Page 10 of Sexting His Son's Ex
It’s important to me. It holds so many memories. I can’t just hire anybody.
She drags a chair from the back room and plops down next to me. “You’re too hard on yourself.” Marlowe bites into her sandwich and somehow doesn’t mess up her black lipstick. “It’s okay to take chances on people even if there is a voice in the back of your head telling you not to because we aren’t always right, are we? We’re human. We’re broken. We are flawed. We aren’t perfect. Plenty of people miss out on being with the love of their lives because their inside voice is wrong. Sure, this time you were wrong to ignore yourself this, but next time? You might not be. Give yourself some slack. The world is hard, and love is a lot harder, no matter the relationship. Friendship, lovers, marriage. The baseline is the same.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her what I’m doing. To tell her about Santino, Luca’s fathers. My revenge plot. I know she’d be all about it. She’d be supportive.
I chew my food, debating for a few seconds before deciding to keep Santino to myself.
“So, what’s this order?” She points to the bouquet I’m making for Santino.
More black roses. I think I want it to be a theme.
“Is it for a funeral? Damn, it’s so… goth. I love it. Why haven’t you made me one?” She pouts.
“Aw, I’m sorry,” I giggle. “I’ll make you one. How about you take that one? I’ll start over.”
She shakes her head. “No way. I’ll take scraps or something.” Marlowe waves my offer away.
Her phone dings and when she checks it, she groans out loud. “I got to go. One of my employees just texted me saying the espresso machine is making gurgling noises. No matter how many times I show him how to use it, he messes it up.”
“Are you going to fire him?”
She rears back, surprised I’d even ask that question. “No. What? No. I’m not firing someone because they don’t know how to do something. It’s up to me to train him properly for the job. I clearly haven’t done that. I won’t give up on him as long as he doesn’t.”
“You’re so fucking great, you know that?” I take another bite of my sandwich, covering my mouth with my hand as I chew.
She shrugs, wrapping her sandwich to put it in the bag. “I’m just giving someone a chance. Nothing wrong with that, right?” She winks. “Text me when you close. You can come over and we can have a movie night.”
I nod. “I might be a little late. I need to prep for tomorrow too. I’ll let you know.”
“Perfect.” She blows me a kiss. “See you later.”
“Bye! Love you!”
“Love you too!”
She turns the sign to open, unlocks the door, and is gone, leaving me alone with my revenge roses.
The door rings again and I make a note to take that damn thing down because it’s getting on my nerves.
“I’m here to pick up a delivery?” The courier I used before walks in with his bike at his side.
“Mmm, yes. One minute. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I wipe my face with a napkin and take a few swallows of my soda. “I only need to plop in some red carnations. Give me five minutes?”
“Sure, no problem.”
I scurry to the fridge, taking out a few red carnations, the same as last time, then for the hell of it, I add a black lily in the middle of the bouquet, keeping the theme dark and mysterious. I hurry placing the stems in the vase. This bouquet isn’t as pretty as the other I made, but like I told Marlowe, I’m behind on orders today because I’ve been adding more work to my schedule that no one knows about.
Sending flowers to a man much older than me? What could go wrong?
I add the card with my phone number in the same spot as last time. “Here you go.” I place it in his crate he has bolted to the front of his handlebars. “This is anonymous, right? I need it to be.”
He nods. “Same price as the last one. I’m upping it, though. Since you’re making it take it to a Salvati.”
Oookay. Whatever that means.
“How much more?”
“Double.”
