Chapter 17
Eris
This is one of the marks
of a truly safe person:
they are confrontable.
― Henry Cloud, Safe People
She couldn’t fathom how Denny had been doing this for years.
People were a nightmare to deal with. Even the polite ones could be nerve-wrecking: slow, confused, undecided, misinformed, uncooperative…
The longer Eris spent in the frenzy of the shop, the more clearly she could detect Denny’s distress through her professional mask.
She hid it well, but it was there, and the harder she tried to conceal it, the more exhausted she was.
Customers who unnecessarily overexplained the simplest requests, who insisted upon stuff Denny didn’t have, who blathered on and on after they’d already had their answers…
Behind Denny’s lovely smile, Eris could see the struggle to keep it up and square, the silent agony of her light-speed brain yearning to skip to the next task, to get moving, to stop wasting time so pointlessly on matters she’d already set aside…
Eris knew that pain. It was how she felt around people who talked too loudly and over each other, when she was forced to step out of her routines and deal with unfamiliar things, unfamiliar people.
Watching Denny lock herself into her business persona gave her an unknown kind of affliction that she was slowly beginning to recognise as something she had only known as an abstract concept until now: empathy.
“Thank you, Mrs Edison, have a good day!”
When the old lady was finally gone, Denny sank down behind the counter, resting her forehead against its edge as she clutched it, white-knuckled. A heavy groan emerged from her.
“You need a break,” said Eris approaching.
“I can’t have a break,” mewled Denny. “It’s 11 AM. I just need to hide in the bathroom and cry for a minute or two.”
Sighing, Eris circled around the counter, grabbed her by an arm and dragged her to the stool behind her.
“Don’t you fucking move.”
She fetched Denny’s bottle and a snack from the office and thrusted both into her hands.
“You’re not getting up until you’ve emptied half of the bottle and finished the cake.”
Denny must have been at her limit, because she didn’t even try to protest. She bit off a huge chunk of the carrot cake and washed it down with a couple of long sips of water, sighing blissfully as she gulped. “Oh my god, I really needed that.”
“I’ll watch the shop if you want to go cry in the bathroom.”
Denny’s expression softened. “I already feel better.” She took another bite, chewed with a pensive face, then said: “You can’t just keep hanging around here all the time.”
“Is this not a public place?” Eris objected. She only came down when Rocco was out for a delivery, which was often, but certainly not all the time.
“I might be accused of exploiting illegal labor if someone reports your recurring presence in the shop and you’re not on the books.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I didn’t tell you sooner because I wasn’t sure it was doable, but…” Denny took a big breath. “Would you work for me?”
“Shut up,” Eris grumbled. There was a crumb at the corner of Denny’s mouth; she wiped it away, then licked the crumb off her finger.
“I mean it.”
“No, you don’t.”
When Eris walked away, Denny chased her and turned her back around. Eris had to fight the discomfort for the ill-timed touch, but, even without physical signs of uneasiness, Denny let go at once and apologised.
“Just hear me out,” she begged. “You do my accounting, help whenever I need it, stay with me when Rocco is away…” She gestured around herself emphatically. “We might as well do this properly!” Her teeth worried at her lower lip. “Unless you don’t care that I get into trouble.”
Eris didn’t buy the coy act for a single second, but was kind of intrigued by it. She crossed her arms and sat back on the counter with a smirk. “Are you trying to guilt trip me into this?”
“To persuade you.” A pink hue tinged Denny’s cheeks. “You’d make my life so much easier! You’re already doing that! And technically you wouldn’t even have to leave the house. Win win.”
A motorbike sped by in the street, the high-pitched rattle of its engine sending a shudder of discomfort down Eris’ spine. There was already too much noise in her head.
Deep down, she had to concede that Denny’s reasoning made a fair point.
Her hands itched every time she saw the disarray that reigned on the office desk.
Making order out of disorder gave her an unmatched sense of fulfilment, and maybe Denny did need some help keeping things in check despite Tansy’s Garden’s accounting being minimal and mostly digitalised—child’s play, if one had the mental ability to sit themselves down and do it.
Eris was confident that she had learned enough by now to do what the job required.
Denny seemed in physical pain every time she was forced to do anything she wasn’t genuinely interested in and there was nothing Eris wouldn’t do to take a burden off her back.
“You’re a little shit,” she whined. It made so much sense that it was hard to fight the temptation to accept.
“I’m proposing a mutually beneficial solution to two problems.” Denny blinked innocently.
Eris gave her a lazy kick. You think you’re so clever, don’t you?
“This is roughly what I can offer you.”
A simple sheet materialised in Eris’ hands.
It wasn’t a full contract, more like a summarisation of the conditions; as Eris went through them, her heart rate picked up: thirty hours a week was significantly less than her former job, but the pay was almost the same and, without rent to cover, she might even manage to set something aside.
She lifted a wary gaze on Denny. “You make enough to pay me this much?”
She had no idea a simple flower shop could be so profitable, but this was Marylebone, after all. On top of that, there was the rent from the salon next door. Denny was wealthier than Eris had estimated.
“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t earn any of this: I was handed everything on a silver platter.
The business, the building…” Denny cast a look around herself.
“My grandma did all the hard work in the 70’s.
I just took over when she retired. Let me share my luck with you.
” She was fidgeting with her nails, as she often did when she was restless.
“It’s a temp contract, to see how it goes.
If it works out, we can look at making some changes. ”
Eris scoffed, tossing the document on the counter. “This is more than enough.”
“So you’re in?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh.”
She wanted to say yes so badly.
It would’ve been a dream: just jogging down the stairs to get to work, no traffic, no crowds, a room all to herself, no obligation to socialise…
She was even willing to tolerate Rocco. But this was an impulsive decision, like all of Denny’s decisions, and it shouldn’t be made lightly.
One of them had to act like a grownup and actually ponder the prospect.
“You don’t need another employee.”
“Then I guess you don’t need to do my bookkeeping when I fall asleep on it, right?” Denny raised an eyebrow, arms cockily planted on her hips, but her expression melted in front of Eris’ unresponsiveness. She came forward to lock her arms around Eris’ neck and grace her with a bashful smile.
It was a dead end, there were no arguments left to counterattack. To a casual eye, Denny may seem naive and feather-headed, but she was impossible to outsmart.
Defeated, Eris tugged at the folds of her dress. “I can’t keep up, Denny,” she muttered through a knot in her throat. “You keep giving and giving, and I have nothing to give back.”
To her surprise, instead of seeking contact, Denny stepped back, the dress slipping out of Eris’ helpless grip.
“Is this a race?” she murmured, a slight quiver in her lip. “Do I have to mark down my points on a board so that we can see who wins?”
“What?”
Denny’s throat bobbed. “You act like… like you have to compensate me for something. Like you’re keeping tabs on what we do for each other.” The cracking tremble in her voice hurt like a stab.
That was exactly what Eris was doing—what she needed to do to know she wasn’t just being a burden in Denny’s life: what she got, it was only fair she gave back. It made sense. She didn’t know why Denny was so upset. Eris had never seen her like that and was at a loss in this uncharted territory.
“Are we fighting?” she had to ask and for a moment she was afraid she’d be laughed at. Denny, however, didn’t flinch, the tip of her nose turning pink.
“Sort of, yeah.”
Eris could only take the blow and nod. “Okay.”
More uncharted territory. Conflict resolution wasn’t part of her skillset.
Avoiding people: that was what she was good at.
Which implied avoiding conflict. She hated confrontation and, had it been anyone else, she would’ve walked away at once.
But it was Denny standing in front of her, addressing a problem Eris couldn’t even see, and running wouldn’t benefit anyone, wouldn’t make the problem disappear.
Mollified by her dismay, Denny ran a hand through her curls with a sigh that sounded more like a sniffle.
“I know you find comfort in rationalising everything,” she said, “but this? Us?” Her voice caught a little. She licked her lips, taking a moment to recenter. “You can’t keep putting our relationship on a scale like this, it’s not healthy, nor fair, to either of us! Do you understand what I mean?”
Eris could’ve said yes, but it would have been a lie. It wasn’t exactly a no, though. She hadn’t forgotten what Denny had said about love not being calculable and she understood the concept on an abstract level. She just had a hard time implementing it.
“I think so,” she said as a compromise, without much conviction. It was hard to concentrate knowing Denny was cross with her. She wasn’t even sure Denny was cross. It felt like anger, but with blunted edges tinged with blue.
Sad.
Denny was sad.