Done, I picked up the last lunch I might ever get from my little sister and took a seat down the table from him. I’d been eating it in bits and pieces as I decorated. Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and steamed spinach. Man, I was going to miss her.
Miguel took the seat beside mine, opening up his lunch bag and pulling out a sandwich and a bag of chips.
I nudged him. “Isn’t it your wife’s birthday today?”
He froze, and then he looked up so slowly, straight at the wall ahead, that I knew the answer. “Today is the sixth?” he whispered.
I glanced at Rip, and even he was looking at Miguel curiously. “Yes.”
Miguel cursed long and low in Spanish before glancing at me with a horrified and panicked expression.
“I wondered why she was giving me a dirty look this morning.” He muttered almost thoughtfully, his eyes wide. “She’s gonna kill me. I thought her birthday was tomorrow.”
“She’s not going to kill you,” I tried to assure him, not fully believing the words myself. I’d met her. We were friends. She really would kill him.
The face he made said he didn’t either.
“Okay, maybe, but I know what you can do. Did you buy her present already?”
He hadn’t. He didn’t need to say it, I could tell. “I was going to take the kids with me tomorrow to get it.”
“Okay, good.” I forked some more food into my mouth. “I know this florist that can deliver flowers by three if you order them soon.”
That had added some coloring to his face. “The same ones you ordered for Owen last month?”
I nodded and got a nod in return. This wasn’t the first time the same thing had happened with one of the guys at the shop. I had half the guys’ credit card information saved on my phone. I usually helped them buy Christmas presents for their wives and girlfriends too since they were such slackers.
“What are her favorites?” I asked him.
Silence.
“Miguelito, what flowers does she like?”
He was back to staring blankly.
We both laughed.
“What do you like?” he asked me like that was help.
It wasn’t. “Oh, I don’t care. Don’t ask me.”
Miguel blinked. “Luna, what have your boyfriends sent you?”
Boyfriends. Like that wasreallyplural. I gave him a funny face before pulling my phone out of my pocket and looking through the contacts for the florist that some of the other guys had used before. “They didn’t. Thanks for reminding me,” I said, trying to say it lightly and playfully, like it wasn’t a big deal.
Because it wasn’t.
If I wanted flowers, I could buy them myself.
“None of them?” my coworker asked, not letting it go.
I found the contact and set my phone on the table between us. “Nope.”
“Not even the old one?”
I snickered and shook my head. “Stop.” I pointed at the phone. “Call and order the flowers.”
He grinned and brought out his phone too, dialing the number quickly and then, putting his phone over the receiver, asking, “What about your sisters?”
