I pretend to think, even though we both know the answer. “Define ‘date’.”
She snorts. “Emma, I’ve known you three years. In all that time, you have not been on even one proper date.”
“We were busy,” I say weakly. “Work. London. Life.”
She raises an eyebrow.
It’s an old conversation. She genuinely believes that if I wanted to, I could have a queue of men. My friends in London used to insist I was too picky and should just ‘give someone a chance’, usually a man they would never have considered for themselves.
My dating history isn’t exactly impressive. A handful of boyfriends, most of them chosen because they were interested rather than because I truly wanted them. The kind of men you talk yourself into liking because you assume you can’t do better.
The idea that I’m supposed to “love myself first” before anyone else can love me makes me want to scream. I don’t love myself. I’m trying not to actively hate myself, and some days that already feels like a full-time job. People say confidence is attractive, but no one ever explains how you’re meant to build it when every mirror, every photo and every careless comment from someone you trusted tells a different story. I’m not a self-help project. I’m just tired of feeling like a flaw that needs fixing.
Christina softens a little, like she can hear the direction my thoughts are taking.
“You deserve someone,” she says. “And not some boring bloke who treats you like an afterthought. Someone who sees you.”
I shrug, because I do not know what to do with that level of belief. “Can I finish this flower arrangement before you fix my whole life, please?”
She grins. “For now.”
I carry the red and purple bouquet I’ve just finished through to the front and find a spot for it near the door. The shop looks good today. Full without feeling crammed. Light glancing off glass vases. The faint hum of the fridge in the corner. It makes something in my chest loosen every time I look at it.For once, I did something right.
“See?” Christina says. “This is why you need someone. So they can tell you how brilliant you are and how fit you look when you’re bossing flowers around.”
Before I can respond, the bell above the door rings.
“Morning,” Christina sings out automatically.
I turn to head to the backroom, already halfway through my usual retreat, when Christina says, in a perfectly normal voice that still somehow manages to make me choke on air, “What exactly are you so busy with anyway, Em? Don’t try to fob me off with ‘paperwork’. You mean reading romance novels and collecting book boyfriends.”
My cheeks heat instantly. “That is slander.”
She ignores me. “You hide in here swooning over fictional men, then act like you’ve forgotten how to talk to a real one.” She winks at the person behind me.
I really should keep walking, but something – curiosity, masochism, who knows – makes me glance over my shoulder to see who has come in and if they could have possibly heard Christina whilst they are browsing the flowers.
Two men stand just inside the door watching us. Both in navy jackets with Fellside Mountain Rescue stitched on the chest.
The shorter one has kind eyes and the expression of a man deeply wishing he were anywhere else. The taller one…
Well.
The taller one is ridiculous.
Broad shoulders. Dark curls cut short enough to behave, but only just. There’s stubble on his jaw and a faint curve at the corner of his mouth, like smiling comes easily to him.
Our eyes meet, and my stomach does a weird, treacherous swoop.
Absolutely not!
“See?” Christina murmurs under her breath. “This is what I mean.”
“Don’t,” I whisper back.
She pretends not to hear me. Typical.
Instead she says, “Welcome to Blossom & Bloom. Ignore me. I’m just bullying my business partner into having a love life.” I freeze, staring at her and then at the lads, wishing harder than ever for the ground to develop a sudden interest in swallowing me whole.
