Page 43 of Flirting Lessons

Callie’s hand was still on her arm. Avery froze. Was Callie flirting with her? Shit. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t remember anything.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Taylor at the other end of the table. Knowing she was there made Avery relax a little. Now she remembered. Smile. Don’t freeze up. Make eye contact. Ask questions. Okay, she could do this.

“So, Callie, what do you do?” Yes,What do you do?was a boring question, but she had to start somewhere. Small talk, remember?

“I own a plant store in St. Helena.”

Huh, that wasn’t what Avery expected her to say. But then, she supposed, she didn’t know what she’d expected.

“Oh wow, how did you get into that? Plants, I mean.”Plants, I mean.Why was she so incredibly awkward? “Sorry, that sounded weird, what I meant was that I recently started getting into gardening and I’ve loved it so far.”

“I guess the way most people get into them,” Callie said. “I got obsessed with having plants in my too-small apartment, and then in our too-small house, and I was constantly moving them around to figure out which ones need full sun and which need filtered sun, how much water they all need and how to repot them and why and everything else. At first, it was just fun, and then I got super into it, and I was at some of my local plant stores so often that all of the staff knew me. So when there was a part-time job available at one, I took it, mostly just to make extra money that I could spend on plants.” She laughed, a little self-consciously. “And then, a few years later, right when I’d decided that I was done working in restaurants and catering companies and needed to figure out something else to do with my life, the owner of the store was retiring and selling the business, and I made the very risky decision to buy it from her.”

“That’s amazing,” Avery said. “It sounds a lot like my business origin story, except not with a plant store.”

Callie raised her eyebrows at Avery.

“What’s your story? What do you do?”

“I’m an event planner. I used to work at hotels, doing their event planning stuff, and I got laid off during the pandemic.” Callie made sympathetic noises. “A few months later, a local eventplanner who I’d worked with reached out to see if I could work for her part-time, helping with virtual events since she didn’t know how to deal with them. And then when she retired, I made the very risky decision to buy her business.”

“That is similar,” Callie said. “How’s it going?”

“Really well, actually,” Avery said. “I’m working a lot, though. I’ve been thinking about hiring an assistant, but I’m a little worried that I’d make a terrible boss.”

Avery saw Taylor grin when she said that.

“Oh, I thought I would be, too,” Callie said. “Luckily, it’s turned out great—which I’m only sure of because I have some employees who have been around since I bought the place, and absolutely would tell me if I was a nightmare. There were definitely some bumps in the road initially, but we figured it out. If you end up hiring that assistant, let me know if you have any questions about being a boss, happy to help.”

“That’s so nice of you,” Avery said. “I might take you up on that.” She knew a lot of other small-business owners in Napa Valley, but many she’d met at events, or given her business card to when she’d dropped by their store; they all sent business one another’s way, but she often had to fake it till she made it with them and be the smart, successful, hardworking, intrepid entrepreneur. She couldn’t ask them questions like how it felt to be a boss, and how to make sure she was demanding excellence from an employee without micromanaging them. That fear had kept her from hiring someone, but it meant that she was constantly overworked. But wouldn’t she be overworked when she had to train someone new and also do all the stuff she was already doing? See, this was the kind of thing she needed to ask someone else.

“So, tell us, how did you meet Taylor?” Liz broke in. “She was pretty vague about that.”

Avery laughed. She hoped it was a casual laugh, and not one that said,Why are you asking me this, do you think there’s something weird about Taylor bringing me here?

“That’s no mystery: my best friend Luke used to work with Taylor. I think he was intimidated by her, which is excellent. More women need to intimidate straight men, it’s good for them.” Even the best of straight men, which Luke is, need that sometimes.

“Taylor can do that,” Callie said, laughing.

Liz nodded.

“It’s true, she can.” She grinned at Avery. “She breaks a lot of hearts, you know.” There was a smile on her face, but not in her voice. What was this about?

Callie nodded.

“She does. We once got her to sing ‘Heartbreaker’ during karaoke, everyone died laughing.”

Avery tried to picture Taylor doing karaoke and smiled.

“Yeah, so she’s told me,” she said. “I can certainly see why, she’s a lot of fun.”

Liz turned to look at Taylor, who was in the middle of a conversation with Dani.

“Yeah,” Liz said. “She is, isn’t she?”

Had she just tried to warn Avery off Taylor? Avery couldn’t decide whether to be amused or flattered. She guessed it would be a combination of both, since it was both very funny to her and an enormous compliment that anyone could think Taylor would be interested in her.

Okay, now it was her time to change the subject. She couldn’t just ask theWhat do you do?question again, could she? Well, why not?

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