Page 8 of King of Lies
I get up and silence my alarm. I take a quick shower and braid my long, dark hair after toweling off. I pull on jeans and a sweater and dust a little makeup on my face. I slide my feet into a pair of ballet flats and grab my bag to head to work.
The day passes by like every other one and I wonder if yesterday’s slight deviation in my schedule has made me more inclined to hope for something different than the norm, even expect it.
That’s utterly ridiculous. I like my life in neat little boxes and I like knowing what’s going to happen and when. I do not like surprises or change. And I definitely don’t like too-good-looking-for-my-own-goodmen who pop into my life and ruffle my feathers. At least, I think I don’t.
Sometime after lunch, when it’s clear that my stranger is not coming back to whisk me right into the pages of a romantic novel, I decide that it’s all for the best that he took my words at face value. The bell over the front door rings and I hear an exchange of men’s voices, though not what they’re saying, before the bell chimes again.
Then April, one of the store’s owners, calls out, “Stella dear, could you pop on up here, please?”
“What’s up, April?” I ask as I walk around the corner and come face-to-face with a blue glass vase filled with the most amazing flowers ever.
“These were just delivered for you,” she says, nodding her head toward the arrangement.
“Wow.”
“You got that right” She laughs the sweet sounding laugh of someone much younger than her years but not in a weird way. April is one of those women who swears she’ll never grow up no matter how old she gets, and I’d love to be the type of woman who lives her life like that one day. I’m sure we both know I’m too much of a chicken to ever try. “Are you going to read the card?”
“Umm … yes?” I reply just before I step forward and reach for the card.
The small envelope, made of thick white paper, holds a white card with a note scrawled in a manly hand. This is not a note copied down and written by someone in a flower shop. This was written personally, for me, before it was stuffed in the envelope and tucked in with these flowers. I let my eyes trace the scrawling print over and over.
“Well?” April asks. “What does it say?”
I look up at her and then look back at the note before reading what it says.
Take a chance on me, Stella.
xx -R
“Whew,” she says. “So, are you?”
“Am I what?” I ask, because I’m so taken back with the note and the flowers, my neat little bubble so firmly disturbed, that I have no idea what she’s even talking about.
“The man.” She laughs. “Are you going to take a chance on him?”
At her earnestly asked question, I want to laugh because it’s so absolutely absurd. I don’t take a chance on anything; let alone a man I’ve only ever met once.
“Absolutely not.”
And then I carry my flowers to the breakroom. What I do not do is call the number written on the bottom of the card.
The sender of the card doesn’t appear. And as I eat my leftovers from home, alone in my apartment later that night, staring at my beautiful flowers, I tell myself that I’m not disappointed. Though, in truth,I totally am.
Chapter 4
Take a chance
My alarm blares and for the first time in forever, I hit snooze, and close my eyes again. That’s not who I am. I’m the kind of a girl who wakes up and gets ready, whether I want to or not. But after last night, a night full of tossing and turning, I just can’t.
I spent all night thinking that my one chance to live life not on the sidelines slipped through my fingers because I was too chicken to do anything about it. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m not a live-life-in-the-fast-laneperson. I’m happy living quiet, not loud. But there was something about that man that makes me feel like I missed out on something huge.
And I don’t even know his name.
Not that knowing his name matters because I’ll never see him again. I was pretty firm when I turned him down. What man in his right mind would come back for more of that? None. Not a one.
By the time my alarm goes off again, I’m awake but miserable. I get up and head into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. I hate coffee but I also need it to survive. It’s a terrible love triangle that I find myself in. A real toxic relationship.
I drop a pod in my coffee maker and at the last minute, I remember to stuff a mug under the spigot. It’s clearly going to be a day. I grab yesterday’s leftover lunch from the fridge and eat it cold and soggy right out of the plastic container it came in. I toss the trash in the garbage and think that it’s probably a good thing I didn’t give that guy a chance because he would take one look at this hot mess and head for the hills. I add more than a splash—like, a lot more—of creamer to my coffee and chug some down to wash away the old sandwich taste.
