Chapter Thirty-Three
Did Max ever receive her flowers, or her hastily scribbled note? Bo had no idea.
“He hasn’t called me,” she complained to Lisa before her flight back to London was due to depart. “He hasn’t called, sent an email, or even dropped me a text message. I’ve heard nothing from him at all.”
“You told me the man uses a Nokia 3310,” Lisa returned. “Maybe he physicallycan’tsend a message.”
“Tin cans linked by string have better reception than his phone, that’s true,” Bo acknowledged. “Still, I thought I’d have heard something by now. It’s been nearly two weeks.”
Lisa nodded. “Don’t panic yet. Remember he’s on tour. After Sydney he has concerts lined up in New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, the US and Canada. He can’t drop a touring schedule to run after you.”
“He could still send a message though. At this point I’d take a carrier pigeon.”
Lisa laughed. “You’re being a little overdramatic.”
Was she though? The longer time went on the more worried Bo became. She returned to London and to her flower shop, and there was still no word from Max. She arranged the flowers for a large local wedding, bringing in a whole new stream of revenue, and still heard nothing. She completed a parkrun in a new personal best, finally deleted her Duolingo app and bought herself a reliable working car, and there was still no word from Max. Two months passed by with each day more painful than the next, and still nothing. Soon, Bo ran out of both fingernails to bite and hope to lean on.
Maybe she’d got it wrong. Maybe the Jacobien Concerto hadn’t been a work of love but a work of release. Maybe he’dwritten it to write her out of his system, and could she blame him if he had?
“Maybe he didn’t love me at all,” she said to Willa miserably one night over the phone.
“Of course he did. Of course he does,” Willa replied, her voice sounding tired. She was in LA, drumming up support from the Academy for an Oscar nomination for her film. Scarrow was determined to get a best director and best film nod for his work and sent Willa in like a villain’s henchman to do his dirty work for him. Not that Bo said a word to Willa about Scarrow. Willa was determined to marry him, determined to make things a success with him, and Bo knew she wouldn’t listen to any home truths she or anyone else delivered. Anyone else except for Berg, that was.
“Then why hasn’t he been in touch with me? Even to just let me down gently?” Bo sighed. “I can’t help but feel I’ve missed something. I can’t help feeling like maybe he and I still aren’t on the same page. I should have made my note clearer. I should’ve gone to see him in person.”
“Maybe he’s just, you know, busy,” Willa returned.
Bo considered this, without telling Willa she’d been low-key stalking Max’s Instagram page. She’d watched clips from Max’s tour from across the globe and knew just how many cities he’d been to in the last eight weeks. She’d watched him play concerts in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Toronto and New York. She knew he was busy, but she also knew he was now home. A picture had been posted of his piano in Berlin just that week.
She also didn’t tell Willa she’d listened to the Jacobien Concerto on Spotify so many times that Max had finally knocked Taylor Swift from the top of her ‘most listened to’ list. She didn’t tell Willa that she’d analysed the music again and again, hoping for hints about Max and his feelings for her. She didn’t tell Willa that she’d cried to the third movement, where a section of Max’smusic was so passionately dark that Bo instinctively knew it represented the final time she and he had slept together.
“Maybe,” she said instead, chewing on a nail, and when Willa ended the call, Bo curled up on her bed with Max’s purple shirt in her hand and worried herself to sleep.
She tried to move on with her life. Once again, she tried to extinguish hope and put Max from her mind. Ida produced a great-nephew who was apparently just perfect for her, and Bo went on a date with him, if only to keep Ida happy. She ended the evening after just one drink however, and when Ida asked why, Bo looked at her with empty eyes and shrugged.
“You know why.”
Three months after she’d sent Max his daisies, she was in the store one Friday evening when the bell above her door sounded.
“We’re closed; I’m sorry,” Bo called out from the small stock room by the shop floor. She was prepping for a wedding the next day and still had three bridesmaid’s bouquets to arrange and refrigerate for delivery in the morning. She didn’t have time to deal with customers who chose to shop for flowers at seven in the evening. What was she, Asda?
She went back to her satin ribbon and baby’s breath, when, after another minute, realized she hadn’t heard the bell above the door sound again, indicating the customer had left.
“We’re closed,” she repeated, impatient now. Ida must have forgotten to lock the door on her way out, and now Bo had to deal with someone who was so desperate for flowers they were lurking in a closed shop. She scowled as she hopped off her stool, walking into her shop. “Look, if you come back tomorrow my assistant will be more than happy to help you—”
The words died on her lips, and she froze in the doorway.
“Hello, Bo,” Max said, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was hoping you could help me. You see, I need a bouquet.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
For a moment Bo stared at Max, still frozen with shock, still full of disbelief, but also — wildly and bizarrely — completely and unequivocally pissed off at him too. It might have been the months he’d left her hanging, or maybe it was a habitual response to his presence, but she was annoyed and couldn’t help her annoyance from seeping into her voice when she finally spoke to him.
“You really are one for walking through doors and surprising me,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “You did it the first day we met, and apparently, we’re sticking with that theme.”
Max blinked back at her. “It’s a shop, Bo,” he replied slowly. “The doors are for walking through.”
He had her there, damn it. She brought her thumb to her lips, chewing on her nail, and watched as Max stepped towards her.
