Chapter Eight #2
I'd tried to cancel. Reid had shown up at the shop anyway to get me.
“Quarterly estimates don't care about your feelings,” he'd said, steering me toward the door while Jamie watched with raised eyebrows. “Twenty minutes. The roses will survive.”
“The roses are fine. I have a wedding to prep for.”
“Then you'd better talk fast.”
Now I sat across from him in our usual booth, a panini going cold on my plate while he flipped through the folder of receipts I'd shoved at him.
His pen tapped against the table in that irregular rhythm that had driven me crazy for three years—tap tap, pause, tap tap tap, pause. He didn't seem to know he did it.
“These are almost organized,” he said. “I'm genuinely concerned. Did you have a stroke? Should I call someone?”
“Jamie has been helping.”
“Ah.” The pen stopped. “The boyfriend.”
I didn't respond. Reid made a note on something, then looked up and studied me over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. The same glasses he'd had since I met him, slightly bent at one temple where he'd sat on them six months ago.
“You look like shit,” he said. Matter-of-fact, like he was reading a balance sheet.
“Thanks.”
“When did you last sleep more than four hours?”
“Tuesday.”
“That's fucked.” He said it without heat, the same tone he'd use to tell me my mileage deductions were wrong. “You're going to collapse in the middle of the Valentine's rush and I'll have to find a new client. The paperwork alone.”
“Ah, don't forget the big wedding at the lodge this weekend. I'll be working Sunday on that bit of work. I'll sleep after that.”
“You'll sleep when you're dead, which at this rate will be Monday.” He picked up his coffee, took a sip. The pen started tapping again. “So. How's Jamie?”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” He nodded like I'd said something meaningful. “Descriptive. Evocative. Really paints a picture.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Something with an actual adjective in it. Happy. Miserable. Concerned about his apparent lack of self-preservation instincts, given that he's dating you.” The pen tapped faster. “Things going well?”
“They're fine.”
“You said that already.”
“Because it's true.”
Reid set down the pen. Finally. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and gave me the look that meant he was about to be insufferable.
“Holden. I'd like to think we're pretty good friends for guys who don't know how to do friendship well, so take this in the spirit which it is intended. I know when you're bullshitting me, and you're bullshitting me right now.” He tilted his head. “What's going on?”
I picked up the panini, tore off a piece, chewed without tasting it. Reid waited. He was good at waiting—better than me, which was annoying.
“The arrangement ends tomorrow,” I said. “After Valentine's Day. That was the deal.”
His eyebrows rose. “Arrangement.”
Shit. I hadn't meant to say that. I was really tired.
“It's complicated.”
“Clearly.” The pen was back in his hand, tapping against his palm now. “Are you telling me the relationship isn't real?”
“It started as—” I stopped. Tried again. “We had a deal. He needed help with his ex. I needed help at the shop. Three weeks, through Valentine's Day.”
“And now it's done.”
“Almost.”
Reid was quiet for a long moment. The pen went still.
“Okay,” he said. “So what happens tomorrow?”
“I don't know.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“Do you want it to continue?” When I didn't answer, he continued. “I'll take that as a yes.”
I thought about Jamie's arms around me in the back room, his voice saying one more day like the words hurt to speak. The way neither of us had said anything after. The way I'd wanted to say everything and couldn't find the words.
“It's not that simple,” I said.
“It's exactly that fucking simple. You open your mouth. Words come out. You wait to see if he runs screaming.” Reid's voice was dry, but something shifted in his expression.
“Look, I'm aware that I'm not exactly qualified to give relationship advice right now.
Recently divorced. Currently figuring out how to date men at thirty-two, which is its own special humiliation.
Last week I spent twenty minutes on a dating app trying to figure out what 'looking for something casual' actually means, and I still don't know.”
I blinked. Reid didn't talk about the divorce. Didn't talk about the dating thing, either.
“But here's what I do know,” he continued.
“I spent eight years married to someone I loved, and it still fell apart.
Not because the love wasn't real. It was. We just wanted different things, and neither of us said so until it was too late to fix.” He picked up his coffee, stared into it like it held answers.
“Claire knew she was gay before I knew I was.
Or maybe she just admitted it first. Either way, we spent years not talking about the thing we should have been talking about, and by the time we did, there wasn't anything left to save.”
“I'm sorry,” I said. It felt inadequate.
“Don't be. We're better as friends than we ever were as spouses.
She's in Denver now, dating a woman who makes her laugh.
I'm here, giving unsolicited advice to emotionally constipated florists.” His mouth quirked; not quite a smile, but close.
“My point is, not talking doesn't protect you from getting hurt. It just means you get hurt without ever knowing if things could have been different.”
The words landed like a fist to the chest. I felt my jaw tighten, my shoulders go rigid. Something about hearing it said out loud—so simple, so obvious—made it impossible to look away from.
Not talking doesn't protect you from getting hurt.
All these years of keeping people at arm's length. All these years of telling myself the quiet was what I wanted. And what had it gotten me? An empty apartment. A shop that felt like a museum some days. A life that fit like clothes I'd outgrown but refused to replace.
Until Jamie walked through my door with his ridiculous dogs and his ridiculous optimism—and smiled at me.
I didn't know what to say to that. Reid seemed to realize he'd said more than he'd intended; he cleared his throat, picked up the pen again, started tapping.
“Talk to him,” he said, back to his usual dry tone. “It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. You sell flowers for a living. If you can't figure out how to have a conversation on the one day of the year designed for this shit, I can't help you.”
He gathered up the folder of receipts, tucked them into his bag.
“Your estimated payments are due in April. Try not to lose anything between now and then.” He stood, dropped a twenty on the table. “And for fuck's sake, get some sleep tonight. You're depressing to look at.”
He left. I sat in the booth for another minute, the panini in pieces on my plate, thinking about what he'd said.
Not talking doesn't protect you from getting hurt.
I ordered a sandwich for Jamie, then headed back to the shop. On the way there, I turned the words over in my head, trying to figure out what I wanted to say to him. How to say it. Whether I had the nerve to try.
The bell rang as I pushed through the door.
Jamie looked up from the counter, and his face did that thing it did when he saw me—the slight softening, the warmth in his eyes.
He was wearing my flannel again, the gray and blue plaid, sleeves rolled up past his wrists.
I didn't remember when he'd started borrowing my clothes. I didn't want him to stop.
“Reid let you escape?” he asked.
“He had other taxpayers to terrorize,” I said, handing him the bag. “For you.”
Jamie smiled, soft and sweet. That particular ache that had become familiar over the past weeks. The one I'd stopped pretending wasn't love.
One day. I had one day to figure this out.
We closed the shop at seven, an hour early. My call. I said we needed sleep before the chaos of Valentine's Day, and Jamie didn't argue.
The walk back to his house was quiet. Snow still falling, light and steady, coating the sidewalks in white. His hand found mine somewhere around the second block, our fingers lacing together.
“I've been thinking—and I'm sorry I didn't say this twenty minutes ago. But I think you should stay at your place tonight,” he said when we reached his door. “Get some real sleep. I know the dogs wake you up sometimes.”
I looked down at him. The streetlight caught the snow in his hair, the tired lines around his eyes.
“You trying to get rid of me?”
He shook his head. “I'm trying to make sure you don't collapse in the middle of the rush.” He squeezed my hand. “Big day tomorrow. You need rest.”
He wasn't wrong. Between the stress and bouncing between the two homes and my small bed and his dogs, I'd been running on four hours a night for most of the week, and my body was starting to remind me that I wasn't twenty-two anymore.
But that wasn't why he was sending me home. I could see it in his face—something he wasn't saying, some thought he was holding back.
“Okay,” I said. “If that's what you want.”
It wasn't what I wanted. But I didn't know how to say that yet, didn't have the words figured out. So I bent down, all the way down, the height difference still catching me off guard sometimes, and kissed him.
Soft at first. Then deeper, my hand cupping the back of his neck, my thumb tracing his jaw.
“I'll see you in the morning,” I said against his mouth.
“Seven sharp. Coffee in hand.”
“Deal.”
He smiled. “Sleep well,” he said.
Not without you, I wanted to say, but I bit back the words and made myself let go, step back, turn toward Main Street.
The walk home was cold. I shoved my hands in my pockets and thought about Reid and Claire, about years of not saying the thing that needed to be said. About what it would feel like to watch Jamie walk away without ever knowing if he would have stayed.
The apartment above the shop was dark when I climbed the stairs. Empty in a way it hadn't felt for weeks. No dogs padding across the floor to greet me. No warmth from another body in the bed. Just the familiar quiet I used to think I wanted.
It felt like a warning now.
I showered, set my alarm for five, lay in bed running through what I might say. None of it sounded right. None of it sounded like me.
But Reid was right about one thing: silence wasn't going to protect me. It was just going to guarantee I lost something I wasn't ready to lose.
Sleep came, but when it did, I dreamed about flowers. Ranunculus and garden roses in Jamie’s colors. An arrangement I'd been building for weeks without knowing what it meant.
I woke before the alarm, knowing exactly what I had to do.