“Oh no. Oh, shit—” I looked at the dog. “Sorry about saying that bad word. I’m not mad at you. I’m not. I’m sorry I sounded mad at you, but I’m not.”
I started picking up peonies. Fletcher crouched down next to me and picked up the rest. He was calm about it. Like scattered flowers were a completely normal thing to deal with at two in the afternoon. He handed me the whole bunch without making a big deal of it, without laughing, without making a face.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome, August.” He stood. “I’ll see you at the beach house this weekend?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“Okay, then.”
He left. I watched him walk back through the market, hands in his jacket pockets, not looking back.
Cliff appeared at my elbow.
“That boy,” he said, “is in love with you.”
“No, no, oh no.” I shook my head. “He’s not. No way. Come on now, Cliff. He’s just—”
“You’re right.” Cliff nodded slowly. “I don’t think so either.”
We looked at each other.
We both started laughing at the same time.
I watched Fletcher walk out of the entrance and towards the parking lot.
It means nothing,I told myself.Don’t be stupid, August. It means absolutely nothing.
***
Chapter 2
Fletcher
“The Q3 projection on slide fourteen is off.”
David stopped mid-sentence. He turned to look at slide fourteen. The room went quiet.
“The growth rate,” I said. “You’ve applied last year’s seasonal adjustment to this quarter’s baseline. They’re not the same baseline.”
David looked at the slide. He looked at his notes. He looked back at the slide. “You’re right.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll correct it.”
“Send me the full report before end of day. The detailed one, not the summary.”
“Of course, Mr. Calloway.”
He moved on to slide fifteen. I leaned back in my chair and let him talk.
The flowers on the corner table smelled like the farmer’s market.
I hadn’t meant to buy that many. I never meant to buy that many. I walked up to her booth and I looked at the dahlias and I thought, I’ll take one bouquet, maybe two. That’s reasonable. That’s normal. And then she was standing there with her hair half out of its tie and a smudge of something green on her left wrist and she was smiling at me with that smile that makes theentire world around me disappear, and I bought everything on the table.
I’d done that exact thing four times now.
Every week I told myself I wouldn’t. Every week I did.
I looked at slide fifteen and tried to focus.
