Chapter 8 #2
Preparing the twins’ orders gave her an excuse to put off cleaning the lab.
Since she had been granted creative freedom, she tried to make bouquets that would suit both the twins’ intent and Eris’ personality.
She made one with candy cane carnations—‘My heart aches for you’—for Malik and one with sunflowers for Noah—‘I worship you’.
They seemed in line with how the boys had reacted to Eris at the gym.
She wrote down names and phone numbers on the cards as per instructions and stood back to admire her work.
Without any false modesty, both bouquets were gorgeous.
Even if flowers weren’t Eris’ weakness, she couldn’t not appreciate them.
Go on, now, she sourly told herself. All she’s missing is one with yellow roses from you.
She sent photos to the boys, wondering if they knew that they’d had the same idea, then found a vase for each bouquet and placed them in the refrigerator, sticking a note to the back door of the shop as a reminder to take them upstairs after closing.
Just a few more minutes and she’d be free. She couldn’t wait to drop down on her bed and pass out.
“Boss, you won’t believe this!” Rocco burst into the lab, panting.
Denny put the tea down. “Did something go wrong?”
“On the contrary! The girl’s cousin’s florist bailed and she wants us to do her flowers, too!”
“Oh, that’s dope! When is her birthday?”
“Tomorrow.”
Denny had a bad feeling about it. “You said no, right?”
Awkward silence.
“Right?”
“I said I’d discuss it with you and get back to them.”
“Discuss it? There’s no way we can get it done by tomorrow!”
“They’re minted, Denny! They said they’ll pay double if you say yes!” Rocco faltered. “I’ll do it alone if you let me use the lab! I could use a few extra quids!”
“Quid,” Denny corrected, a note of dejection in her voice. Rocco was always struggling with money. Charging double wouldn’t be unreasonable for such a cumbersome last-minute commission. “It’s an awful lot of work for two, let alone one,” she sighed.
Rocco’s face fell. He didn’t try to argue. “The mother begged to let her know ASAP if we can’t do this because she’s desperate to save her baby’s big day.”
The phrasing speared right through Denny’s tender heart. She saw her bed fly out of the window, along with her composure.
“Luna’s arrangements took us two days! How on earth are we supposed to squeeze the same amount of work in half the time? We don’t even have the material to do that!”
“I’ve already checked with Ludwig. He says he can be here at 7 with whatever we need, if we send the order by 4. I have reference photos of what the girl wants.”
“But we’ll never manage to—”
“We will,” said Rocco, grabbing her arms. “If we stay up all night.”
Denny fumbled. It was a lot of money, but also a lot of work. It would be tough—really tough—but not impossible.
“You could also... You know…”
“What?”
“Ask your gal pal to lend us a hand.”
“No!” Denny was unmovable on this. “She already does so much, I can’t ask her to do this, too!”
“If you pay her—”
“It still feels like blackmail! I don’t want her to feel like she owes me this!”
Rocco cocked his head. “You’ve got it bad, eh?”
Denny swallowed. This was nonsense. Eris wasn’t a slave and she shouldn’t feel obliged to do anything whatsoever, least of all help in the shop.
“I see how you look at her. Those longing puppy looks… If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to get into her knickers. Or get her into yours. I never asked: are you a top or a bottom? You give off pillow princess vibes.”
If this was what having a brother was like, Denny was glad she was an only child.
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“That’s an admission right there.”
“Oh my god!”
“Look, I get it: she’s fit. Terrifying, sure, but you love Shadow Momm—”
“Enough!” Denny snipped, ears burning. “Show me those damn photos!”
* * *
She was positively going to regret this.
Crawling upstairs, laden with flowers, she cursed herself over and over for indulging Rocco and his recklessness.
He hadn’t given her a choice, not really. She didn’t care about the money, but there was a fifteen-year-old girl out there who counted on her to save the most important birthday of her life.
“We can do this!” Rocco had exclaimed with manic excitement. “All we need is lots of coffee and lots of snacks!”
He was forgetting an itsy-bitsy detail: something fucked up in Denny’s biology caused her system to react to caffeine the opposite way normal bodies did and the slightest excess of it had the power to knock her out for hours.
A dejected sigh wheezed out of her as she butted the door open and walked in backwards, trying not to ruin her creations. The console table by the door was too cluttered, so she brought the bouquets to the kitchen.
Eris was emptying the dishwasher. She gave Denny a nonplussed look when she placed the bouquets on the table, nearly knocking one down with the other.
Denny put her hands on the small of her back to catch her breath. She was exhausted and the worst hadn’t even started yet.
Eris completely bypassed the flowers to flash her a concerned glance.
“Two WHYNSUA,” Denny explained, “and so much time wasted on useless small talk when I had so much to do in the back…” Just the memory of it made her want to cry.
She inhaled a deep breath to calm down. She hinted at the bouquets.
“Looks like you’ll have to decide which doe-eyed Jordan twin gets to take you out first,” she said. “If you’re interested, that is.”
She gingerly spied Eris’ reaction: she wasn’t thrilled, but, then again, she never was. The sight of her admiring the flowers put a bitter taste in Denny’s mouth. I made those, she wanted to remark, as if to lay some claim to Eris’ flattered expression.
Great. Now she was tired and sad.
“Dinner is cancelled, by the way.”
A small, perverse part of Denny that she hardly recognised rejoiced at Eris ripping her attention off the flowers.
“We received a very urgent order that needs to be handed out by tomorrow afternoon. Ludwig will be here any moment with a fresh supply. Rocco and I will be pulling an all-nighter.”
Eris wasn’t happy. With a deep furrow in her brow, she grabbed the little stack of flashcards that Denny had got her and started flipping through it. When she found the card she was looking for, she turned it to Denny, who sighed at the cute kitten tucked in bed captioned as ‘sleepy’.
“I’ve already taken the payment.”
Eris flipped through the cards again until she spotted the extremely upset red parrot captioned as ‘angry’. She slammed it onto the table with the rest of the stack and picked up her phone instead. A few seconds later, Denny’s phone vibrated in her pocket.
Eris
YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT AND NEED TO REST
Denny bit down on a grin. The few texts that Eris had bothered to send her so far were all succinct questions or reminders about things Denny had to do. It seemed fitting that the first showing a trace of emotion was to berate Denny.
“The parents were desperate, I couldn’t bail,” she sighed, still tired, but not as sad as before.
Eris hissed out a sharp breath through her nostrils.
Eris
I’m going to kill that stupid himbo
“Sorry, no killing until the job is finished.” Denny massaged her temples. When had her head started throbbing like that?
One of her hands got yanked away and a glass of water was thrust into it. She downed it greedily, only now realising how thirsty she was. Eris filled it again, handing Denny a blister pack of paracetamol before getting her phone again.
Eris
I’m serious, Sunshine
You look like you’re about to collapse
An emotion Denny had never felt before popped inside her like a bubble—a mixture of joy, dismay, and a peculiar urge to cry that made the earth feel brittle under her feet. All because of an innocent little Sunshine.
She already knew she was saved as Sunshine in Eris’ contacts. It wasn’t all that groundbreaking: plenty of people had called her Sunshine since her childhood. Her heart didn’t care: it was puffing up like she’d received the most romantic declaration of love.
Just friends, Denny. Hold your horses.
A subject change was required.