Page 12 of Lovesick
“Florist?” A harried-looking woman brushed flyaway locks of hair back over her ear and looked us up and down. “This way.” She led us down the hall to an open, spacious conference room. “Do you do the arrangements?” She glared at the balding man across the room holding a cell phone to his ear. “Nathan should have asked that when he placed the order,” she told me.
“We can,” I offered. Setting up flowers only took a few minutes and increased the likelihood that we would get a tip. The shop also offered flower arranging as a service, which was more involved and required a lot of creativity and far more flowers than we had here. But that was different from just unboxing vases, filling them with water and dropping a few blooms and greenery into each one. “Tell my partner where you want them, and I’ll go get the rest out of the van.”
“Yes,” Maggie added, shooting me another hard look for putting her on the spot. “I’ll do the arranging, and you do the heavy lifting. I like that.”
The event planner’s lips twitched into a quick smile. “Okay. I want two vases per long table, one at each end…”
I left. I had heard it all before, and I wanted to hurry so I could get back to help Maggie. It might have been a little presumptuous of me to throw her into the thick of LaFleur Flowers’ day-to-day business, but I knew she could handle herself. Anyway, if we were going to help set up this event, we would need to get a move on.
When I re-entered the room, vases sat on the tables and Maggie had a large pitcher filling each one with water. She caught me staring and asked, “What?”
“It’s just… most people overfill the vases… Like, three-quarters full. When you put the flowers in they could overflow.”
Maggie glanced at the vase she had filled to under the halfway mark. “Really?”
“Really… really. I meant to warn you, but I forgot…and I guess I didn’t need to anyway.”
“Guess not.” She grinned.
We finished in record time - just in time, was more like it. As it turned out, this was the bank’s annual board meeting, and suited men and dressy women began trickling in just as we were gathering up the boxes.
The event planner led the way to a storage closet and said, “Put them here. The vases will be packed and ready for you to pick up tomorrow. Thank you for your help.” She passed a few folded bills to Maggie and disappeared around the corner.
I raised my eyebrows at the amount of money in Maggie’s hands as she counted the bills. “Wow, a hundred dollars, she must have really liked you.”
“She liked us,” Maggie countered. “Didn’t you see her laughing every time we cracked a joke?”
“I missed my calling as a comedian. Come on, let’s go. I’m starving. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah, I forgot to eat lunch.” She passed the money to me, and I slipped it into the metal case and showed her how to mark the delivery complete.
“This is a pretty big tip for this size job. What do you say we take my mom out for dinner? We can invite yours too and make it a family affair. Whatever’s left of the tip, we can split.”
“My mom can’t come tonight, but it’d be great to invite yours. She seems kinda stressed.”
I sat down in the driver’s seat, put the van in reverse, and in the rearview mirror I caught Maggie gazing at me. “I don’t think she’s too stressed. Mostly just busy, and she doesn’t have a lot of time to herself. My dad hasn’t been pulling as much weight as he used to.”
“How come?” The concerned knit that appeared in her eyebrows was so cute, and I backed a little closer to the car in the spot behind me than I meant to.
“He used to run deliveries a lot, but he keeps drinking too much to drive.”
“Like you?” This time her pointed gaze stared back at me in the sun visor’s mirror as I flipped it around to block the glare.
“No. I don’t drink too much when I know I have to drive. My dad keeps forgetting that sometimes we need him for more than just working around the nursery.” I didn’t expect Maggie to drop the subject, which felt a bit like a continuation of her telling me off for that second beer over lunch. I guess she felt the same as me, though - she didn’t want to ruin the good mood our camaraderie and flower arranging had put us into with an argument.
“This week is going to be fun,” she said instead after a moment of reflection.
I grinned at the road ahead.With Maggie around, definitely…
But I didn’t say. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
Chapter Seven
Maggie
I yawned widely as I rounded the corner of the hallway and walked into the kitchen. My mom glanced up from a griddle on the stove. “Good morning, sleepyhead. It’s almost noon.”
“I know.” Another yawn split my jaw. I made a beeline for the fridge and finagled the orange juice over the top of a stack of Tupperware. “I stayed at Marty’s longer than I meant to.” Armed with my orange juice, I put my chin on her shoulder to see what was cooking. The delicious aroma of fresh pancakes rose from the ones on the griddle and a growing pile on a plate.
