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“You hungry, Mrs. Wilson? Help yourself. There’s lots to go around.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t! But that pizza looks delicious. Maybe I’ll just have one slice. Is there a little one in there? Just a tiny one.”
“How about that one?”
“Thank you, dear.”
Tossing the pathetic triangle barely worth being called a slice onto a paper plate, I hand it to Lily’s mom. Then I watch as she presses a paper napkin down on top of it. For a second, I think she’s going to eat the paper napkin along with the pizza. But she lifts it and dabs again at the top of each pepperoni slice before tossing it in the garbage.
That was weird. Then she takes tiny little bites of the pathetic slice and doesn’t even finish it. It’s disrespectful to the damn pizza. I eat another two big slices to show my respect. This pizza is damn good.
Everyone takes their time finishing up the last of the pizza. Then everyone asks Lily if she needs help with anything else and eventually things start wrapping up as we all get ready to leave. It’s been a long day, and everyone is beat.
“Thank you all so much for helping out today. I’m starting to think I’m actually opening a flower shop,” Lily says, slowly looking around at the shop and everyone in it.
“Hell yeah, you are, Lil!” Jacks shouts. “Proud of you.”
“Thanks, bestie.” She gives him a huge smile.
I’m not jealous of my brother. Lily and Jacks are best friends. Always have been, always will be. But I want her to smile at me that big in front of everyone. And then I want her to wrap her arms around me and show everyone that she’s mine.
“You all promise you’ll come back and buy some flowers when I finally open this place up? I’ll give you the friends and family discount,” Lily offers.
Everyone heads out the door ahead of me promising to come back when the shop’s open and buy stuff, while I fiddle with trying to pull some old nails out of the wall behind the retail counter, keeping one eye on Lily.
“Course we will,” Gunnar says, bumping into her shoulder before heading toward the door.
“You coming, Jameson?”
I shake my head, walking over to the front door. “I’m heading out in a minute. Lily said she needed help loading some stuff into her truck.”
Gunnar nods. “You need another set of hands?”
“Nah, man. Thanks, though. There’s not that much stuff. See you later.”
“You, too. Bye, Lil.”
When everyone’s finally gone, I close the door and lock it tight behind them. Lily and I are finally alone, and I need to get my hands on her after a full day of being in the same room and not being allowed to touch her.
Only when I turn around, she’s not there anymore.
“Lemon?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’d you go?”
“Oh, just packing up all the stuff for you to load into my truck.”
“I thought I made that up, babe.”
“Huh, that’s weird. Can you close the blinds before we leave?”
Clenching and unclenching my fists, I head over and close up the blinds like she asked me to. “Anything else we need to do to lock up?”
“Front door’s locked?”
“Yeah.”
