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“Do you offer this for all of your brides?” I ask Hope as she comes to the table to help us get set up.
“Usually no, but then again, I’ve only done a couple of weddings since I opened the shop.”
“You’ve been here almost a year, right?” Sara asks her. Hope is a transplant to Sonoma but is still a bit of a mystery. She doesn’t talk much about herself no matter how hard all of the nosy gossips in town have tried. I really admire her for it.
“Yes, this April will be a full year.” She smiles, and despite the joy radiating off her as she talks, I can see a sadness lurking deep behind her eyes. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can see it because I’ve lived the very same lie.
You feel the happiness you’re showing the world, but deep down inside, there is a black hole of heartache that never leaves. It gets better over time but it never truly goes away.
“So, what you guys will want to do is pick out a few flowers you like the best, around five or six is good, depending on the size. You’ll trim off the ends and place them into the vase however you want. Then you’ll add greenery throughout as you add in your flowers to make it look full and pretty. Quinn, you and I are going to make a similar setting to what you’ll have on the tables.”
Hope grabs one of the pink flowers on the table and shows us how to trim the ends and then places it into the vase, arranging other things around it.
She and Quinn discuss the flowers Quinn wants at the wedding and how they’ll look together while the rest of us start working on our arrangements. Despite these being small, it is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be to make.
“This is way harder than I anticipated,” Sara says, and I laugh since I was thinking the same thing.
“Seriously. Hope, how do you make it look so pretty every time?” Lucy asks, frowning down at her arrangement. In all honesty, it’s pretty sad-looking.
Hope looks up at Lucy’s question and then down at her attempt at an arrangement. She bites her lip in an effort to not laugh and just says, “A lot of practice and a love for flowers since I was a little girl.”
“I don’t think Lucy loves flowers very much based on her arrangement,” Sara teases. We all bust out laughing, even Hope, as Lucy chucks a stem at Sara.
“Let’s all agree to leave the flower arrangements to Hope from now on because yours isn’t much better,” Lucy quips back, making us laugh again. She’s not wrong. None of our arrangements are very pretty, but it was a lot of fun trying to put them together.
Hope holds up her arrangement, and of course, it looks beautiful. “This is a general idea of what Quinn’s will look like.” Naturally, we ooh and ahh over it. The smattering of pink and white is beautiful, and the greenery just enhances the flowers. “We’ll have similar flowers for her bouquet and boutonnieres.”
“They’re going to look so good, Quinn,” Megan says, and we all nod our heads in agreement.
“Do you have any other details you need to finalize?” Hope asks.
“This was the last one. Cooper is driving me crazy with how impatient he’s being, and it’s starting to rub off on me.”
“With how he acted when he wanted you to move in with him, it’s not a surprise,” Sara points out.
When Quinn and Cooper decided to move in together, they had to do some renovations to his house, delaying Quinn’s ability to move in. Cooper was not happy she couldn’t move in right away, and he pouted almost the entire time. We teased him mercilessly for it.
We help Hope clean up and then say goodbye, each of us holding our sad excuses for arrangements. Going our separate ways, I walk to my car across the street. The classic black lampposts lining the sidewalk are all lit up, casting shadows around them.
Looking down the sidewalk, I see a dark figure walking towards me. Something about him causes a shiver to run down my spine. I quickly unlock my car and get in, setting my flowers in the cupholder.
I look behind me and see the figure just standing there, hidden in the shadows, unmoving. Looking away, I put my keys in the ignition and start my car. As I drive off, I check my mirror again, and the sidewalk is empty.
Shaking my head, I laugh at myself. I can’t believe I got freaked out over some random person walking down the sidewalk. I was doing the exact same thing to get to my car, so why it scared me, I’ll never know.
Once I’m home, I get ready for bed. With the computer situation figured out, I can switch my focus to the book drive. We use the donations for our reading program where we pick out a few books for different age groups and send them home with kids who may not be able to afford them. We hand the bags out throughout the year, and anyone is able to come and get a bag if they want or need it.
I still can’t believe they’re giving me the funds for the computers. It tells me Edward may be the only one who has a problem with me and not the whole council, which is an interesting development. I think I’ll have to do some digging of my own to find out why.
