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The soft knockingon my office door pulls from my trance, looking out the window into the clear autumn afternoon. The chill still sits on the mountain and I’m looking forward to a cold winter.
Maybe it will freeze the pain inside of me.
My receptionist pokes her head in, a wild grin on her cheeks. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“Okay?” I reply with a raised brow. “And?”
“And it’s not a patient.” My front desk representative January whispers, “It’s a beautiful woman and she says you’re expecting what she’s delivering.”
The door opens a little wider and I see her. Cali is standing there with a box wrapped tightly in her arms. She gives a thankful nod to the front desk.
“Going to head out Dr. I’ll lock up. Have a good night.”
“Thanks, January.”
She scurries back to her desk as Cali steps inside my office and smiles.
“Hi.” My heart thumps wildly against my ribcage as I stand to meet her.
As much as she may have crushed me with how she reacted after I confessed my feelings to her, Cali is still everything I want in this world and then some.
I just wish she’d see it too.
“Hi.” She avoids making eye contact with me as she says it. “You didn’t tell me how many orchids you wanted, so I took a guess and brought five.”
“Five is perfect.”
She takes a step further into my office as I take a step towards her, bridging the gap between us. When she finally looks into my eyes, I see the sea of sadness tearing through those turquoise marbles. I don’t know if it’s something I did, but she looks heartbroken and all I want is to fix whatever is making her look like that.
“For your office.” She hands me a single orchid. “I’ll get the rest of these set up,” she says, moving gracefully back toward the door. I follow her out into the hallway, gently smelling the orchid in my hand as I watch her carefully set up one orchid after another along the windowsill.
“This smells good.”
“It’s a Cattleya Walkeriana dwarf-form. The best smelling orchid. And one of my favorites.”
“Is that vanilla and…”
“Cinnamon,” she offers. “You don’t want to smell the Phalaenopsis venosa.”
“What’s it smell like?”
“Bacon. Greasy bacon.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t. There’s a cloud over her. She was a little grumpy when I met her, but now she’s gloomy.
“Cali, are you okay?”
I want her to be okay, but I want the truth. I need the truth.
“I had a fight with my sister,” she says as she sets up the second orchid, turning it to the perfect position. Her shoulders tighten. Her back is toward me, but I can still see the heartbroken look on her face in the clean glass reflection.
“What about?”
“That I can’t do everything for Dirty Hoes anymore.”
“And what did she say about that?”
