Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
George
Iwould not have chosen to spend my afternoon in a florist's shop. Especially one that smells like wet stems and overpriced candles. But Eleanor asked, and gave me the look that means please, for the love of everything, so here I am.
Tessa is already inside when I arrive, standing near a display of sample centerpieces, nodding at something Eleanor is saying.
My mother stands on her other side, and beside Mother is a woman I don't know: sharp eyes, expensive blazer, the posture of someone who has decided in advance that she's the authority in any room she enters.
I almost turn around and leave.
Eleanor catches my eye from across the studio and gives me the small, exhausted nod, and I know I can't leave.
I cross the room and stop beside Tessa without announcement, which is apparently the wrong approach because she startles, pressing one hand briefly to her sternum like I've defibrillated her.
"You could warn a person," she says quietly, not looking at me.
"I walked in a straight line at a normal pace."
She doesn't respond to that, but the corner of her mouth moves.
Eleanor shepherds us all toward the main consultation table, which is covered in fabric swatches, ribbon samples, and photographs of floral arrangements that appear to have been organized by someone in a genuine emotional crisis.
I sit beside Tessa at the small table. She's close enough that I'm aware of the warmth of her arm without actually touching it.
The woman in the expensive blazer introduces herself as Fran: My mother's old friend, self-described floral enthusiast, and someone who has attended fourteen weddings in the last five years.
I file this under: not useful.
Fran does a trill of a laugh that I'm supposed to join in. I don't.
The florist begins her presentation, and Tessa produces a notebook from somewhere and uncaps a very fine-tipped pen.
I watch her notate as the florist gives pros and cons of specific florals. Tessa's handwriting is surprisingly neat. Small, even letters, slight leftward slant, like she's been thinking faster than she can write and everything is leaning to try to catch up.
I find myself watching her write instead of listening to the florist and redirect my attention to the arrangement samples on the table.
Eleanor reaches across and squeezes Tessa's free hand warmly. Tessa smiles back, and for just a moment, the professional calm face is gone, replaced by something easier and more unguarded.
Then, under the table, without any discussion or prior agreement, Tessa shifts her hand palm-up in the space between us. A quiet, efficient, entirely businesslike invitation.
I take her hand. She is my 'girlfriend' after all.
Her fingers are cooler than I expected, but are slightly distracting.
"You two are just adorable," the florist says warmly, glancing between us.
"Oh." Tessa's voice comes out slightly higher than usual. "We aren't—we're not getting married." A flush moves up her neck and into her face.
She gives my hand a sharp, pointed squeeze and I understand immediately.
"We're here for my sister," I say, gesturing toward Eleanor. "And her fiancé."
Thankfully, Daniel chooses this moment to materialize in the doorway, five minutes late. Eleanor waves him over, and the florist pivots with professional smoothness toward the actual couple.
"Sorry about the confusion," the florist says, a little flustered.
"No problem," Tessa says, with perfect composure, and squeezes my hand again.
This time I think she just wants to.
She doesn't let go after that, which makes sense. Releasing my hand now would look strange, would make the whole moment strange. And so we sit there, her hand in mine, while the florist moves on to centerpiece options.
Fran immediately takes over, pointing at a photograph of an arrangement so aggressively dense with flowers it looks like it might be structurally unsound. "The more the better," she declares, with the confidence of someone who considers personal taste a universal law.
Tessa writes something in her notebook without comment. I glance sideways and read two words: allergy risk.
The florist starts talking about flowers on every surface apparently known to mankind, the tables, the chairs, the entrance arch, even the individual place settings, and I watch Tessa’s pen slow to a halt.
"I wonder," she says, in a tone carefully calibrated to sound offhand, "whether it's worth checking for guest sensitivities. Some of these arrangements are quite concentrated, and in an enclosed venue—"
It's a reasonable point, precisely structured and diplomatically delivered. Fran tilts her head and smiles in the way people smile when smiling is a polite way to disagree.
"No offense," Fran says, "but you're a matchmaker, not a florist."
The table goes quiet in the specific way tables go quiet when something slightly too sharp has been said out loud.
Tessa doesn’t flinch. Her face stays composed, carefully neutral. But her grip on my hand tightens for a split second, a small reflex she gets under control almost immediately.
"Tessa solves multi-million-dollar communications problems for a living," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected, which is probably the better outcome. "I'd recommend listening to her."
Fran opens her mouth. Closes it.
Eleanor looks at me with an expression I can't immediately place. Surprise, maybe. Or something that might be approval.
The florist, with the smooth reflexes of someone who knows how to rescue an appointment, pivots neatly into a discussion of alternative arrangement densities, and the moment slips past. Under the table, Tessa’s hand remains in mine.
She does not say a word, but after a beat her thumb gives one small, calming circle.
I decide not to analyze what that means.
***
Back at the office, I am reviewing third-quarter compatibility index data. It should require focused attention. At the moment, it is getting something closer to sixty percent.
The remaining forty is occupied, for reasons I have not yet found a useful way to justify, with monitoring the hallway outside my office door.
Tessa passes at 2:14, speaking quietly into her phone, her heels striking the hardwood in precise, even beats. She is already solving something. I can tell by the small vertical line between her brows and the way she nods before the other person has finished explaining the problem.
At 2:31 she passes again in the opposite direction, carrying coffee and listening to someone I cannot see, her expression suggesting she is already three steps ahead of whatever they are telling her.
Noah appears in my doorway, drops a file on the corner of my desk with slightly too much casualness, and leans against the frame in the way he does when he is not there about the file.
"You're watching Tessa," he says.
"I'm reviewing data."
He says nothing to that, which is its own kind of commentary.
Behind Noah, I recognize a man from our intake list in the hallway. He has a difficult case, three failed compatibility cycles, and apparently he's not happy about it. He's moving toward the reception desk with his jaw set and his phone gripped in his hand like a club.
Tessa steps into the hallway before he reaches the desk.
Something in how she angles herself toward him shifts the whole geometry of the interaction. Ninety seconds later, Carver's nodding along with whatever she's saying. She walks him toward the consultation rooms, and he follows without resistance.
I realize I've stopped pretending to look at my screen.
"Ninety seconds," I say, mostly to the room.
"She has a talent," Noah says, as though this has been established for years and I'm simply the last to file it correctly.
A few moments later, Tessa reappears in my doorway. She acknowledges Noah with a brief nod, then her eyes find mine.
"If a couple's PR metrics spike after a negative event," she says, "would you weight that as volatility or engagement?"
It's a precise question. I appreciate precise questions.
I answer her, "engagement, weighted against baseline variance, flagged for context," and watch her process it. Her forehead wrinkles for a moment like she's trying to decipher a complex foreign language.
"That's what I thought," she says. "But I wanted to check against your model rather than assume."
She says your model like it's a compliment.
She leaves. Noah watches her go, then turns back to me with an expression of theatrical patience that I find unreasonable.
"You still certain this is purely professional?" he says.
I return my attention to my screen.
"She asks your opinion a lot," he adds.
"She asks precise questions because she thinks precisely. That isn't unusual."
Noah picks up his file and says nothing. Just gives me a look of quiet, unconvinced disbelief, which is somehow more effective than if he'd pressed the point. He never needed to deliver a file in the first place.
After he's gone, I find myself watching through the glass wall of Conference Room A.
Tessa is seated across from a client in his mid-forties with the tense posture of someone who arrived expecting bad news. He'd come in twenty minutes ago with a problem "too big for a relationship fix."
Now he's leaning back in his chair.
Tessa says something I can't hear. He laughs, unexpectedly and genuinely, and then she laughs too, briefly covering her mouth with her hand like she didn't plan for it to happen.
I had categorized her function here as problem-solving: intake, assessment, resolution. Clean and efficient. I was not wrong, exactly.
But she's not just solving problems.
She's making people feel like their problem was never as large as it seemed. Like they walked in carrying something heavy and she quietly showed them it was hollow.
I have never been particularly skilled at that.
I had always assumed Tessa Bloom was simply competent.
The data, I'm finding, suggests something considerably more complicated.
I may need to revise my model.