Page 13 of Forget Me Knot

Winnie’s immediate laughter doesn’t elicit the same response in me as before. It reminds me of the doctor who suggested I try acupuncture, but the entire time I was far too aware of the needles prickling against my skin in a way that made me feel claustrophobic rather than at ease. She takes pity on me and playfully kicks my side with her socked feet.

“Come on, Jacky.” Not Jack or Jackson. Always Jacky. “We can talk about it if you want to.”

I definitely do not want to.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve asked someone on a date. Not since Stacy and—”

“Please don’t,” I all but beg her, and I know by the look in her eyes, she won’t push any harder. “I know how long it’s been. I’m not gonna ask her out.”

She pinches her lips together in the way that tells me she has so much more to say and little patience to filter her words.

“You’re telling me that no part of you is interested in her, at all.”

I suspect we both know the answer to that question, and since she doesn’t need more ammo in this conversation, I refuse to take the bait. Gulping the rest of my coffee before dumping the remnants in the sink, I pat her leg twice and flick my head to the door.

“Whoops. Gotta get to work.”

Winnie lets out an exasperated sigh, and just when I think I’m free, she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the microwave beside her.

“Jacky! You didn’t!” she screeches, jumping off the counter like a spider monkey and attaching herself to my back as I try to leave.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Win!” I carry her on my back to the couch with her pinching my arms and pulling the hairs at the base of my head before I dump her where I found her this morning.

“I cannot go to work with a mustache, you butthead.” She covers her mouth like it will make the Sharpie mustache I drew across her upper lip while she was sleeping disappear.

“You’re a tattoo artist, Win. You can do whatever you wanna do.” I surprise myself with a chuckle and head for the door.

“And I’m sure my clients will appreciate it. See ya later, mister.”

When I took over the flower shop from my Gran two years ago, I thought of it like a new start, and that’s how she spun it. A way to leave the old behind and press on to the new, no matter how skewed the new picture might be. I’d spent enough time working there as a teenager and a young adult that Petals didn’t feel intimidating to run.

In fact, it felt like therapy. Like purpose and peace. Using my hands to create something felt like all those calming words I hated repeating. It wassilence,solitude,andsafewhen I so often felt the opposite of those things in this new brain and body I’ve found myself trapped in. Petals, in so many ways,felt something akin to hope.

I am more at home behind the distressed, wooden counter, where I carvedJackwith a pocketknife when I was ten, than I am in the apartment upstairs. It’s where my grandparents held their fiftieth wedding anniversary party and then where we held my Gramps’ wake the following year when he passed.

I kissed a girl for the first time in the storage room, trapped between the paper towels and the decorative vases. Owen busted a lip on the window sill at the front of the store, and I helped him clean up the blood before Gram saw it. Owen and his childhood best friend, Daniel, snuck in after hours as teens and toilet-papered the place as an ill-advised prank with Winnie as their lookout, only to find the next day that Gramps had installed cameras inside the shop the week before. Gramps and I ate popcorn from the street and chaffed them as they cleaned for a day.

Memories. I have memories at Petals. Ones that remind me of who I am… or who I was… before my life changed so dramatically. It’s a feeling I haven’t been able to put into words when I’m surrounded by my friends and family who are all attached to a version of me that I’m not certain I am any more. I remember him, but I don’t know him.

All I know is that when I’m at Petals, I feel like myself.

But every minute I’m here this morning, refrigerating my weekly shipment of flowers, pruning bad spots, or planning my schedule for the week, is another minute I hear Dinah on the other side of the wall. Her music, lower than before but still present, grates on my nerves in a different way today. Because now I can imagine what her mouth and full pink lips look like as she belts out all the wrong words to her playlist. And I replay the way her smile, warm and inviting, disappeared so quickly upon meeting me for real.

I should do my best to make things right, but to what end? Because we’re neighbors? Fellow business people? Our…acquaintance… can’t go anywhere further than that. As soon as Dinah hears through the Honey Hill gossip mill what a nutcase I am, she’ll bail. And I won’t blame her. She certainly wouldn't be the first.

By mid-afternoon, though, Dinah’s upbeat tracks slowly switch to something melancholy and impossible to ignore. I’m in the business of cheering people up. Or my flowers are, at the very least. The idea of her slopping around next door, sad about something, has me more annoyed than the ‘80s greatest hits playing earlier.

When a delivery I’ve been waiting on finally arrives, I set aside work and trudge next door to make nice with the woman who’s taken up more space in my already muddled brain than I’d like.

The sign for Knotty & Nice reads closed which I think is odd given it’s three p.m. on a Tuesday and what I assume would be a decent business hour.

“She’s closed today, son.” Mr. Cotten waddles up to me with his wife on his arm, joining me as I stare into the bright shop window. “Not a good start, if ya ask me.”

“I see that.”

“Ya here to yell at her some more or are ya gonna put yer money where yer mouth is and give her a ring?” Mrs. Cotten’s gray hair, highlighted with touches of lavender, is teased in a bouffant so large it shakes at me as she speaks. Looks like someone at the salon had some fun recently. I’d bet all the flowers at Petalsit was Owen’s best friend, Brooke.

“You do know we just met, right, Mrs. Cotten? I don’t plan on giving anyone a ring.”

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