Page 70 of The Great Dating Fake Off
“I’ll get a cart.” She scurries off, leaving me with a shit ton of flowers and no one around to steal them.
A minute later, she returns with a cart and a determined expression. “The lady at the counter said anything on the main floor is fair game.”
I drop the flowers I’m holding into the cart and stroke my chin. “Should we search the internet for what types go together? For her bouquet?”
“They’re all pretty. Pretty things go together. Let’s grab everything.”
“But what are the rules? I’ll research it.” I take my phone from my pocket. This is what I should’ve been doing in the car on our drive over, but I was too distracted by her and her playlist. “I don’t want to show up with a bunch of bad flowers.”
“Bad flowers?” An airy laugh slips out of her mouth. “Is there such a thing?”
“Yes. You heard her mom going on about magazine spreads and whatever the hell. I know how these rich people operate. Like when people want me to paint their houses, they have picked out contrasting colors that complement each other. The right blue to go with the right coral that both play nicely with eggshell or whatever the hell shade of white for the trim. All the same paint finishes. That’s the kind of perfection the Ferraro mom will be expecting. If we drop three thousand on flowers that aren’t good enough—”
She pinches my cheeks to shut me up. “They don’t have to be perfect to be good enough, Sebastian. Watch this.”
I let my phone hang at my side as she flits about, brow furrowed in concentration.
“A sunflower,” she murmurs, taking the bloom from the metal trough-like vase. She whirls around, eyes wide as she appraises the options. “An orange rose.” Pluck. “A white hydrangea.” Snag. “A yellow tulip.” Grab. She spins again, a pretty tornado in this tiny shop. “And these pale daffodils! Yes.”
She gathers them all in her fist and holds it up for my inspection. “Voila. I’ll call this one sun kissed. You wouldn’t think they’d make sense together, but they work. And if it’s ugly, hey, at least it was made with love.”
She’s so proud of the thing, with all its mismatched stem lengths and sizes.
“It does look sunny,” I admit.
“Thank you.” She places it in the cart and sets to work picking more from the display.
“I don’t like getting things wrong,” I blurt. “It’s not that I want to be perfect. I’ve just spent a lot of time feeling like I’m not”—I shake my head, dislodging the words smart enough and good enough—“like I’m going to disappoint people.”
She blinks at me. “You really believe that you could?”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
She drifts closer, taking my hand to spin the ring on my finger, the way I’ve seen her spin her own when she’s thinking. “I can’t imagine you disappointing anyone.” Her eyes gleam. “Not Ro with flowers, not your friends who you are doing this elaborate favor for, not your family who probably think you’re God’s gift to humanity, not your mentees who I’m sure idolize you. So, who? Who are you disappointing, exactly?”
Myself. Constantly.
She drops my hand. “Your best is good enough.”
When I don’t immediately say something, she pokes me in the ribs, and then again until I laugh. “You hear me? Even if your best is mismatched flowers, it’s more than fine.”
I tuck her words away, hyperaware that she’s studying me. She was having a good time putting flowers together, and I derailed her with thirty years of baggage.
So, I angle her toward the flowers with a hand to her waist. “Let’s get back to it. If it’s for sale, we’re taking it.”
She opens her arms as if to gather the whole store into her embrace. “That’s the spirit. Let’s Supermarket Sweep this thing.”
Chapter Nineteen
Nora
I blow a chunk of my savings and all of Friday afternoon on a pomegranate sugar scrub and pedicure at the spa.
Did I need a pedicure? No. I groomed, waxed, and polished my whole body within an inch of my life before coming on this trip.
But was it great to avoid the world for a while and clear my head?
A resounding yes, though Sebastian hovered just on the edge of my mind all the while.
