This Summer Will Be Different(77)

My alarm goes off at five. I need to be at the Gardiner Museum early. I’ve rallied the whole team today. But I can spare a few more minutes. I hit snooze, but big hands grip my waist, and Felix rolls me on top of him.

“No fair,” I grumble.

“You told me not to let you sleep in.” He kisses me. “This is your wake-up call.”

Having Felix in my bedroom is magic. A new first. I show him how to use my coffee maker, and he fixes me a pot while I shower. Finding him in my kitchen, blowing into his cup of tea, is surreal. My apartment will never be the same. From now on, I will always picture Felix Clark drinking Earl Grey in this kitchen.



* * *



? ? ?

He comes with me to the museum—he wants to watch me work and he wants to meet Farah. I introduce him to her, Rory, and Gia, then start on the archway, but my gaze keeps slipping to him, distracted.

“Your heart’s leaking out your eyeballs,” Farah says from across the space.

So I kick Felix out. It’s my best friend’s wedding day, and I need complete focus.

I returned to Toronto seventy-two hours ago, but I’ve slid right back into overdrive—long hours at the shop, a newly signed contract with the restaurant group, full-time positions for Rory and Gia, a raise for Farah, and two more job openings ready to be posted next week. Work is how I coped with losing my aunt, and it’s how I’m coping with Bridget moving. She’s leaving a big hole in my life, and I need to fill it somehow. Job stress I can handle. Saying goodbye to Bridget in two months . . . I can’t even think of it.

All of it slips away as I begin to fix stems of magnolia leaves into the foam base of the arch. I enter the singular place where my mind is quiet and my fingers take over. Halfway through, I have the notion that if I could do this every day—work with flowers and cut the other stuff out—I would be happy. This is the thing I love doing. I was made for this work. And Bridget’s wedding will be my best work yet.

I stand back when I’m done, surveying the structure, assessing the balance. There are branches of blackberries and globes of hydrangea, fresh and dried. Creamy ranunculus, roses, magnolia leaves, and seeded eucalyptus. My arches are usually seven or eight feet high. This one is ten. It’s partially because Miles is a very tall man and the venue is open and airy, all glass and sharp edges. But it’s also because I’m showing off. By the time we finish, the museum looks like a fairy tale, the aisle lined with blossoms, chair backs swagged in blooms.



* * *



? ? ?

I make my way down the aisle, finding Felix at the front of the room, standing with Miles and the best man. We blatantly stare at each other until I take my place as maid of honor and shift my gaze, waiting for her. When Bridget walks toward us on Ken’s arm, I can’t take my eyes off her. She glows. She’s radiating from within, reflecting light all around. The dress is white. Simple. Scoop neck, sleeveless, a column of silk caressing her skin and falling to the floor. There’s no lace or beading or embellishment of any sort. There’s no underwear, either. Bridget tried a thong, but even that showed through. Her heels are delicate, pearlescent, and I doubt they’ll make it past tonight’s dessert course. Her hair is pulled back into a low, perfectly imperfect bun, and the greens in her bouquet trail almost to the floor. Her dimples are on full display. She’s gossamer. She’s wind and air and cloud. The embodiment of happiness. So beautiful, my best friend.

I stare directly at her because I don’t want to miss a thing, but I can feel Felix’s gaze. I know if I look, I’ll see the dimple. He hasn’t stopped smiling all day. When Bridget joins Miles at the altar, my eyes slide to Felix.

“Hey,” he mouths.

“Hi,” I mouth back.

“You look hot.”

“You too.” Felix in a tux is criminal.

He nods his head at the archway. “Also hot.”

I know it is. But I love that Felix thinks so, too.

Before the rehearsal dinner yesterday evening, he told his parents we’re dating. I stood beside him, but Felix did the talking. Christine gripped Ken’s forearm like she might fall over, but then she let out a whoop.

Bridget and Miles’s first kiss as a married couple lasts so long, there are hollers from the audience.

“Get a room, mate,” one of the Aussies shouts.

When the newlyweds make their way down the aisle, Felix whispers something to the best man, and switches positions with him. We turn toward each other. He wipes a tear from my cheek with his thumb and then offers his arm.

“I know you,” he says.

“We’ve met before.”

“But never like this.”

“That suit should be illegal,” I say when we’re halfway down the aisle.

He chuckles, then whispers, “Tonight. You, me, that dress, your dining table. I’m going to bend you over it.”

I lean into his ear, my heart racing. “Not if I bend you first.”



* * *



? ? ?

There are photos where we are positioned beside each other. A dinner where we are seated next to each other. Felix invents ways to keep touching me—his hand wanders to the base of my spine as I move, his fingers skim over my shoulder when I laugh. At one point, his palm coasts under the slit in my dress and takes up residency on my thigh. I didn’t let Farah off the hook—she’s still my date for the evening—but Felix talked her into swapping seats. I’m sandwiched between the Clark siblings, and I can’t stop grinning.