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“Yeah, that would have been weird,” Leo confirmed. “What are you doing back here?”
“Avoiding Scarlett,” Colin said simply. Leo bobbed his head and looked toward the sliding glass door that led back inside to where he’d seen his sister-in-law Harper and her younger sister Scarlett in the living room earlier.
“Ah, makes sense,” Leo replied.
“I tried to talk to her, and she told me to go away, so here I am,” Colin sighed. “She doesn’t like funerals, so I thought I could cheer her up. Apparently not.”
“Her brother, right?” Leo asked.
“Yeah.” Colin nodded. “He died when he was eleven.”
“What was your plan to cheer her up?” Leo’s eyebrows raised.
“Paints and brushes,” Colin said. “She’s an artist. She paints when she’s sad or happy or stressed.” The way Colin spoke was always so to the point, and Leo appreciated his ability to get right down to business.
“I think you should give them to her anyway. If she won’t talk to you, just give them to her sister, and she can pass them on,” Leo suggested.
“Okay.” Colin got up from his seat, immediately taking to Leo’s idea.
“All right.” Leo blinked. He was used to people following his orders, but a Hartrick listening to his suggestion and rolling with it off the bat? Unheard of. “Good luck,” Leo called back as Colin slid the glass door open to leave the backyard on a mission.
“Do you want space, or someone to sit with?” Piper’s voice called out from behind Leo as she passed by her brother in the doorway.
Leo turned around to tell her he wanted to be alone, but the second he saw her, he knew that wasn’t true. “Sit with me.” Once Piper was safely seated beside him, he let out a slow breath, unsure of what to say. “I don’t like that it doesn’t feel like Abuelita’s spirit is in there. Your family’s nice for throwing this for us, and I’m sure it would have had the same result at our house, but I can’t stand it. She was the life of every party, you know? I just hate that she’s not here to yell at everyone for being so sad.”
“What if we changed it?” Piper asked.
He turned his torso to face her, finding her ocean eyes full of compassion. For once, he had hope that she might feel the same way about him. “What did you have in mind?”
Piper skipped down the aisle of Lydia’s Grocery holding up a bouquet of sunflowers wrapped in brown paper.
“I feel like we’re getting sidetracked. Why do we need flowers?” Emma asked and reached up to smack Sam’s hand away from a shelf stocked with toaster pastries “Focus! You don’t need Pop-Tarts.”
“Walker said that he eats Pop-Tarts when he’s writing, and he’s a literary genius,” Sam proclaimed. “Maybe I need Pop-Tarts to give me that edge of brilliance.”
Leo chuckled. “Sam, you’re a great actor. You don’t need Pop-Tarts. And you need to chill with Piper’s uncle before he kills you off like one of the characters in his book.” He wrapped one arm around Piper’s waist as she came to stand beside him. “Emma’s right. We’re here for tamal ingredients and enough massive bowls to make said tamales. Why do we need flowers, princesa?”
“Sunflowers are your mom’s favorite flower, so I thought they’d cheer her up. Plus, your grandma had sunflowers on her headscarf the first time I met her, and I’m buying, so.” Piper gave her shoulders a happy little shimmy, looking genuinely delighted by her reasoning. She was entirely too adorable for her own good, and Leo didn’t want to break that, but he had promised her complete honesty during their drive back from Archwood after Thanksgiving. After already breaking that promise by not admitting his feelings, he felt he owed her the truth.
“Sunflowers aren’t my mom’s favorite flower.” Leo watched Piper’s face fall and quickly added, “But the second part is true. I bought that headscarf for Abuelita’s birthday in high school. We should get the flowers.”
“No.” Piper shook her head, pulling her eyebrows together. “I distinctly remember you texting me to tell Talia to get your mom sunflowers.” She reached for her phone in her pocket as if she were going to go back through their texts to prove him wrong, though he already knew what she’d find there. He had, in fact, told her that.
“Yeah, uh, I don’t know, I must’ve just been thinking about sunflowers at the time. It’s not a big deal.” Leo shrugged and looked away, realizing suddenly that even back when he hated Piper he’d still subconsciously thought about her and the dress she wore at the karaoke bar. And the headscarf… had Piper been subconsciously stuck in his head then, too?
Piper touched his arm with a gentle brush of her fingers to draw his attention back to her. “Sunflowers are my favorite flower, Leo.”
Emma coughed, and both she and Sam strategically began inspecting the Pop-Tarts when Leo jerked his head in their direction. Their acting was subpar at best.
“I didn’t know that, of course,” Leo started, his shoulders stiff. “But I probably could have guessed. You have a sunflower dress, the earrings you're wearing right now are little sunflowers, you have that sunflower in your inspiration box from your mom, and you’re… sunny.” He was going to die on the spot from mortification.
“Oh.” Piper blushed and reached up to touch one of her earrings. He could see on her face that she must have been considering what all of that meant when they were rudely interrupted.
“Piper?” a man’s voice called out from behind them, and Leo’s back immediately went ramrod straight. His body always had an instant reaction of disgust to that voice, and he hoped he was hearing it wrong, but he found his ears were dead on as usual when he turned around.
“Harden,” Piper replied when she met her ex-boyfriend face to face. Her tone was ice-cold, and it only made Leo love her more.
Leave that sunshine for me, princesa, he thought.
