Page 85 of Petals and Plot Twists
I almost deflect the question. I don’t want to talk about work. I want to talk about us. But I only want honesty between us, so I swallow and tell her the truth. “It’s been amazing. I really like the team.”
She squeezes my hand. “That’s good. Really good. I had a feeling you would. And you like the city?”
“I do. The NASCAR Hall of Fame is nearby. That sounds exciting.”
She wrinkles her brow. “You do not want to go to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.”
“No,” I say, smiling. “I don’t. But I did get a pretty thorough tour of the city on Tuesday afternoon. It’s nice. A lot of great parks. Nice museums. Oh! And a Chinese place I think you’d love. Best kung pao chicken I’ve ever eaten.”
“I can’t wait to try it,” Sophie says. She drops my hand while she shifts on the bed, kicking off her shoes before pulling her legs up so they’re crossed under her and she’s facing me. She reaches forward and takes both of my hands in hers. “So, I have a small confession.”
I swallow against the nerves clawing at my throat. “Okay.”
“I actually arrived in Charlotte early this morning,” she says.
“I wondered,” I admit. “You’re pretty dressed up just for a flight.”
“I had a business meeting,” she says, holding my gaze, but that doesn’t make any sense.
“In Charlotte?” I ask, and she nods.
“It’s a pretty crazy story, actually,” she says. “Yesterday, I called my grad school mentor, Dr. Finley, over at UMass. It’s always nice to check in and say hello, but this time, I had a very specific question.” She licks her lips, and I notice a slight tremble in her exhale.
I give her hands an encouraging squeeze, and she smiles softly before continuing.
“Dr. Finley is really well-connected all up and down the East Coast. From guest lecturing to publishing to all the students she’s mentored, I thought it might be worth asking her if she knows anyone in the Charlotte area.”
I furrow my brow, still not fully grasping what she’s trying to tell me.
“Unsurprisingly, she has a former colleague who recently left academia and is opening his own firm here in Charlotte. It feels incredibly hard to believe, because everything happened so quickly, but she made a phone call to him, he suggested we meet, I mentioned I was going to be in the city the following day, then I booked a flight for the literal crack of dawn the next morning, jumped on a plane eight hours later, and met with him today. He’s still a few months out from hiring, but we had a great lunch today—we really vibed and hit it off—and then he took me over to his new office building, which is still under construction, and I met his wife and his twin daughters, and I just like him so much, and he says if I’m interested, he’d love to bring me on as a junior designer.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Sophie, what are you—are you saying you would workhere? In Charlotte?”
She bites her lip and nods. “Probably not until late summer. August or September, maybe. Which isn’t ideal. But I’m really excited about the way Gregory talked about design. It’s so much more in line with my own principles. So muchmorethan what I’ve been doing with Trowbridge. I really think it will be a great fit for me.”
“In Charlotte,” I repeat, almost afraid to let myself get excited. Does this mean what I think it means? That she would move here—for me?
“Peter, I’m in love with you,” she says. “And I feel like that’s a really important distinction because I’velovedyou for years. But this is more than that. Which, I realize it’s a little wild to say that because it happened so fast, but when we kissed, something shifted and suddenly all that love I already had for you just—it morphed into something else.” She lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “Meeting with Gregory today was just a bonus. What I really flew down here to do was tell you that I want us to be together. And I’m ready to move to Charlotte to make it happen.”
Heat floods my chest, and I lean forward, taking her face in my hands as I press a kiss to her lips. “Are you serious right now?” I kiss her again. “Is this for real? Are you for real?”
She laughs in between kisses. “I’m absolutely for real, and I’m absolutely serious.”
I pause, another question popping into my brain. “But what about your flower? What about David?”
She shrugs her shoulders dismissively. “Someone really smart once told me he doesn’t need a flower to tell him how he feels, so I decided I don’t either.”
I can’t stop the grin that spreads over my face at her words. “I don’t even know what to say.”
She presses a kiss to the tip of my nose. “You could start with I love you too,” she says playfully.
“I do,” I say, hating that I needed her prompting to say it when it’s been pulsing in my mind and heart for weeks, months—even years. “I love you so much.” I pull her against me, breathing her in, hoping she senses how much she means to me. “I’ve loved you for so long, Soph.”
This time, when we yield our words to kisses, we don’t stop for a long time. There are so many things I still want to know. Questions I want to ask. Logistical things my brain is already sorting through. But all those things can wait.
Right now, I just want her to know how much I love her. I love the softness of her lips, the wildness of her curly hair, the shape of her body. I love her exuberance and her cheerful nature and the joy she brings to everyone she meets. I love her eye for color and design. I love that she’s so good at growing things and making spaces beautiful. I love that she’s never given up on me. Even when I’m anti-social. When I’m too boring or too logical or too scientific. She still sees the good in me. And she reminds me of that good like it's second nature. Like my worth is so obvious, she shouldn’t even need to say it out loud. But she says it out loud anyway because that’s Sophie’s way. To lift and encourage and make people feel good.
Eventually, as our kisses slow, I whisper all of this to her, as we touch and taste and explore this new aspect of our relationship, I tell her all the things I’ve held back, that I’ve been too afraid to say for fear of scaring her away. And she whispers right back. Promises of love, but also admissions of the fear she wrestled to get here.
