I looked at her profile. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it easier for everyone.”
She smiled at the ocean. It was a small smile, a little tired around the edges. “She’s very pretty,” she said. “You look good together.”
I looked at the railing. Her hands were resting on it, right next to mine. Close enough. I looked at them and looked away.
“Tell me about the shop,” I said.
She turned to look at me. “What about it?”
“Last time you mentioned it you said you’d found a location.”
Her whole face changed. The tired edges disappeared. Her eyes went bright and she straightened up and turned toward me. I had made a very good decision asking about the shop.
“Okay, so,” she said. “You know the block on Halden Street? Right next to the coffee shop and the bookstore?”
“Birch & Grounds.”
“Yes. Right next to it. There’s that narrow little unit that’s been empty since the candle place closed down. It has the big front window, and the ceiling is high enough that I could hang installations. I went and looked through the glass three times before I called the landlord.”
“What did the landlord say?”
“He said the monthly is fourteen hundred and I almost cried right on the phone.” She laughed. “But I kept it together. I have eleven months of savings right now. I need about five more and I can put down the deposit and the first three months.”
“You need to save for five more months?”
“Maybe four if the market picks up in the fall. I’ve been thinking about adding dried arrangements to the stock. They sell really well online and the margin is better than fresh stems.”
“You’ve done the margin math.”
“I’ve done all the math. I have a spreadsheet.” She paused. “It’s color coded.”
“Of course it is.”
“Each flower has its own color in the spreadsheet. The dahlias are orange. The peonies are pink. The sunflowers—”
“Are yellow.”
“Obviously yellow.” She grinned. “I also have a column for Gerald’s maintenance costs because he’s part of the business plan until I can afford a delivery van, and his rattle is getting worse and I’m pretending I don’t hear it.”
She was still smiling. She was looking at the water again, but it was a different kind of looking than before. She was seeing something I couldn’t see, something that lived a little ways ahead of right now, and her eyes were completely clear.
I had an offer sitting in my chest that I had already decided I would not make tonight. I had made it before and she had said no with so much warmth and so much certainty that I had understood immediately it wasn’t about the money. It was about what the money would mean. I kept it in my chest.
“I think I’m going to cry at the opening of my flowers shop.” August said, still looking at the ocean. “I’m already planning on it. I’m going to stand outside and look at my name on the glass and cry.”
“You should.”
She looked at me. “Yeah?”
“You’ve been working toward it for three years. You’re allowed to cry about it.”
She looked back at the water. The orange was fading now, the pink taking over. She had her chin slightly lifted, the way she did when she was happy about something and didn’t want to make a big deal of it.
I looked at her hands on the railing.
