Maisie takes this very seriously, sticking her tongue out in concentration as she presses the dough into a messy circle.
Fallon is at the prep station, slicing peppers and onions with a chef’s knife that looks like a machete in his large hands. “You know,” he says, his back to us, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop at the theater, but I heard you mentioning HVAC trouble earlier. Everything okay at the shop?”
I sigh, sprinkling cheese over my pizza. “It’s a mess. Our main supplier had a transportation failure last week—a truck broke down on I-5. We had a massive wedding order coming in, so Norah and I decided to buy in bulk from a secondary distributor to be safe.”
“Smart,” Fallon comments.
“It would have been,” I reply, dusting my hands off. “But the bulk order was twice the size of our usual delivery. We’re overflowing. And to make matters worse, the compressor on the main cold room unit died this morning. It’s holding at forty degrees, but that’s not cold enough for the roses. They’re wilting fast.”
“Damn,” Fallon says, dumping a pile of sausage onto his pizza. “That’s a nightmare. What are you doing with the overflow?”
“We’re running back and forth to Fox & Fern,” I explain. “Wren—Norah’s best friend, she owns the bakery—let us hijack their walk-in cooler for the buckets of roses until we can get a repair guy out. But lugging heavy buckets through the snow in the middle of winter isn’t exactly fun.”
“No, I imagine not,” Eli says, sliding a pizza peel under Maisie’s creation. “Have you thought about dehydrating them? Instead of trying to keep them fresh?”
“Dehydrating?” I ask, watching him slide the pizza into the wood-fired oven.
“Yeah,” Fallon chips in, turning around. “Some flowers actually dry better than they keep. Roses preserve their color pretty well if you dry them right. Eucalyptus dries perfectly. You could sell them as dried arrangements. Potpourri, wreaths. It saves the stock from rotting.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
Fallon lets out a laugh. “I once had a girl take me on a flower arrangement date. It was…something.”
“You’re something else.” Eli laughs.
“Something like what?” Maisie asks.
Fallon is laughing as he explains the expression, but I’m focused on what he said. I hadn’t even considered that. I’ve always been so focused on the fresh product, the perfection of the bloom.
“You know, that’s… actually a really good idea. The brides this weekend definitely want fresh, but I could use the damaged ones for drying. Save the inventory.”
“Eli’s the idea man.” Fallon grins, tossing a mushroom at Eli. “I’m just the muscle.”
Eli catches the mushroom and eats it. “I just hate seeing things go to waste.”
Maisie is listening to all of this, even though she doesn’t understand half of it. She’s watching the easy way Fallon and Eli interact and having fun in the process, asking about types of cheese, picking toppings, tearing the basil leaves.
It hits me then, how strange this is. These are two men I barely know. Alphas. Strangers, really. But they are here, on a Sunday night, making pizza with my daughter.
They’re kind to her. Fallon is patient, answering her endless questions about knives and dragons. Eli is gentle, guiding her hands, praising her messy dough work.
I watch Fallon hand Maisie a piece of pepperoni to snack on, and he winks at her. She giggles.
A cold, hard knot forms in my stomach.
I remember Luke. I remember bringing Maisie around his apartment once, when she was barely three.
Luke had been annoyed by the noise. He told me to make her sit in the corner and be quiet. He hated the clutter of her toys. He snapped at her when she spilled juice on his carpet.
Bile rises in my throat, sour and acidic. I swallow it down hard, gripping the edge of the counter.
Luke made me feel like a burden. He made me feel like Maisie was a mistake. He made our life feel like something to be ashamed of.
These men… they don’t make me feel that way. They make me feel like I’m part of the team.
“You okay?”
I look up. Eli is standing right next to me, his voice low. The pizza oven is roaring behind him. His eyes are searching mine, concerned.
