Chapter Twenty-Four
Sunday was flower market day, and for the first time since the accident, Olivia found herself standing in front of her friend’s florist market stall dressed in a camel apron with Danielle’s business emblem on it.
The Columbia Road Flower Market was among the most renowned destinations for fresh flowers in the capital, and tourists loved the unique and magical feel of walking through its stalls.
In season blossoms lined the streets and transformed the area into a collage of colour and scent.
Olivia had occasionally helped out in the past, wrapping the stems up and placing them in the black flower holders, exchanging money and giving change.
And when she’d texted her friend Danielle and said that she would be up at the crack of dawn to help haul the flowers into the back of the van and set up ready for the eight am market opening, her friend was delighted to have extra help.
“You’re different today,” Danielle said as her friend opened up the back of her pink florist truck.
“I told you on the phone; I just want to help out.” Olivia reached in to lift the first crate of flowers delicately from the back of the vehicle.
Narrowing her eyes, Danielle tilted her head to one side in thought. “You coloured your hair.”
“No.”
“Got a facial?”
“No.”
“Got laid?”
Olivia bit her lip as she went under the tent and disposed of the box on the fold-up table. Danielle gasped at her silence just as her husband came around the side of the van, lifting one of the heavier boxes and tucking it under his arm almost too easily.
“You bitch,” Danielle exclaimed, looking at her friend with wide eyes.
“Who’s a bitch?” John muttered.
“Olivia.” Clipping the black flower buckets to her display, she began shoving them in their spots in frustration. “She got laid and didn’t tell me.”
“I did not get laid,” Olivia said.
The early summer morning was bright, the sun rising steadily and making the slight fog that had covered London overnight melt away like it had never been there.
The bustle of other florists setting up their stalls made the road buzz with excitement.
Pigeons were scattered, hobbling in all directions across the concrete path, and eager tourists hovered awkwardly near the market entrance.
“Took you a while to answer,” Danielle sang teasingly. Grabbing a bouquet of flowers from Olivia, she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. John stood behind his wife, a smirk on his face as he lifted another box of flowers down.
Olivia looked between them before letting out a small huff. “I did not get laid!”
“Promise?” Danielle stuck out her pinky finger like they were in primary school. Rolling her eyes, Olivia linked her pinky with Danielle’s and looked her friend dead in the eye.
“Promise.”
Danielle pulled back with a small pout. “Well, that’s no fun. I was excited for you for a second. Stop giving me false hope.”
“When have I given you false hope that I might get laid?”
“Uh, every time you mention your little dates with Theo. That’s when.” Danielle stated. “Which, by the way, is more often than you call me nowadays.”
“Hey, I call you.” Olivia frowned at her friend.
The market was growing busier, the sun shining down through the tent and in their eyes as they rolled out parchment paper onto the table in preparation for bouquet making.
“I’ve just been busy. I’m almost finished with my writing, and between Edward and Theo—”
“Wait, hold up.” Danielle paused with a bunch of baby’s breath in her hand. She stared at her friend in confusion. “You’re dating both of them?”
“Well, yeah. Kind of.”
“What do you mean ‘kind of’? Are you dating them at the same time?”
“Wow, I didn’t know you had it in you, Livvy,” John joked.
Olivia shoved a bunch of roses into another slot. “Like I said, kind of. Theo is helping me with research and Edward… well he’s Naomi’s perfect man. I have to keep seeing him.”
“How long have you been seeing both of them?”
“Well, you know how long I’ve been seeing Theo. It’s almost the end of summer. Edward was date number three or four so I’ve been seeing him for a couple weeks now.”
“Livvy, have you been on more than one date with Edward?” Danielle gasped.
“We’ve been on two. The first was what Theo set up and the second was this dinner in a place that overlooked the Thames. It was private, and the food was amazing. John, you really should take Danielle ’cause she would just love the chocolate souffle—”
“I can’t believe it,” Danielle cut her off. “You slayer. You’re dating two guys at once.” Her laughter rang out in the early summer air.
John stepped up next to his wife, his hand caressing the top of her arm, halting her booming laughter with a simple question. “Wait, do they both know you’re seeing someone else?”
“About that…” Olivia shuffled her feet, her fingers brushing over the stems of another bunch of flowers.
She was doing everything she could to distract herself from the fact she hadn’t told Edward she was seeing Theo, in a professional capacity or not.
She had also neglected to tell Theo about her second and upcoming third date with Edward.
Perhaps she felt a bit guilty continuing to see Edward after the conversation she’d had with Theo about him replacing her every bad date (which, at the present, was a fair few) with good dates.
Dates with Theo. As if he was going to step into the shoes of her character Naomi’s leading man.
A task which Olivia wasn’t sure she wanted him to do.
Was it unethical and, perhaps, mean to neglect to inform her dates about each other?
Yes, there was no doubt about it, but she was determined to get her leading man down on paper before the June deadline whether they liked it or not.
Feelings aside, this was what she had to do…
and, shamelessly, she was having fun doing it.
At her words, John’s eyebrows raised before he coughed, face turning a beetroot red, as his wife’s jaw slackened so much, Olivia was sure it was in danger of unhinging and landing land on the floor like one of those funny cartoons they used to watch as kids.
“You’re… you… Olivia.” Her friend gathered her thoughts, scooping them off the floor like the marbles she seemed to think Olivia had just lost. “You can’t be serious.”
The sun glared in Olivia’s eyes as she turned and took in the shocked faces of her friends. “Okay, but just listen for a moment.”
John’s gruff laugh sprang out. “Oh my God, this is gold.” At the comment, his five-foot-nothing wife elbowed him sharply in the side with the clipped edges of a handful of poor, now crushed roses.
“Theo promised to help me find my leading man, that was what we stated in the agreement we made months ago. He would organise dates, and I would go on them. Edward was one of those dates. Now, is it wrong for me to not tell Edward? Yes. But I’m not planning to officially date, and after Micah… I have no interest in falling in love.”
At first she thought that her friends were just mulling over what she’d said, taking in her justifications and coming to the same understanding she had the previous evening.
Instead, she looked over to see them frozen in their spot, even more perplexed than five minutes earlier when she had told them she was scandalously dating two men at the same time with little to no intentions of romance.
“What?” Olivia’s eyes flicked between the married pair at rapid speed, her heart racing.
They were looking at her as though they thought she was completely bonkers.
Maybe she should have just kept it to herself.
After all, it wouldn’t be the first time Danielle had accused her of doing something completely mental.
“Darling, did you just hear that?” Danielle whispered to her husband. His laughter was long gone as he stared at Olivia.
“Yes, I did.”
“She said his name.”
“She did.”
“For the first time since…” Danielle’s hands came up and cradled her mouth as a small tear fell from her eyes.
Before Olivia had time to blink, she was engulfed in the all-encompassing squeeze of her best friend’s pale arms. Danielle smothered her, head tucked firmly over her shoulder as she held her.
“You said his name. Micah’s name.” John spoke carefully.
Olivia awkwardly patted her friend’s back. “What’s the big—”
“I am so proud of you,” Danielle mumbled in her ear. Leaning back, she took Olivia’s face between her hands and looked into her eyes. “You. Said. His. Name.”
Realisation sank deep into Olivia’s bones, and she felt it bubble up her spine and settle behind her eyes with a heavy sting. “Oh, my God. I said his name.”
“You said his name.”
“I said his name.” Olivia took a step back from her friend and rested a hand on the edge of the table, settling herself down on a small wooden stool John had unpacked from the van as part of their display. “I said his name. I… I didn’t even realise.”
“How did it feel?” Danielle asked.
“Natural.” Natural. That’s how it felt. It hadn’t even registered.
Micah. She hadn’t spoken his name since his funeral over a year ago.
When she was settling the will and passing his belongings back to his family who, after the accident, had cut her off like she hadn’t been engaged to be married to their son.
As if she hadn’t attended three Christmases at their house in north London.
After the accident, which had left her heartbroken and fiancé-less, she had pushed aside her belief in love.
Adamant there would be no other for her, she’d guarded his name as though it were the last scrap of him in her reality.
God knew it was the only thing his parents let her have of him.
His name, his memory, and his Yale University T-shirt, which she had shoved so far deep in the back of her chest of drawers it had stopped smelling of him far too quickly and instead smelt of moth balls and her.
A year ago, she’d have thought uttering his name once more would kill her, the pain being too much.
Acknowledging that love that had far too quickly been ripped away from her seemed like the complete opposite to natural.
It had once felt impossible. But between the dates, and her finally writing, the gaping wound his death had left in her chest had somehow begun to scab over, the ache dulling and being replaced with something peaceful, reassuring.
As she’d been writing this fourth novel, she had felt him, sitting in his spot on the sofa, whispering encouragement in her ear, giving her suggestions about her main protagonist. She had felt his encouraging motions whenever she spoke into the abyss of her living room, typing away on her laptop about Theo, and the dates she had been on.
Olivia had spent far too long talking out loud to Micah as though he were right there beside her, at first feeling guilty for going on the dates, but later explaining it was all in the name of research.
Just like she had said to Theo about their arrangement. It was all just for research.
So when she said it felt natural to say his name, she meant it.
Closure had crept up on her quicker than she had expected, hitting her like a freight train, pushing her off its tracks and onto her own.
She had never breathed cleaner air than this, standing there under that bloody tent, organising roses with her friends and talking about him.
It felt like her lungs could finally take in a big gulp of newness, and promise.
Promise that she was going the right direction, and that she had him leading her the whole way.
Micah. The man who had been her leading man in reality.
The man that was now giving her the green light to enjoy dating again.
The man who was whispering in her ear with every word she wrote: “Just because my story is over, doesn’t mean yours hasn’t only just begun. ”
At the thought, Olivia felt a ghost smile drifting over her lips as her friend pulled her close for a second time.
“Come on, you.” Danielle gave her a quick but just as smothering hug before dragging her over another box of flowers that had yet to be dealt with.
“Let’s finish getting set up, and then, after we sell my whole shipment of peonies, we’re going for a drink. ”