“I’ve got a job! I’m helping Monica out at the florist. Incredible, right?”
Entertained, Lucas asked if I needed a ride.
“No, I can handle it on the bike. But I appreciate the offer.”
I ran to my room, put on a strap dress with a loose skirt, and dug around in my drawers for a pair of socks. I sat back on the bed to slip them on, then noticed the box for the sandals, which was sitting in the same place I’d left it the day before. I decided to open it, and I felt strange when I put them on, but a glance at the mirror showed how well they went with the dress.
I rushed into the bathroom, brushed my teeth and hair, and washed my face. When I came out, Lucas was lying on the sofa. He eyed me up and down, lingering a little too long on my feet.
“Very nice,” he said.
“Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself,” I fired back, feeling incredibly nervous as I did so.
I ran out and down stairs, dying from embarrassment.
You don’t look so bad yourself?How corny. “Idiot,” I said to myself.
“Idiot?” someone else said, and I looked up and found Dante entering the vestibule with bags from a home decor shop. Behind him was Giulio. As always, I was happy to see him.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I was just talking to myself. You guys were shopping, huh?”
“Yeah, getting decorations for the living room. We just rehabbed it,” Giulio replied. “Are you leaving?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m heading into town.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
His being so kind with me made me feel bad, and that feeling grew with each day that passed without my saying anything to him. But I couldn’t find the time or the place—or the way—to admit to him why I’d come there.
I pushed the bike past them and rode away. At the flower shop, Isaw how overwhelmed Monica was between the phone, taking down orders, and handing off orders that had already been prepared. There was a line of customers at the counter, and they were starting to get impatient as I pushed past them to greet her. She looked relieved when she saw me.
“Thank God you’re here! Put on that apron so you won’t get messy and give me a hand with these roses.”
“These white ones?”
“Yeah, they’re for a wedding. We need to separate them into bundles of twelve.”
“All right.”
We were busy all morning, and I had to learn to do everything on the fly. I cut thorns, made bouquets, tied bows, filled out cards. I also ran all over town making deliveries. When I arrived back home, my body was aching as if I’d gotten a beating. But when I went upstairs, I smelled something delicious that made my stomach groan so loudly that you could probably hear it all through the building.
Lucas peeked out of the kitchen and asked, “Hey, do you like fish?”
I loved it, as it happened, and I told him so as I dropped my bag on the couch and walked over to him. I found the table set with cloth napkins and wineglasses. In the middle was a vase with sweet-smelling flowers from the garden.
“Is all this for me?”
He nodded as he brought a casserole dish of fish and potatoes out of the oven, setting it down on the counter. “Since you got a job, I thought we should celebrate. Take a seat.”
I did so, deeply moved. No one had ever done anything like this for me before, not even Antoine in all the time we were together. Little gestures, moments of togetherness… We’d never had any of that. Nor seduction or intimacy, just the sexual act itself. Feelingemotions of the kind that were now running through me like electricity was something completely new.
Lucas opened a bottle of wine for me, and I remarked, “I thought you hated wine.”
“This is for you,” he said. “It goes great with the fish. I’ll have a beer myself.”
Sitting across from me, he looked in my eyes and I thought I saw a special gleam in his stare. The roasted fish was so good, I had a second helping. He knew what he was doing in the kitchen. Certainly better than me: The most elaborate dish I’d ever made was an omelet with cheese. He asked me about the flower shop, and I told him in detail everything I could about the business. What had really interested me there was the relationship between flowers and different feelings, colors and their meanings.
