreliable and I should stop romanticizing the past.