The Blue Iris, page 26
Tessa pulled back. The room squinted at him.
“I . . . there’s—” Rowan had been trying on phrasing all morning, but none fit. Everyone’s questioning eyes pierced like blow darts, seizing his muscle groups one at a time. “The thing is, I . . . we need to—” His jaw locked up.
“Jeezus fuck,” Darryl said, “spit it out!”
Rowan lifted the fold of papers like a flashcard. Tessa plucked them with the care of a bomb-handler and read silently, face scrunched.
Her voice broke, and she was sobbing into his chest again. “I’m so sorry. I really thought he would fix it.”
Darryl snatched up the papers. Ran his hand over his face and down the back of his neck, his eyes wet cement. “You’re really doing it. You’re selling off my mother’s legacy. Her house?”
“I bought as much time as I could!” Rowan said. “We won’t get a better deal!”
Darryl was behind the counter in one step, sending the air in the shop atwirl. Luke and Tony mobilized. Tessa leaped protectively in front of Rowan.
“They’re giving us five more years,” Rowan pleaded. “You’ll get a condo in the new development, free and clear. Charlie and the guys, too!”
“You money-grubbing sellout son-of-a-BITCH!”
A stadium yell tore from Charlie, rattling the windows. “Enough!”
Everyone froze.
“We get it, Darryl,” she said, “your parents opened a flower shop. A lovely one. And they worked very hard. But Simon turned it into an asset. Took away their mortgage, made them boatloads of cash. Rowan stepped up, kept that vision going all these years.” She waved her hand wildly. “You think you and your alcoholic brother would have pulled all this off by yourselves?”
Rowan focused on the ragged fray around his nails as Charlie pressed on. “You ever stop to think of the overhead? The taxes, utilities, insurance? Your rent that hasn’t increased in thirty years? The solid business decisions he lets you override because of your mother? How about a little respect? How about thank you, Rowan?”
Charlie crossed the floor to stand beside Rowan. “He doesn’t owe you shit, Brick.”
Darryl stared, jaw quivering. Finally, he walked out of the store, pausing only to smash his palm against the door frame.
Charlie turned to Rowan. “I should have said all that years ago. You made it look easy, just like Simon. But I should have asked more questions.” She picked up the offer, signed and ready to send to EnvidaCorp, and tore it in half. “Nobody’s taking you for granted anymore.”
Rowan shook his head helplessly. “We’ll never get a better deal than that.”
Charlie waved away the paper bits. “Forget it. I want in.”
He looked at her, confused.
“I went to the bank. I’ve got preapproval for a mortgage, and a loan.”
“Okay.”
“Sell me the house. And an equal stake in the shop.”
It pained Rowan to look at his friend. In a few minutes, when he printed off a fresh copy of that offer, there would be no house to buy. No business to invest in. Without permission from the city to use the back half of the property for business, Trucks had to close by tomorrow. The Blue Iris would live out its final five years in its humble, small-scale beginnings, before giving way to condo towers.
Charlie’s determined gaze sent goosebumps down his arms. “We can do this, Rowan. Whatever it takes, I’m with you.”
He couldn’t say the words. He simply shook his head. It’s too late.
Tony chimed in. “I could buy the Lodge.” All heads swiveled towards him. He shrugged. “I started cutting lawns when I was nine. Probably have more saved than half the fake-ass posers who shop here.”
Charlie darted around the counter, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Enough for a down payment?” She began throwing numbers at him, based on the market assessment of her own place.
Tony nodded. “Like my dad says, if you’re busy making money, you’re not spending it.”
Rowan blinked. His thoughts zizzed like fingertips on a calculator. Would it be enough to get back in the black? If so, how long could he stay there with a crumbling storefront and no Trucks?
Darryl filled the doorway again, two red milk crates stacked in his arms. Tessa, looking on in rueful silence, peeked inside the crates and gasped.
“Holy shit.” Luke waved Darryl inside, locking the door behind him.
Darryl stacked the boxes next to the pail of alstroemeria at Rowan’s feet, each one filled with tidy bundles of cash. He looked at Rowan. “Dad’s never money. Thought you could renovate the place or something.”
Rowan reeled. Blobs of light floated through his field of vision. “But Trucks . . . the fines.”
“We could start a petition,” Tessa said. “I’m sure the local residents would prefer a beautifully renovated flower market over condo towers. The landscapers and their crews would definitely be on board. Peter would push the variance through if enough votes depended on it.”
Charlie lifted her eyebrows, offering Rowan her hand. “Partners?”
Rowan took it, grinning. The dingy room exhaled. Only one cloud remained—that reptile Thornton walking the streets, Tessa’s scars unanswered. But that, too, would come to a head. Tessa had, against all reason, seen the beauty in this tangled heap and fought for it. Now, with the same solvency it had shown the rest of them, the Blue Iris would do the same for her. It always did.
Darryl swallowed Rowan’s clammy hand in his. The others closed in around them, hollering. Rowan lifted his eyes to Darryl’s. “There’s going to be changes. Lots of them.”
Darryl shrugged. “Could probably use a few.”
Charged with enthusiasm, the group set about brainstorming. All agreed the counter and basic inside layout should be preserved. The building itself would be structurally updated, expanded, and extensively redecorated. Powder-coated aluminum shelving would replace the rusted setup, with formal space carved out for Tessa’s redesigned front display. Cameras, security lights and a powered gate system would go along the entire perimeter.
For the rest of the afternoon, customers were treated to free flowers and slices of the cake that had somehow materialized in the staff room. Charlie and Tony placed calls to the bank. Rowan instructed Bobby to draw up the paperwork, then informed his crew that effective tomorrow, a stop-credit would be issued on all overdue accounts, with penalty interest accumulating until the balance was paid. Going forward, legitimate wholesale clients had thirty days to settle up. All other customers had to, quite simply, pay for their stuff.
Darryl offered to help enforce the new protocol, but it all seemed so reasonable now. Rowan said to send anyone with a problem directly to him. The Blue Iris was his family, and it was home. All the more reason he had to start treating it like a business.
Customers poured merrily in. Inexplicably, cheap plastic leis and party hats with elastic strings were now being passed around along with the cake. Everyone was pulling them over each other’s heads, giggling and crowding into selfies when the icy shatter of glass meeting concrete brought the festivities to a halt. Rowan gasped.
Charlie.
She stood paralyzed behind the counter, jaw a heavy noose. Hands still clutching the nineteen-dollar hourglass vase that was no longer there. Rowan tracked her gaze through the crowd to where a figure stooped near the door, plucking a honeycomb of her favorite dahlias from their pail.
The room plunged underwater in a myopic slur. Rowan took in the customer’s hair, the silhouette that rounded at the shoulders, as if carrying an invisible backpack full of rocks. The stranger straightened, his twilight eyes clear as a church bell and fixed—impossibly—on Charlie, the bouquet a Hail Mary at his chest. Rowan could no longer breathe.
It was Sam.
King Protea (Honeypot) / Protea Cynaroides
Earth’s oldest flower.
LUKE
They stood there, every leaf and bloom trembling. Sam stepped forward, Charlie backwards. More silence. Next, it was Charlie plunging ahead, dodging limbs and flowering buckets until only a sheet of air hung between them. No one breathed as she pressed a chlorophyll-stained finger to Sam’s cheek.
He was real.
Then, she slapped him so hard, Luke felt the breeze of it. Shoved him with a wrangled cry. Volumes passed in the silence, until Charlie took off. Sam followed her. Down the sidewalk, out of sight.
After awhile, everyone quietly dispersed. Tessa practically skipped alongside Luke all the way back to the Lodge like a child on Christmas Eve, full of questions he had no answers for. “But how is it possible? Where did he stay? Why didn’t he call?”
Luke walked in stunned silence. Sam was back. They would laugh and joke and smoke again. Charlie’s heart and conscience would mend. The shop would be whole. It was a miracle, and Luke was grateful beyond words, yet his own predicament weighed heavier by the minute.
Tessa must have felt it, because as they reached the Lodge she stopped talking and turned to him in the driveway, blue eyes full of worry. Luke nearly reached for her. But after staff night, he vowed never to lay another finger on her again. It would be too much.
“Luke,” she said as he wriggled under her gaze.
It hurt to look at her.
It hurt not to look at her.
With a weary sigh, he drew her into him. What did it matter anymore? He’d be gone soon enough.
A lock of her hair fell into the crook of his arm. Her cheek found the dip in his sternum. “What are we doing?” she whispered to his heartbeat.
He drew in her scent. Exhaled it into the crown of her head. “I wish I knew.”
“I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve never been so confused.”
Luke couldn’t take much more, either. He needed it to end, for her sake as much as his. “Tess, listen. I’m leaving.” She pulled her head back, looking up at him. “The co-op credit I missed? Because of Sam? I’m doing it over the winter.”
“But . . . how?”
“Frank knows a crew in San Diego. A spot opened up, and I took it.”
Her expression was unreadable. “When do you leave?”
Luke swallowed. “Training starts Monday.”
Labor Day. Three days away.
He had to take the job. He’d worked too hard to come this far. He couldn’t put everything on pause, upend his life again, set himself back further. This way, he could start taking his own landscape clients in the spring as planned, no matter what.
No matter who.
Tessa looked at the ground, emotions billowing.
“Hey,” Luke cradled her jaw with both hands. “It’s only a few months. And I’m not going anywhere. We’ll still be us, Princess Pain-in-the-Ass and her Super Hot Best Guy Friend.”
She pretend scowled.
“Super Hot Jackass and his Royal Pain-in-the-Ass?”
A smile broke through, but she still wouldn’t look at him.
“For real, Tess. No matter what happens, you’ve got me. I’ve got you. Okay?”
Luke meant it. His heart would limp battered and bruised across that airport finish line, knowing Tessa and Westlake might very well rebuild bigger and stronger while he was gone. She could be married by the time he got back. But their friendship was everything, and he’d have her back, always. He just couldn’t be anybody’s blip ever again.
Then, somehow, they were kissing. More accurately, it was Tessa kissing him, though his lips more than accommodated as she drank from him like a flask that wouldn’t flow quick enough.
Reason rocketed swiftly downstream, and Luke started thinking that given the circumstances, maybe he was fine being a blip after all. He let his arms fall tightly around her, pulling her in.
Just then, Tessa emitted a sound into his mouth. An anguished sort of hiccup. With violent force, she stepped back, one hand clapping over her wet lips as her eyes, still on him, snapped wide in a mix of shock and horror. His chest sank, because she looked like she’d been stabbed.
And then, she was gone.
Jacob’s Ladder / Polemonium Caerulium
Rupture.
TESSA
HEADLIGHTS.
Had her subconscious withheld this memory on purpose, waiting for full-blown flames in the cockpit before triggering her ejector seat?
The penthouse elevator slid open, and the first thing she saw was Will’s face, like he’d been standing there ever since that black morning she left.
A shaving nick by his Adam’s apple looked freshly clotted. His eyes jumped to the puckered grape line along her temple. He touched it lightly, like she was a bubble he was afraid of popping. “Does it still—”
“Shhh.” Tessa pressed her lips to his, her thoughts a hot heap—their fight; Thornton; Will’s jarring show of force against the shop; the newspaper article; his proposal-turned-ultimatum, set to expire in three days.
Before they began unpacking any of it, she needed to let herself feel, just for a moment, how deeply she loved this man in front of her. How intensely she still wanted him, despite everything. Will pulled back, affirming the lust in her eyes, then pressed her to the wall in a hard gush and kissed her again. For a brief moment, Tessa had the whole mess in hand. They would figure all this out. Everything would be fine. Until Will’s mouth, the lips she knew more intimately than her own, proved jarringly naked. Devoid of dark stubble.
She stopped cold. Her insides carved themselves down the middle like the thin spine between yin and yang, each half containing a glaring dollop of the other. These past few days, whenever her thoughts found Luke, there was also Will. Now, she was sure, there could never again be Will without Luke right there between them.
Tessa had long struggled with indecision, but there was no choice here. Will was a favorite movie, watched for the hundredth time. Luke was a symphony, exploding in deaf ears. She needed both. Somehow, whatever it took, she would have both.
Her gaze ran wild over Will. She pushed her hands into his hair, one flip-flop slapping to the floor as she pulled her legs up, around him, his hand fumbling below as he shoved aside her running shorts. The shorts she’d thrown on in haste mere hours ago, while Luke waited on the other side of the door.
One thrust was all it took to send her conscience spurting everywhere. Tessa fled across the room with a muffled cry. Will stared after her, his pants around his ankles.
He was her happily ever after; she had never wanted more.
Luke was her friend; they never meant for it to catch fire.
“Thornton didn’t hit me,” Tessa blurted.
Will didn’t answer, just joined her at the window. They stared over downtown. “I’ve been out of my mind,” he said. “Wondering if you were okay. If you were ever coming back to me.”
“Someone else was there. I remember now. There were headlights, and I stumbled off the curb.”
“I should have been there. By your side, through every second of this.”
Tessa wandered aimlessly. “I looked straight into them. That’s why I couldn’t see—”
Behind her, Will’s tone pinged off the vaulted ceiling. “You shouldn’t have been out there alone at that hour, period!”
Her head snapped back. “It was my fault?”
“I didn’t mean—” He stepped closer. “What made you think it was a good idea to take a run at the attorney general in a dark alley?”
Tessa held up one hand to stop him moving any closer. How smug of her, expecting all along Will would choose her. Thornton couldn’t go after Tessa for assaulting him without implicating himself as an impaired driver who fled the scene, the same way Will couldn’t press him without risking the brassy alliance his family needed. With these people, it always came down to the win. “You’re protecting him,” she breathed, “over me.”
“You attacked him. Just once, you couldn’t stop to think before flying off the handle? Or were you purposely trying to ruin me?”
“He was DRUNK, Will! I was supposed to let him drive away? For your father’s stupid election?”
“You realize this dead guy Sam you rave about had three DUIs, right?” Will started pacing. “You’d have me turn my back on all of it . . . family, career. Our future.” His face twisted. “For a flower market?” He looked at her. “You want to talk choices? Look me in the face and tell me you didn’t leave here and run straight to him.”
Tessa hurled a ragged breath at the ceiling. “Why are you so bent on punishing me for something I haven’t even done yet?” The last word scurried out before she could stomp it.
Will’s eyes were green baseballs. “Yet?”
Tessa studied the carpet pattern, gnawing her lip. His gaze revved around her like a chainsaw.
“Just say it. You’re dying to sleep with him.”
“What? No!” But as fiercely as she denied it, she knew in another life, another world, the answer would be different.
Will stopped circling. “What, then? Are you in love with him or something?”
Tessa stayed silent. The plush rug began to swim.
“ANSWER ME!”
“I don’t KNOW, okay?”
Will sank into the couch, staring numbly at her knees until the shards in his mouth dissolved, his next words trickling. “Do you still love me?”
Tessa sank to the floor in front of him, absently rubbing her arms and thighs, a full-body shiver mounting, the warning kind that typically reared before she threw up. She ignored it. “More than I could ever love anyone.”
Will let out a shaky gust. “Then we can still fix it.”
Tessa glanced around, as if he had some magic wand lying around. “How?”
Will slid from the leather, half-crawling to her. “Whatever it takes. I’ll make it happen, you know I will. Tell me what I’m missing, Tess. Just tell me what you need and it’s yours.”
“It’s not some sort of checklist, Will.”
But Winning Westlake was already off, doing what he did best. “We start over. Right now. Clean slate, for both of us. I take back the ring, make the paper run a retraction. And obviously I’ll call the bank, cancel the instructions for Monday. The offer on the house stands indefinitely.”
