Page 31 of The Love Duet
~
Istared at the frontdoor, still refusing to believe that this was happening.When I’d gotten the email this morning, I had convinced myself that it’d been a mistake; that it’d been referring to another office.After all, this was all that we had to help get us through the rough times.Yeah, I had my parents, but they didn’t need my shit at their age.
Honestly, no one needed my shit.
Not being able to help myself, I reached out, grabbed the door handle, then yanked on it like it was going to help.However, as the door remained locked, it was hard to ignore the reality that this was actually happening; that it had actually happened.
As I took a step back, my eyes scanned every inch of the building for some additional hope, but when I couldn’t find any, I could feel myself crumbling that damn email in my hand.This was wrong on so many levels, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe with the weight of this mistake pushing on my chest.After all, that’s what this was...a mistake.
A huge one.
This was also about more than just finding another support group.I’d already poured my heart out to these people, and the pain of experiencing that kind of transparency wasn’t anything that I wanted to go through again.While I knew that other groups would still understand it all the same, shutting these doors had just cost me another band of brotherhood that I hadn’t been prepared to lose like this.
There was also the issue of availability.None of the referred offices on the flyer were here in town, and the nearest one was three towns over, and I needed something that was readily available to me, not something that I had to make an appointment for.
With my chest feeling tight and my mind threatening to go down another rabbit hole, I stared at the now empty building, and I wondered how they could do this to us.After all, I wasn’t the only one who was going to be affected by this.There were a bunch of other men and women that were going to feel just as angry and lost as I felt right now, and for what?
What had we all done this for?
Chapter 1
Pepper – (Five Years Later)~
While I did my best to never complain about my blessings, finding and keeping good help was hard.Since I didn’t need more than a couple of full-time employees, I employed a lot of high school kids for the part-time stuff, but those kids kept growing older and graduating on me, leaving me always looking for help.
Now, when I had first opened The Flower Shoppe five years ago, I’d had Leah to help me, and it’d been both a wonderful and therapeutic experience for the both of us.After dating her father since college, then getting married and starting a family, we’d gotten a divorce after twenty years together, and it’d been a huge adjustment for all of us.
When I’d first met Tullie, I hadn’t paid him much attention, him being one of the many other students in my art-history class, but after being paired up with him for a project, that had changed.He’d been a six-foot-one ball of curiosity, and with his light blonde hair, brown eyes, and sweet face, I’d fallen hard for him.Always inquisitive and active, we’d had that in common, and it’d been refreshing that Tullie hadn’t cared about being ‘cool’.
Growing up, I hadn’t been nowhere near to being cool, but I hadn’t minded in the least.My parents, Graham and Wendy Milo, had raised me to be authentic, choosing happiness over what others had thought of me, so I had walked around looking like a total mess most of the time.Of course, being the sports fanatic that I’d been, and also playing volleyball like it’d been my life’s blood, I hadn’t ever had the need to check my hair or makeup when out in public, but I’d been fine with that.
Plus, nothing had been more important to me than my best friend, Roxanne Rafferty, and we’d been two peas in our own perfect little pod, always choosing happiness.Even when Roxanne had been diagnosed with Usher’s Syndrome, that hadn’t stopped us.She, her family, and I had all taken sign language classes, and I could still sign with the best of them, even though she lived states away now.
In a sweet turn of events, during high school, Royce Cameron, our school’s star quarterback, had fallen hard for Roxanne, and upon graduating from college, he had proposed to her, the both of them getting married before starting his career in the NFL.Nowadays, he was a sports broadcaster, and Roxanne was a literacy advocate, and they both lived in Nevada.
At any rate, once Tullie and I had graduated from college, we’d gotten married, and it hadn’t been long before Leah had come along.Though it’d been a struggle at first, Tullie had taken his degree in chemical engineering to Streep Chem, and I could remember all the long hours that he’d had to work just to prove himself among all the other gifted minds in the company.Still, Tullie had made a name for himself rather quickly, and it hadn’t been long before his intelligence and drive had gotten him promotion after promotion.
I, on the other hand, had taken my degree in marketing to a small ad agency that had been the perfect fit for me at the time.Since a marriage took sacrifices, had we’d both been workaholics, our marriage never would have lasted as long as it’d had.So, I’d done the nine-to-five bit as Tullie had put his all into his career, something that I hadn’t minded at the time.
However, once Leah had come along, everything had changed.Though Tullie had adored his little girl, work had been all that he’d known, and so I had quit my job to become a full-time mom, and I had raised her while Tullie had provided for us financially, something that most women would balk at, but it hadn’t bothered me in the least.The one thing that I could say about my ex-husband was that he hadn’t ever made me feel like the money earned had been ‘his’.To this day, Tullie March didn’t have one stingy bone in his body, and that was just one of the many fine qualities about the man.
Nevertheless, somewhere along the way, we had become roommates, and it was a regret that would probably always stay with me.Our divorce also hadn’t come as a surprise, nor had it come with any fireworks.It hadn’t been until I’d realized that we’d gone six months without sex that I’d had no choice but to sit Tullie down and talk with him about our marriage.When he had shared feelings that had mirrored mine, we had spent the next three months talking every night about Leah, our marriage, our friendship, and our futures.
So, two months after that, divorce papers had been signed, and Tullie had left me with enough money to start my own business.By then, Leah had been entering high school, so fifty-fifty custody had been an easy thing to agree on, and though disappointing, that had been the beginning of our new lives, and that’s when the old Pepper had started reappearing.For twenty years, I’d been playing it safe, dressing like an adult, and making my husband and child proud of me, but if you looked at me now, you’d wonder if I was colorblind.
Starting my own business had also been scary as hell.My dad worked as a warehouse manager and my mother had worked as a city clerk, so neither of them had been much help in the advice arena, but with the internet being what it was, it hadn’t been that hard to get started.Plus, I’d also been lucky enough to have Tullie in my corner, something that I would always be grateful for.While my daughter’s parents might be divorced, we hadn’t broken her family in the way that most divorces could.
When I’d finally been ready to open the shop, everyone had shown up in support, and Royce had even posted it on his social media page, turning me into an almost overnight success.Not for nothing, not only was Royce Cameron gorgeous as all get out, but having four Super Bowl rings throughout his career had made him pretty famous through endorsements.Roxanne being deaf and not your average sports wife had also catapulted their fame in a way that had taken all of us by surprise.For whatever reason, the public had fallen in love with the way that Royce was in love with his wife, and it really was the stuff of romance books and romantic legends.
Love aside, Kelly Jermaine had finally graduated from high school, and she had put her two-weeks’ notice in, having gotten into Harvard, which wasn’t located in Macon.Now, while I was happy as hell for her, hiring new people always sucked.June and July were prime wedding months, and so I couldn’t afford to dilly-dally the process.However, I also couldn’t afford to hire someone lazy, something that no business needed.
As I locked the shop up, I waved to Suzanne Ryder, the photo studio owner across the street, glad to call the end to this day.No matter that I’d done it for five years in a row already, I always needed a couple of weeks to recover from Mother’s Day.In fact, I was pretty sure that every flower shop in the country had to recover from it, not to mention all the bakeries and restaurants.
Getting into my car, I started the ignition, then headed home, eager for the silence that greeted me every evening.While I loved people, socializing, activity, and noise, even superheroes needed to rest every now and again.
~
Josiah~
