Page 14 of The Arrangement

“I think Marc told you about me,” he began, taking a sip, and my heart lurched into my throat.Oh Fuck. Please no.I was doing fine–mostly–with the pretending. “I’m the friend helping him get the shop in order. By the way, this tea is incredible. Wish we had something like it up north.”

“Oh, bless your heart, you’re a Yankee.” She patted his arm as if it were something he’d contracted instead of where he’d been born and gave me a sad look. “He’s a Yankee, Marc.”

I snorted a laugh into my cup, and my heart returned to its normal location in my chest. “Try not to hold it against him.”

She scoffed and placed her bony hand flat against her chest. “I wouldnever. Anyone who takes care of my Marc is alright in my book, especially when they’re this handsome.” To my absolute mortification, she patted him on the cheek and winked. It was a coin toss whose face was more red: mine or JD’s.

I spotted a small bouquet still tied in its paper resting on a little breakfast/dining table and walked over to it, eager for achange in topic. “Really, Aunt Petunia? This is the best you could do?”

“Hush your mouth. I have limited resources here,” she huffed, walking over.

I picked up the small bouquet, plucking at the vibrant red camellias and bell-like lily of the valleys, but I couldn’t resist tugging free the strange addition of the buttercups. The first two made sense. They represented “longing for you” and a “return of happiness”. But for the life of me, I couldn’t see how “radiant with charm” factored into that. Not that I wasn’t flattered. I held up the expertly trimmed buttercups I’d removed and arched an eyebrow at Aunt Petunia, who ‌shrugged.

“What? She said he was handsome and had good manners. It seemed appropriate.”

Chuckling to myself, I turned to JD, who was looking more confused by the second. “I don’t get it,” he said, joining us with yet another refilled glass of tea. Lord help me, someone who enjoyed overly sweetened tea as much as my aunt.

“These aren’t for me,” I said, feeling six kinds of ridiculous as I handed him the flowers.

Chapter 10

James

Iswirled the pretty yellow flowers between my fingers. I couldn’t remember a time anyone had ever given me flowers before–I was pretty sure Savannah giving me a handful of dandelions with their roots still attached and dropping clumps of dirt when she was five didn’t count–and I was oddly touched by the gesture. Logically, I knew Marc wasn’t the one who’d actually gotten me the flowers, but he’d been the one to hand them to me, and there was no convincing my ridiculous lizard-brain otherwise. God, he’d looked fucking adorable with his lips tipped in a half smile, a light pink staining his cheeks…his great aunt smirking in the background.

“Hey, you about ready?” Marc said, as he came back from concluding his transaction with the salesman, because of course his aunt had sent us up to a town called Spanish Fort with a massive shopping center, and more importantly, a mattress shop.

“Sure thing. Pleased with your purchase?” I tried to hide the flowers, but he clocked them before I got far.

“Yeah, I guess.” He plucked at a sticker some kid had stuck to the bench I’d commandeered. “You know, you don’t have to keep those if you don’t want to. I know the game my aunt and I play is kind of silly.” It sucked that he felt like he needed to give me an out.

Watching him with his great aunt and with the flowers had been eye-opening and a little magical. At the risk of being “woefully unimaginative,” as my brother would say, Marc had blossomed. He clearly had a passion for nature, and the pervasive toxic masculinity often found in the army had taught him that was something to be ashamed of. The army might bring out the best in some, but it could also bring out the worst.

I carefully set the flowers aside, determined to protect them until I could find a more suitable place to keep them safe. “What’s this about a game? First I’m hearing of it,” I said with a grin, hoping to distract him from the flowers I had zero intention of discarding.

“Oh, yeah,that, uh.” He picked more aggressively at the sticker. “So, it was always sorta my great aunt’s thing? People would come into the shop for custom bouquets and arrangements that ‘said something’. See, back in the day, likeway wayback in the nineteenth century, proper etiquette frowned upon displays of emotion. So, they came up with a way to communicate true feelings in more subtle ways by connecting symbolism and meanings to flowers.” He shrugged and finally abandoned the shredded remains of the sticker that refused to surrender.

“That actually sounds pretty cool. And useful as f—” I spotted a little girl bouncing animatedly beside a mom walking by and quickly amended my vocabulary, “useful as heck.”

Marc snorted, catching the source of my adjustment, and angled his head for us to make our way back to the car. “You really think so?”

“Well, yeah. Think about how many ops could have gone smoother with an easy visual message of flowers. Though I guess some of them might have been harder to get ahold of, which then would have made them more obvious. Okay, maybe not so great in some places, but I can definitely see the merits. How did you get pulled in?”

His tentative grin bloomed into a full smile. “When my sister and I started spending our summers down here when we were younger, it turned out I had a real knack for it. So Aunt Petunia taught me. First, they were like little tests, but as they got more complex, they became more of a game. And, I don’t know, it was fun.” He shrugged as if it were nothing, but his smile continued to split his face and his eyes danced with remembered joy. “It only got more fun when she started having me make bouquets for customers.”

“Sounds like a blast.”

“Yeah, it was.” He tilted his face up to the sun, bathing in the warm light, and looking goddamn beautiful with his soft smile curving his lips and his entire expression perfectly at peace.

“So…”

He angled his head back up and gave me an expectant look. “So?”

“So, if I want to know what the yellow flowers mean, you could tell me?”

His grin took on a mischievous edge. “I could. The real question iswillI?”

I punched him in the arm, not hard enough to actually hurt him, but with enough force to get his attention. As I’d hoped, he laughed and rubbed his arm, shooting me a playful grin. “Ioughta tell your aunt that you’re not being a very hospitable host.”