But I love flowers too much. So I clutch my precious bouquet and breathe it in. The card wedged inside it, with my name penned in dark ink, pokes against my chest, reminding me, since having determined via text it was not my parents, of my many unanswered questions:
Who sent it? And why?
Who knows my full name?
Who knows I eat vegetarian and love pumpkin doughnuts?
Who knows where I work right now?
Reminded of work, my mind makes one of its nimble leaps and reroutes, drawn to memories of the day, how happy they made me. After Jack and his parents left, a fresh batch of customers came in. I took care of them, helped them pick out a card for Grandma, stationery for a friend, a small art print for their grown child who just moved into their first place. During restock, I laughed with Bea, teased with Toni, traded a knowing look with Sula as my sister and Toni bickered like old biddies.
I hadn’t planned to stay all day, but time passed so easily. Hours flew as I snapped photos of the store in between customers, capturing its loveliness as the sun made its journey from butter-yellow morning light to honey gold at high noon, then to rich russet as it dipped below the horizon.
Before I knew it, we were closing the door, flipping the sign from Open to Closed. And when I clicked through my camera’s screen display, Toni, Bea, and Sula gathered around me, their oohs and aahs a soothing chorus to my ears, I felt it—a rare, precious ember, small and glowing, right in the center of my chest.
Belonging.
Warmed by that little nugget of happiness, I clutch my flowers, impervious to the determined wind, contentedly alone, about to start my walk home. It took a bit of maneuvering to get myself here—standing outside the pub next door to the Edgy Envelope, having just waved goodbye to Toni, who hopped on the back of Hamza’s Vespa while Sula whizzed by on her bike, her bell chirping a merry ding goodbye—but I managed it.
Jamie stopped by a half hour ago with pho in hand for Bea and me, a cab waiting to take us home. I declined, lying by saying I was going to get a bite at the pub next door and would catch my own cab home. Because Jamie and Bea need it—time alone at the apartment, time to be happy in a way that I don’t understand because I’ve never known it but that I’m happy for them to have, nonetheless.
I told the same lie to Toni and Sula, a little disconcerted by how readily I’ve deceived people since I came home, knowing it’s something I’ll have to sit with at some point and face. The reasons I tell my little white lies, the choices I make to stay separate, the roots I refuse to let sink deep.
But not tonight. Tonight, my belly full of the quiche and doughnuts I snacked on all day, my face buried in the luscious perfume of flowers, I’m letting myself bask in a sliver of joy.
That is, until I see someone leaning against the streetlamp a block away, hands in his pockets.
He tips his head back, scrapes a hand through his hair, exposing the line of his throat, a thick Adam’s apple kissed by the sunset’s glow.
I stare as a bolt of awareness races down my spine. There’s something so familiar about him. The way he scrubs at his scalp, then lets his hand fall. The way he lifts his wrist, examines his watch, and slides his thumb across its surface.
That’s what I recognize first. His hands.
Hands that pushed me on a swing when I was a scrawny girl who wanted to fly so high I could kick the clouds. Hands that dragged Puck, the family cat, out from under his front porch’s crawl space where he’d hidden for shelter from a sudden, violent storm. Hands that scooped me out of a closet last night.
Christopher.
His eyes meet mine. “Katerina.”
Reflexively, I hug the flowers tighter to my chest. The card pokes my skin and my stomach drops as I remember the name written on it.
Katerina.
No. It couldn’t be him. He’d never.
Would he?
I shift the bouquet in my arms and lift my chin, forcing myself to meet his eyes. Two glowing embers in the dying light, fringed with thick black lashes. Dark half-moon shadows beneath them. He looks exhausted.
Not that I care, of course.
“Christopher,” I finally manage to say. “What’re you doing here?”
He pushes off the streetlamp post and strolls my way, so intensely . . . there. Solid and sure, unmoved by the wind tugging his wool coat, whipping back his hair. Sunset gilds his profile and, when he faces me fully, lights up his amber eyes as it spills, burnished bronze down his body.
My breath is doing funny things, turning short and tight in my chest. I feel the danger, the draw of leaning too close to a roaring fire after a long, frigid day.