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“Maybe we should go sit down.”
“Babe, I really have a lot of work today, so if you could just—”
“This isn’t working for me,” Brad blurted out.
I tightened my grip on my coffee cup before it slipped out of my hand. “What?” For the second time in under ten minutes, I’d been completely blindsided. What the fuck was in the air today? It was supposed to be filled with love birds cooing and angels singing, not… whatever the fuck this was!
“This,” Brad continued, gesturing around with his free hand. “This relationship. I don’t think we’re compatible.”
“We’re not compatible?” I don’t know why I thought repeating it would make it make sense in my brain, but I tried—and failed.
“No. And I don’t see this going anywhere.”
All I could do was stare at him. “We’ve been together for three months. Two nights ago you were talking about moving your stuff into my apartment. Seemed like we were pretty compatible then.”
“I know,” Brad made a face, kind of like a pout and a wince all rolled in one. I had no idea what emotion he was trying to convey, but I didn’t buy any of it. “I guess this was more of a holiday fling.”
I rubbed a hand over my face and walked away from him. I just… couldn’t. Not with him, not with Aaron, not with anyone today. This was the busiest day of the year for me and the last thing I needed was to be distracted by either of them and whatever baggage they were hauling around.
“That’s it?” Brad asked, drifting after me. “You’re not going to say anything?”
I whirled on him so fast, he bumped into my chest, nearly spilling coffee all over his dress shoes. “What the fuck do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe act like you give a shit instead of acting like everything is fine?”
“You don’t want to be with me? Fine! What do you want me to say to that? You want me to beg?”
“Yes! Something! I need passion and excitement in a relationship and you’re too nice sometimes. You’re too… predictable.”
“Story of my life. You don’t want passion, Brad. You want fucking drama and theatrics.” I rolled my eyes and turned around again, pitching the coffee he gave me into the nearest trashcan. “And you know what? It’s fine. It’s all fine. Because I’m not that guy and I don’t want to be. I don’t do drama. So good luck finding a guy who does.”
“Wow.”
Ignoring him, I stormed into the work area in the back, grabbing buckets of roses from the cooler on my way by. I was halfway done with the first basic bouquet when Brad sauntered through the room on his way to the exit.
“Bye Alex.”
“See you around,” I replied automatically, not even bothering to look up. It had only been three months, true, but getting dumped on Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly how I planned to spend the day. Good thing I had a shit ton of orders to fill, otherwise I’d have way too much time to think about things. The past, primarily, since Aaron blew back into my life like a tornado.
No, I snapped at myself silently. I had work to do and worrying about Aaron wouldn’t help me get it done any faster. It was an unnecessary distraction.
An hour and a dozen bouquets later, I threw my floral knife onto the table and wriggled my cell phone out of my back pocket.
On a hunch, I started with the florist the next town over—Forever Flowers.
A chipper female answered. “Thank you for calling Forever Flowers, this is Melissa speaking. How may I help you?”
“Hi, Melissa, this is Alex from Briar Lane Flower Shoppe in Middleton. I have sort of a strange question… Were you contracted to do the flowers for a wedding at the Bramble Banquet Hall tonight?”
“Oh my God! Yes! How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.” I mean, the world of florists was fairly small to begin with and in the middle of nowhere Illinois, it was even smaller. He only had so many options. “I heard about Laura’s accident and I was wondering if I could buy those flowers off you? Aaron asked if I could help but you know how crazy today is. I don’t have the supplies. But I figured since you guys did…” I left my train of thought open-ended, hoping she’d pick up what I was putting down.
“Oh, wow! Yeah! That’d be great! Oh my God, Laura is going to be so relieved. She feels terrible about leaving all of the customers hanging today, but especially that wedding.”
“I can only imagine. Do you think I can swing by in forty-five minutes or so?”
“Absolutely! Thank you!”
