“Can I ask why the purple?” Jay asked suddenly. He was as focused on his camera as she was on her flowers.
“Hmm?” Mara asked, and it was her turn to be surprised and innocent.
“The purple flowers,” Jay repeated, pouting his lips to point in the direction of the purple statice flowers. “In a sea of red and orange, there was purple. I was just wondering if it was her favorite color, or…?”
Mara shifted uncomfortably where she stood, and it wasn’t because of her flatter shoes. She was trying to decide how much she was going to say, how much of herself she would reveal to Jay. She already felt like he knew too much about her, and this was the longest conversation they’d ever had.
“You dated her for three months, and she didn’t tell you her favorite color was autumn?” Mara teased instead, and Jay laughed. There went the eye crinkles. And also, as proof of his sweet-boy vibes, his mouth actually formed a heart when he laughed. How adorable was that? Mara had only seen it in anime. But there he was, a man in real life giving her a heart-shaped smile.
“We really weren’t meant to be, I guess.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. Good for him. Because Marina probably ended things with him properly. There had actually been something mutual, consensual and out on the table for them both. “Ok lang. I’m not really a relationship kind of guy. Feelings are not my thing.”
“Ha? If I recall correctly, David called you a serial monogamist. It was your selling point.”
“David’s in marketing. He will say a lot of things to get the deal.” Jay snorted. “Also serial monogamist means I date a lot. And I do. I like dating, and I date one person at a time. But let’s just say, I’m not the kind of guy people fall in love with.”
Mara highly doubted that, but she said nothing. It reminded her of all the times a thinner friend would complain to her—a US size 22 who can’t even buy underwear in this country—that they were getting fat now. That their clothes didn’t fit. And she would hum and say something vaguely like, “There, there, poor thing.”
“Isn’t it funny how much meaning we attach to flowers?” he asked her suddenly, his gaze focused on the blooms that she was rearranging. “It’s a plant. It’s a dead plant, essentially. Meant to wither and fade away. They don’t last very long, and they aren’t meant to.”
“Sometimes they do. This one dries out really nicely,” Mara said. She’d made these arguments before to various customers. Why this flower? Why spend money on something this cheap? And out of theme! “And a specific, single bloom may not last forever, but you always find the statice in the grocery, in an everyday arrangement. I wanted Marina to know that it’s not so stately and serious, marrying someone you love.”
Ha. He had nothing to say to that.
“I added the purple,” Mara announced. And she suddenly felt defensive of her admittedly sentimental choices. “For very selfish reasons.”
Their eyes met across the presidential table. He had nice eyes, shaped into points on the sides. Serious but so expressive. His eyes were looking at her face now, moving, trailing down to her lips. Mara pressed her lips together, her throat suddenly feeling dry. “They hid their feelings for each other for a long time, as you and I well know.”
A bitter pill to swallow, but she was used to that now. She and Jay exchanged wan smiles. The smiles of two people who had been completely fooled.
“I thought it would remain unseen and unnoticed.” She shrugged like she hadn’t kept that little secret to herself. She hadn’t told anyone about it, mostly because nobody asked. It was freeing, to be able to say it out loud. “They felt that way about each other for so long that they just let it grow and turn into…this. A color that doesn’t quite stand out, that doesn’t quite fit in, but has been there all along. In a selfish way I wanted to commemorate the way they hid their feelings.”
There was now silence between them, and Mara’s stomach twisted. She’d said too much. Jay wouldn’t understand. She felt a little raw and exposed, even with the little she’d said.
“They’re just flowers, and like you said, they don’t last,” she said quickly, because she’d gone back and forth about this silly, insignificant, even petty little thing. “But they have meaning to the ones who chose them.”
“Hay. I keep making you upset.” He sighed, shaking his head. Mara couldn’t tell if it was genuine disappointment. “My mouth goes places my brain can’t control.”
He held up the camera again and caught her blink at him in confusion, her heart flipping around in her chest as butterflies swirled a storm inside her. “But this is sweet, Mara. Doing this for them.”
“I just told you I called them selfish in flowers.” She laughed bitterly.
“Doesn’t mean you don’t love them. You were hurt, and you wanted it to be acknowledged in a way that mattered to you,” Jay pointed out. “The way I see it, there are worse things to do than to say you were hurt in flowers. Now smile, beautiful.”
“Flatterer.” She raised a brow at him and let him take another photo.
“Hey, I mean it!” Jay said, frowning as he lowered the camera. “You are beautiful. Today you look like a princess. I said that out loud, when I saw you at the church this morning. Which was how I remembered that you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you.” She dismissed the thought with a snort. “I hate what you did. And that you didn’t apologize.”
“Well, I did na.”
“You didn’t, actually,” Mara clarified while resuming her tasks. Spreading the flowers out to the farther edges of the tables, accepting the shears one of the staff offered her. In her peripheral vision, Jay sauntered (sauntered!) over to the presidential table, a hand on the back of the chair across where she was quickly pulling deep red anthuriums and carnations from the center arrangement, evening out the whole display.
“I didn’t what?” he asked as Mara gave the shears back and told the staff what a good job they did.
“Apologize to me,” she said, looking up from her work. “You said you wanted to apologize. But I didn’t hear a single ‘sorry’ from you.”
“I groveled!”
