Cece turned off the garden hose and smiled at her boss. “Can you give me five minutes to finish watering?”
“Tanisha can finish up for you.” Leonard motioned for the older Black woman to join them. “Tanisha, I need you to cover for Cece, please.”
“You got it.” She gave Cece a cheerful smile and held her hand out for the garden hose.
Cece handed it over. She glanced at Leonard, her stomach twisting. He was studying Briggs, who stood one aisle over. His sheer size had customers detouring around him, and more than one had snapped a picture since Cece started work three hours ago. Briggs stoically ignored them, his gaze on Cece.
“Cece? Let’s go,” Leonard said.
She followed Leonard through the damp, humid greenhouse and into the store. Briggs quickly caught up to her, and that knot in her stomach grew even tighter when Leonard stopped in front of his office and frowned when he realized Briggs was with them.
“This is a private meeting,” he said.
Briggs turned to Cece. “Any windows in his office?”
“What?” Leonard asked. “Why are you asking that?”
“No,” she said.
Briggs ignored Leonard, his gaze on a white man with gel-spiked hair and a thick winter coat who was headed directly toward them. Briggs stepped in front of Cece and growled softly. The man gave him a startled look, backing up a few steps and staring at Briggs with the wide-eyed look of a frightened deer, before he made an abrupt turn and nearly sprinted down the aisle. He left the store, the bell over the door jingling, and Leonard made a sound of irritation.
“Cece, my office, now.”
Cece could almost see the anger settling onto Briggs at Leonard’s tone, and she gave him a pointed smile, willing him not to freak out. “I’ll be right back.”
She nearly pushed Leonard into his office, making him give a startled grunt, and shut the door quickly.
“What the hell is going on, Cece? You can’t let your boyfriend stand there and scare off people who come near you,” Leonard said. “You’re making me lose potential customers.”
He sat behind his desk with a heavy thump, his brown skin covered in a light sheen of sweat from the humidity of the greenhouse. He ran a hand through his thinning hair before he picked up his phone.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Cece said, but Leonard was already texting.
She sighed inwardly and forced a smile. She loved working at the greenhouse and hated that her relationship with her boss had soured in the last six months. The worst part was she couldn’t pinpoint why it had, only that it had. She’d been basically running the greenhouse for the last year, but her hope that Leonard would acknowledge verbally and financially how hard she worked to keep it running smoothly had never borne fruit.
She’d even mustered her courage and, after writing a comprehensive list of all the ways she had improved the greenhouse's functions and processes, had approached Leonard about a raise and a promotion to greenhouse manager. A position he’d been talking about creating and filling for nearly two years.
He’d hemmed and hawed, made excuses about needing to do a deeper dive into whether the business could afford a greenhouse manager's salary, and had promised to revisit the issue. But that had been three months ago, and he’d basically been ducking her ever since.
“Cece!” Leonard gave her an irritated look, as if it were she who’d been making him wait. “You need to ask your boyfriend to leave.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she repeated.
“Fine, friend, whatever,” Leonard said with a wave of his hand. “He can’t be hanging out in the greenhouse scaring away my customers.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Cece said. “Let him know that -”
“He has to leave,” Leonard said.
“It’s not that -”
There was a knock at the door before it opened, and a blonde woman wearing the same Sprouts Greenhouse apron as Cece stepped inside.
She shut the door as a wave of dislike washed over Cece. “This is a private meeting, Lori.”
Her hatred of Lori was well deserved but not helpful, Cece reminded herself. Lori was a passive-aggressive drama queen who’d been doing her best to stir up shit at the greenhouse since Leonard hired her six months ago. She gossiped about other employees, pitted them against each other with outright lies, and was often rude to the customers. Cece knew for a fact that Lori had told three outrageous lies about her and hadn’t even looked embarrassed when Cece called her out on them. Cece and a few other employees had made formal complaints to Leonard about her, and he’d had many closed-door meetings with her, but so far, Lori had escaped any formal discipline.
All of that was annoying enough, but what really pissed Cece off was how little Lori cared about plants. Why even work at a greenhouse if you didn’t like plants?
