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Or, as I’ve always feared, too late.
“What are you doing in here?” asks Billy. “Was that Celeste who just ran by me?”
Arming myself with a deep breath, I face another shadow of the past. Jeremy’s brother, younger by two years. He’s a man, now, with a family and a successful construction business in nearby Boise. He also looks eerily like how I imagine Jeremy would, were he still alive. Still sturdy and fit, with kind eyes and a generous smile. The kind of man a woman wants when she’s done messing around with losers. Handsome, capable, and genuine-hearted.
“Yeah, that was her.”
Billy’s eyebrows lift. “Bro, she looked pissed.” He chuckles. “Some things never change.”
“No, they do not,” I agree, then glance at my watch. “You’re two hours early.”
Billy shrugs. “My morning opened up.”
I sigh. “Perfect timing, actually. So did mine.”
11
After dropping Damien at school Wednesday morning, I head to Main Street Flowers. My eyes are bleary from poor sleep, I have a pounding headache, and all I want to do is crawl back into bed.
Mom and Dad are already at the shop, unpacking our delivery van. Once a week, they get up before dawn to drive down to their favorite Boise flower market. Back in the day, they made the trip up to three times a week, but now a few local farms supply the bulk of our flowers. I suspect they still make the trip more for the fun of it than out of necessity.
“Good haul,” I tell them as I grab a bucket.
“Sure was,” my mom agrees with a smile.
My dad squints at me. “Did you shove a fork in a light socket again?”
I stick my tongue out at him and quickly pull my hair into a messy bun. Ten minutes later, the van is unpacked and the work begins. I eagerly embrace the familiar routine of sorting, trimming, treating, bundling. It keeps my mind occupied, away from the barn and his fingers in my hair. Away from broad shoulders taking up my vision. His scent around me. Familiar eyes full of longing.
But most importantly, I keep busy to ignore the longing I felt in return. The inner tectonic shift triggered by his gentle thumb on my face, revealing a chasm of want inside me that, instead of closing over time, has widened exponentially.
“Shit.” I drop the rose I’m holding and shove my thumb in my mouth.
My dad pulls a Band-Aid from his pocket and hands it to me. His own fingers sport three of them. Mom is the only one who never gets stabbed sorting rose stems and stripping thorns. From the other side of the big table, she shakes her head at us in bemused affection.
“The school carnival is tomorrow, right?” she asks once I’m bandaged and back to stripping thorns.
I nod. “I’m helping with setup, then I’ll have a free hour before I volunteer at the face-painting booth from seven to eight. Damien is going over to Caleb’s after school and Jane’s bringing them. You guys are coming, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” affirms my dad.
“Oh, look at the time,” chirps my mom. “It sure does fly. You two keep working. I’ll get the doors open.”
I lose myself in the work, in the croon of oldies from a speaker in the office, and before I know it, there are no more flowers in front of me.
Nothing in front of me. Nothing distracting me.
My dad’s hand falls on my shoulder. I jerk, blinking, and am surprised when a tear falls to the table.
“Go home, Celeste,” he says gently.
“I’m fine,” I say quickly, mustering a smile.
“You’re not fine,” he says, softening the words with a squeeze of my shoulder. “And I’d be shocked if you were. Seeing Lucas again was bound to bring up a lot of memories. We’ve been here before. If you don’t ride the wave, it’ll take you under.”
He’s talking about grief. The ebbs and flows. The sneak attacks. My dad knows better than anyone else what it’s like, having lost his parents young. Grief isn’t linear, like that famous book told us. No steps or stages lead us to eventual freedom from pain.
The pain never lessens. And even though we grow around it—willingly or not—as life continues, the core of it remains. A cobra primed to strike.
