Chapter 23 #2
Talar stayed behind, suddenly entranced by the floral artwork surrounding her and forgetting the whole deal about being Ani’s legal representative.
Alone with Jeannie, Ani apologized profusely and said, truthfully, that she was still looking into the incident. She gushed over Jeannie’s floral artistry like she was getting paid by the compliment, then silently prayed while the older woman weighed her words.
“I can see you’ve got conviction,” Jeannie said. “Still, in my thirty years in the business, this has never happened to me.”
Ani’s heart seemed to stop. No flowers. Maybe she’d have to do the flowers. By hand? Oh God, that would take all night, if not longer. She could make a decent arrangement, but they wouldn’t be nearly as good. Then, an idea sprouted.
Ani pulled out her phone, tapped around, and pulled up a page.
“Jeannie, here’s Entertainment Tonight. Front page is Grace Zhang, who is my client, who would love for your flowers to be at her wedding.
There are literal paparazzi stalking the winery venue weeks before the actual wedding date.
This wedding is going to be all over the news, and we might even get a feature in Vogue. ”
“Grace Zhang, eh? Haven’t heard of her,” Jeannie said, squinting at the phone.
“She rose to fame pretty recently, but the press is all over her. You’ll be seeing her name around,” Ani assured her, a smile on her face but inwardly losing hope.
Madison popped out from behind a corner. “Did you just say that mega flower order was for Grace Zhang? Like Mafia Princess Grace Zhang? Are we seriously doing her wedding?”
Jeannie stepped back and stared at Ani. “Vogue, you say? I haven’t had a feature there in a while; we are due.”
Ani nodded. “A very strong possibility.”
The older woman considered Madison, who had pulled out her phone while humming the Auto-Tune version of “I just wanna like…swallow it,” and gasped. “Oh my God, Grace is riding horses in Malibu with her fiancée! Iconic.”
Jeannie tapped her leg while staring at Madison, considering. “Well, it was a large order. And we did already call in some special favors. Would be a shame to lose out on that.”
Ani nodded again, eagerly. “It would, it would.” Madison loudly agreed as well.
She felt a presence behind her. Talar, no doubt, catching up to them.
“All right,” Jeannie said. “We can do it.”
Ani’s smile grew huge and she restrained herself—with great effort—from looking too enthusiastic. “Yes? It’s back on?”
Apparently her—and Madison’s—excitement was contagious because Jeannie had some sort of mini-smile on her face, too. “It’s back on.”
“Oh thank God,” said a man’s voice behind her. A man who sounded a lot like Raffi.
Ani whipped around. It was Raffi. Standing right next to Talar.
“What’re you doing here?” Ani asked, shocked.
“What’re you doing here?” Raffi returned. He appeared surprised himself, but thrilled, like he had been given an unexpected gift.
“Who is this man, and how do you two know each other?” Talar asked, an impressed tone to her voice as she sized up Raffi.
She didn’t know him well and obviously didn’t recognize him out of context here in the flower shop.
But she clearly thought he was hot and was jazzed that her sister was consorting with a guy like this. Little did Talar know…
Jeannie, seeing that these questions had nothing to do with her, turned on her heel and waltzed to the back of the shop.
“I asked first,” Ani said.
Raffi appeared like he wanted to hug her but then clocked Talar, undoubtedly remembering her from the photo on Ani’s phone, and shifted from one foot to the other instead.
“The florist called me and left me a message that I didn’t really understand, because I thought it sounded like she said the entire flower order was canceled, but that seemed too ludicrous to be true.
Anyway, I was a few stores down when I listened to my voicemail so I figured I’d pop in.
And if anything was really wrong I’d give you a call right away. ”
Sweet of him. Try to sort it out himself but knew this was Ani’s territory.
God, it was difficult being this close to him and not being able to hold him, kiss him.
She could smell his cologne very faintly and wanted more of it.
How would she introduce him to Talar? She’d better figure it out because she owed Talar an answer to her question.
Ani avoided Talar’s question a little longer and said, “And we’re here because you’re right, someone did apparently call Tilde and cancel the flowers.
Which is insane. I have no clue who, or how it could have happened.
” Although she did wonder, with Raffi’s father so displeased by the queer wedding and so disgusted by the paparazzi and reporters…
she could imagine him taking steps to ruin it.
But canceling the flower order? That felt more of a mean jab, less “shut down the whole thing.”
Raffi’s jaw tightened. “This isn’t good.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not.” They were so close, so very close, to the wedding, and someone was playing around trying to sabotage it.
To screw around with her future. If this wedding didn’t end up the perfect fairy-tale dreamland she’d promised, she was toast—and not the cute, artisanal kind.
Photos ruined, no magazine features, and worst of all, now there was the threat of bad press.
“Do you have any idea who it could have been?” Raffi asked tentatively.
Ani wasn’t about to blurt, “Your dad!” but in truth, that was her only lead. “I’m—I’m not sure. Someone who doesn’t like the idea of a queer wedding maybe?”
Raffi pressed his lips into a thin line. “Hmm. I hope not. My first thought was that this was related to Grace’s sudden celebrity. Either an enemy or someone trying to make a great story.”
Ani thought. “Someone who wanted the Mafia Princess role but didn’t get it?” Canceling flowers did feel like the petty kind of thing someone who was trying to poke at their nemesis would do. It was possible, but that theory, a fellow celebrity, would be a tough one to track and confirm.
Talar stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Ani, do you mind introducing me to your new…friend?”
“Uh, sure,” Ani said uneasily. “This is Raffi. He runs ? winery.”
Raffi extended one elegant arm, but Talar’s hand flew to her mouth as it dawned on her, apparently, exactly who this Raffi was. The one Talar had explicitly warned Ani about. Telling Ani stories about his racy, reckless past.
“Nice to meet you, Talar,” Raffi said, prompting Talar, as his hand was still outstretched.
Ani gave her sister a discreet nudge. Talar, her eyes still glued to Raffi’s face finally reached out and shook.
“And you’re…” Talar started. “Here to help with the flowers?”
“Yes,” Raffi said. “Though as usual, Ani figured out how to solve the problem without help. Speaking of flowers, you should have seen her a few months ago when this man refused to sell me his rare plants. I was about to get into a fistfight with the guy when Ani swoops in and sweet-talks him into selling us his entire stock. Still not over that.” He shook his head, smiling fondly.
“And by the way, they’re growing perfectly, thanks to the instructions you left me.”
Talar looked between them, and Ani’s heart ticked up a couple notches. Ani wanted to tell Talar. She really did. But she needed to prep Talar first about how Raffi had changed.
“You’re Raffi Garabedian?” Talar asked, truly puzzled.
Raffi gave a magnificent smile. “I am. You’ve…heard of me? All good things, I assume,” he said, laughing at himself.
Talar gave a weak smile. “Indeed.”
Just then, Ani’s phone rang, which was a huge mercy considering she didn’t know how much longer she could endure the awkwardness of this interaction. But then she saw who it was. Kami. Ani flashed the phone to Raffi, frowning, which he returned.
“Have to take this. Give me a sec.”
Ani picked up and said hello.
“Aniiiiiiii,” Kami wailed, then hiccupped.
She must have heard about the flowers, too. “Don’t worry, I sorted everything out with the florist,” Ani said confidently.
“What thing with the florist?” Kami asked, her voice still thick but less whiny. Woops. So this call wasn’t about the flowers.
“Nothing at all. Everything’s great. But what’s up?”
Kami took a deep breath and sputtered. “It’s my dress!
I’m at the final fitting and it’s all wrong.
They messed up. It’s like they made the pins bigger instead of smaller and I’m swimming in this and they say they can’t make all the changes on time and I neeeed youuuu,” she cried out the last two words.
“It’s not that bad,” Ani could hear Galia say in the background.
“It is!” Kami stammered.
Kami’s voice was so loud on the phone she was sure Talar and Raffi could hear it.
In fact, she knew they could. Talar rolled her eyes and wandered off, admiring the floral art.
Raffi appeared gravely upset. She didn’t blame him.
This was more of the job of a relative, not the wedding planner.
At the final fitting, Ani would have to examine every inch of Kami to see how the dress was fitting.
A close-quarters job that she didn’t want to do.
Plus, she had just gotten to Napa. She would say no. She would say. No.
“Kami, I’m sorry, I can’t come. I’m in Napa.” Fixing a near disaster you don’t need to know anything about. “With traffic I wouldn’t even be able to get there for another hour and a half at minimum.”
Kami sniffled. “Can you come anyway? I’ll wait.”
Shit. Ani caught Raffi’s eyes, which had darkened. He had heard that and was waiting for Ani to run to Kami again.
“No, I can’t,” she said simply.
Kami sobbed openly on the other line. “What am I going to do?”
Ani took a deep breath and thought. She didn’t want to completely leave her bride in the dust. “Send me photos, lots of them, of all the parts of the dress that aren’t working, and send me videos, too, of you standing and moving around in it, and then of you walking in it, back and front.
Tell me which parts they say they can’t fix.
Also, remind them that you can pay extra to get it rush altered,” Ani added, remembering that Kami had the benefit of being able to throw money at the situation.
“Can you do that? Then I’ll send my recommendations. ”
“Ohhh…kay…” came Kami’s shaky voice. “But you are coming to the house in two weeks, right?”
Ani stared off in confusion. “What house?”
“We rented a house in Napa for the hinoum and the wedding and…” she hiccupped, “we got you a room in it so you can stay.”
“Oh,” Ani said. This was actually very considerate because it would have been a huge pain to drive from San Francisco to Napa for the engagement party and then the wedding.
But she had been hoping to stay at Raffi’s, although they hadn’t discussed it yet.
And she couldn’t tell anyone she was sleeping over at his place anyway. So now she couldn’t refuse this. Shit.
With hesitation, she said, “Of course, that’s really thoughtful of you guys.”
Kami’s voice was still thick with tears. “Okay, well, I’ll see you then, and I’ll send some photos now.” She sounded so sad, let down by Ani—Ani remembered that well, the guilt Kami would pile on when she didn’t get her way, and Ani would immediately reverse it and jump to do whatever Kami asked.
But not today.
“Great,” Ani said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have suggestions.”
She hung up and stared at Raffi, who appeared crushed.
Ani called to her sister. “Tal, can you give us a few minutes?”
Talar’s eyes pinged back and forth between them. She shrugged her shoulders but appeared anything but indifferent. “Sure, whatever you need to do,” she said, sarcasm icing the edges of her voice. Ani could deal with her sister’s suspicions later. Right now, she needed to talk to her boyfriend.