Chapter 12 #2
She shook her head, her gaze leaving his face and finding her black Converse sneakers interesting instead.
At first, he thought she wouldn’t answer, that maybe he’d intruded on things she didn’t want to tell him, but eventually she said, ‘Matthew. We were together in high school. He was my best friend at the time. We thought it would be fun to get married, run off together. So, we eloped when we were eighteen, got hitched at the city hall in the next town over.’
Her laugh was more sigh than laughter, and Elliot’s heart ached for her, for what he knew must come next.
‘We were married for just over a year. My parents let us live in the back of the shop. We fought all the time. We didn’t know how to be adults, let alone married adults. It was a stupid mistake.’
When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand, trying to laugh again.
‘It turns out being married is a lot harder than going to prom together and skipping school to make out. We were dumb kids.’
‘But you loved him.’
‘Yeah.’ Her answer was a whisper.
‘And it hurt.’
‘Yeah.’ Daisy sniffled and wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
‘It took me a long time to get over it, to move on and then I met David and I thought … I thought okay, this is the real thing, you know? We were adults, making adult decisions to live together and be together and then he just … he just … changed his mind.’ The sniffles were becoming full sobs now, and Elliot couldn’t take it anymore.
He pulled Daisy toward him, and she burrowed her face in his chest as his arms wrapped around her.
‘And I felt so stupid. Like, how did I not see it coming? How could I not know that he was falling out of love with me? And then I had to move back into the same shitty apartment I lived in with Matty, and it was like my terrible decisions had come full circle. It’s like I was moving backwards.
Like I was stuck.’ Her voice was muffled as she spoke into his tear-dampened shirt.
He was going through shirts fast today, but Daisy was pouring her heart out to him, and he wanted to offer something in return.
The woman crying in his arms wasn’t exactly the heartbreaker the town had made her out to be. He knew David had been the one to end things, and now hearing Daisy’s story about her marriage, well, he felt silly for avoiding the flower shop for so long.
‘Leigh was the only woman I ever really dated,’ he blurted out.
‘She made the first move, and I was just so happy that I didn’t have to.
So relieved. When she asked for a divorce, all I could think was that I’d be alone forever now, that I wasn’t at all equipped for dating or finding love or doing any of this all over again. I’d had my chance and I blew it.’
He’d been confessing to the top of Daisy’s head until she pulled back to look at him.
‘That’s really depressing.’
A surprised laugh escaped him, and Daisy gave him a teary smile in return.
‘When we were looking at that picture of my relative, I was thinking that maybe she was like me. That she’d had her heart broken, too.’
Elliot nodded, resisting the incredibly strong urge to plant a kiss on the top of Daisy’s head.
‘I wonder what happened to her.’
‘Maybe we could do some digging and find out.’
‘You just want an excuse to look at some more dusty old books,’ she teased.
‘Guilty.’ And to spend more time with you.
She pulled away, dabbing at his wet shirt with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
Daisy looked up at the sky, wiping at her face again. She spoke with a sigh. ‘No, really, I’m sorry. Good thing this is fake. Imagine doing that to someone you were actually dating? Getting tears and snot all over his shirt?’
Elliot glanced down at his shirt. ‘I didn’t realize there was snot. You should definitely be sorry.’
Daisy’s laughter filled the quiet street, but when her gaze met his again she was serious.
‘Thank you, though. For that. For letting me get that all out.’
Elliot shrugged even though he wanted to say he was more than happy to hold her while she cried.
‘Anytime.’
‘Any time I want to use you as a human Kleenex, I can?’ Her teasing grin was back, brighter because it came after the darkness.
Elliot smiled. ‘Owen already used me as a spit-up cloth today, might as well pile on.’
‘You’re a good guy, Elliot.’
‘Uh … thanks.’
‘And I don’t think Leigh was your one chance.’
‘You don’t?’
Daisy shook her head. ‘No. I think there’s hope for you.’
Elliot’s heart picked up speed. Hope for him with … her?
‘You do?’
‘Yeah,’ she said with another smile before opening the door to the shop. ‘And maybe this whole fake relationship thing will help you practice for the real thing.’
His hopes fell. ‘Practice?’
‘We’ll get all the awkwardness out now and then you can go and date someone for real. Just think of me as training wheels.’
‘That’s not how I think of you at all.’
She paused but didn’t ask how he thought of her. ‘Training wheels. And then when you’re ready, you get rid of the training wheels, and you can ride for real. Whoever you want.’
‘I don’t want to … ride anyone else.’
‘I know you’re not over Leigh, but you’ll get there. And then maybe you will want to ride someone else.’
God, he wished she would stop saying it like that. All he could think of was Daisy on his lap riding him until those eyes weren’t sad anymore, until she was whimpering for entirely different reasons than crying over her shitty ex.
It wasn’t Leigh he was thinking about at all.
And that startled him.
‘And what about you?’
She shook her head. ‘You know what they say, Elliot. Fool me twice… And I’ve been fooled enough times. I can’t do it again.’ And then she turned and went into the shop, leaving Elliot standing alone feeling confused and a little bit sad and far too horny.