Chapter 18 - Andrea
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Andrea
I walked onto the floor and stopped.
My desk was covered in pink peonies. Dozens of them, pink and white blooms spilling over my keyboard and my file tray, petals on my chair, the whole surface buried under flowers like someone had emptied a garden onto it.
The smell hit me before I reached the desk and my feet just stopped moving because it smelled like my mother’s garden.
It smelled like the fence row in Whitebrook where she grew them in long uneven lines and I used to pick them and stick them in water glasses because we never had enough vases.
I stood there. I didn’t tell him it was my birthday.
Didn’t tell anyone at the office. I’d mentioned it once, on the porch, to Fin, years ago, talking about how I stopped celebrating after my parents died.
I’d said, offhand, that peonies were my favorite.
That my mom grew them. A throwaway sentence at midnight to a dog I thought couldn’t understand me.
Through the glass, he was at his desk reading something on his screen. Didn’t look up. Didn’t acknowledge the flowers. Didn’t wait for a reaction.
I sat down and touched a petal. It was soft under my finger, impossibly soft, and my chest hurt in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
I picked up one of the blooms, held it to my nose, breathed in.
My eyes burned. I had to blink hard and fast before I could open my laptop because I was not going to cry at work over goddamn flowers. I was not.
My phone buzzed. A text from Maryjane.
happy birthday babe!! come by the shelter later, peter made you a cake and it’s ugly but he tried
I texted back: my desk is covered in flowers
Mary: from who??
who do you think
OH MY GOD
what kind
peonies. pink ones.
are you crying
no
you’re crying
shut up
andrea grey if you don’t lock that man down I will personally drive to your office and do it for you
I put my phone face down and pressed my fingers against my eyes. Through the glass he was still at his desk, still reading, still pretending he hadn’t buried my workspace under flowers that smelled like my dead mother’s garden.
I got up. Walked into his office without knocking. He looked up and I must have looked like a mess because his expression shifted, softened, and he stood.
“You remembered,” I said, and my voice cracked.
“I remember everything you tell me.”
“I told a dog.”
“You told me.”
I crossed the distance between us and threw my arms around his neck.
He caught me, pulled me in, lifted me off the floor and spun me once, my feet leaving the ground.
I buried my face in his neck, breathed him in.
The peonies on my desk, his skin, the warmth of his arms, it was too much and not enough at the same time.
He set me down. His hands stayed on my waist.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I’ll pick the place.”
“Okay.”
“Stop saying okay and go back to your desk before I keep you in here all day.”
I laughed, wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, and went back to my desk. The peonies were still everywhere. I moved a bloom off my keyboard and started working and every time I breathed in, my chest ached in the best way.
After work I stopped by Bonalisa first. Peter’s cake was lopsided, frosted unevenly in pink with “HAPPY BDAY ANDREA” in wobbly letters that sloped downhill.
It was the ugliest damn cake I’d ever seen and I loved it.
Mary hugged me so hard my ribs popped and Peter stood behind her looking proud of his disaster.
“Tell me everything about the flowers,” Mary said, cutting me a slice.
“He remembered my favorite. From years ago. I mentioned it once and he remembered.”
“The man has a steel trap for a brain when it comes to you.” She handed me the plate. “Did you cry?”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“A little. At my desk. Very briefly. It doesn’t count.”
“It absolutely counts. You cried at work over flowers. That’s love.”
“That’s allergies.”
“Sure it is.” She grinned. “Where’s he taking you tonight?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Ooh, mystery dinner. That’s either very romantic or very serial killer.”
“With him it could genuinely go either way.”
I ate the cake. It tasted like box mix and too much frosting and I loved every bite.
Buddy was in the back pen, his tail going the second he saw me.
He’d filled out since the last time I fostered him, coat shinier, less flinch in his posture.
I sat on the floor and he put his head in my lap and I fed him a crumb of frosting that Mary pretended not to see.
“He’s doing better,” I said.
“He’s doing great. Still shy with new people but he trusts us now. He trusts you especially.”
I scratched behind his ears and he leaned into my hand. I wanted to take him home so badly it hurt, but I still didn’t have the space or the hours, not yet. Someday.
I hugged them both again, promised to visit on the weekend, and left to meet him.
He took me to a small restaurant, warm lighting, a corner table tucked away from the rest of the room. Over dinner I told him about my parents. Not about the peonies, he already knew that, but about my dad. The birthday tradition.
“He used to pretend to forget every year. He’d show up at dinner with a gift that was completely wrong on purpose.
A baseball glove. A fishing rod. One year he gave me a tire iron.
Kept a straight face the whole time while my mom was dying laughing behind her napkin. Then he’d pull out the real gift.”
“What was the real gift?”
“Always a book. Every year. He’d find something he thought I’d love and wrap it in whatever he could find because we never had wrapping paper. He’d watch me open it with this grin on his face like giving me a book was the best thing that happened to him all year.”
I missed them so hard my ribs ached. Ten years and it still hit like this, sudden, sharp, grief living inside your bones just waiting for a reason.
My phone buzzed. Grandma. My throat tightened before I even answered.
“Sorry, I have to take this.”
I stepped into the hallway by the restrooms, leaned against the wall, pressed the phone to my ear.
“Hi, Grandma.”
“Happy birthday, my Andy.” Her voice was warm and my throat closed up, just like that, no warning.
She sounded exactly the same as she had when I was six, when I was fifteen and shattered, when she held me together with sheer force of will.
“Your mom would be so proud of you. I need you to hear that.”
“I hear it.” My voice cracked on the second word and I pressed my forehead against the wall.
“You sound happy.”
“I am, Grandma. I really am.”
“Good. Be happy. You deserve it, sweetheart. More than anyone I know.”
I stood in that hallway for a minute after we hung up, pressing the heel of my hand against my eyes, breathing until the tightness loosened enough to go back.
I wished she was here. Wished I could sit at her kitchen table with a cup of tea, tell her everything, the real everything.
Wolves, kings, a man who turned into a dog to sit on my porch because he couldn’t stay away.
She’d probably believe me, probably just nod and say, “Well, that explains the size of that damn dog.”
I went back to the table, sat down, face still damp, and I didn’t try to hide it. He didn’t ask if I was okay. Didn’t hover or push. Just reached across the table, took my hand, held it while I breathed.
After we ate, he reached beside his chair and pulled out a wrapped package. Small, rectangular. My heart stuttered.
I opened it and my hands went still. A book. A hardcover with raised lettering, heavier than my worn paperback at home. I opened the front cover and there on the title page was the author’s signature, ink slightly smudged at the tail of the last letter. Real ink, not a print, not a stamp.
My hands were shaking.
“How did you find this?”
“I paid attention.”
“These are impossible to find. She barely does signings, I’ve looked for years.”
“Good thing I’m persistent.”
I let out a breath that was half laugh and half sob. I looked at the signature, looked at him. My dad giving me books every birthday. This man doing the same thing without being told, fitting himself into a tradition he’d learned from a porch confession at midnight.
I leaned across the table, took his face in both hands, kissed him. Knocked the candle sideways and didn’t care. The waiter had to come put it out and I didn’t give a damn about that either. I kissed him until I ran out of breath, then pulled back with wet cheeks and a chest so full it hurt.
“Thank you,” I said. Meant it more than I’d meant anything in a long time.
Back at the estate, in his bedroom, I set the signed copy on the nightstand, carefully, spine up so it wouldn’t crease, and turned to him.
He was standing by the bed and the look on his face was different tonight.
Softer. Slower. Like the urgency that usually drove us had burned down to something quieter.
His hands cupped my face, thumbs brushing over my dimple, those amber eyes holding mine without a hint of rush. That mix of possession and care that always got under my skin, making my chest ache in a way I wasn’t used to.
He didn’t say anything at first, just leaned in and kissed me slow, lips parting mine like he had all night.
His tongue slid against mine, tasting like the wine from dinner, and I melted into it, my hands fisting his shirt.
When he pulled back, his voice came out low, rough around the edges.
“You look beautiful tonight, Andrea. That dress has been killing me since you walked in.”