Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Two words, written in Kellum’s rough, heavy hand:
Mine. K
My breath catches. The sting from Lana’s comment evaporates like it never existed. My smile stretches so wide it almost hurts. I set the flowers right on the counter where everyone can see them. The card though, I put it in my pocket, keeping it close.
The rest of the morning, I can’t stop touching the card, running my finger over the ink like it’s proof. A few months ago, I was disposable. Today, I’m his.
And I’ve never had a better day.
I float.
There’s no other word for it. The roses sit like a red sunrise on the counter. The little white card tucked at the perfect angle in my back pocket where I can touch it easily and remember the words.
Mine. –K.
It’s ridiculous how one word can take all the knots in my chest and turn them into fluttering butterflies.
Trina clocks the vase the second she comes out with a stack of fresh linens. Her eyebrows do a graceful climb. “Oho. Someone finally admitted what the whole street already knew.” She leans in and looks for the card then looks at me over the rim of her glasses. “You look like someone watered your soul. They from Pretty Boy?”
“Don’t,” I say, trying for blasé and failing utterly. My smile is an ungovernable animal. “It’s just a nice gesture.”
“‘Just nice,’” she mimics, smirking. “Please. That is the kind of ‘nice’ that gets a woman through a thirty-minute hold with the bridal party from hell.” She taps the vase. “Put it on the far end so the acetone doesn’t waft over here to them.”
I slide the arrangement down the counter, guarding the card like a dragon with a single coin. As I straighten, I catch movement and—of course—Lana glides in from the back, her facial done, bun messy and perfect at the same time, nails a weaponized red.
She stops. Looks at the roses. Then at me. Then, pointedly, at my neck.
The heat climbs my cheeks again. I tug the collar of my blouse. “It’s not that obvious,” I lie.
“Mm,” she says, noncommittal. Her gaze flickers softer for a heartbeat. “Happy suits you.”
I’m too surprised at her answer. Lana gives the flowers one last look, then nods in a way that feels like a truce. “Tell him he owes the front desk a bigger tip jar,” she says, breezing past. “Your phone is going to ring off the hook with women rescheduling so they can ask how you tamed the wildest of them all.”
Trina laughs. “Don’t encourage the chaos.”
“I live for it,” Lana tosses back, and disappears.
I stand there, hand on the vase, heart doing a strange relieved stutter. I was braced for another dig, the way she warned me weeks ago. Instead I got a moment of peace, maybe even happiness for me. The knot I didn’t know I’d been holding loosens another click.
The morning picks up. The phone does, in fact, ring more but by happenstance. I book a facial for a woman who whispers like she’s telling me a secret about cucumbers. I move a massage to Friday for a man who apologizes six times for having a back ache pop up. I sell two gift certificates and explain, three separate times, that a pedicure does not have to include glitter but could if it would heal anyone’s inner child. That is our current promotion and I’m dreading cleaning up behind them. Glitter is like the worst thing because it goes everywhere.
Every now and then, a client glances at the roses and then at me. I watch the little lift in their faces, like maybe the idea of being claimed—in a way that isn’t possession but promise—still means something in a world that keeps telling us to ask less, expect less, be less. I’m not less today. I’m enough to fill this whole room.
Between appointments, Trina leans on the counter and drops her voice. “So. How’s the boat, Captain?” I shared with her what Kellum has said. This is what having a real girlfriend is like and I’m thankful for her.
I duck my head, grin at the card. “Steady.”
“And the first mate?”
I bite my lip, but the happiness comes out anyway, bright and uncontainable. “He’s a keeper.”
She deadpans. “I can see that.”
Trina’s smile goes small and warm. “Look at you.”
I don’t tell her about last night. I don’t need to. The evidence is on my neck and in the curve of my mouth turning to a smile just at the mention of him. Some things don’t need a whole paragraph. They just need a woman standing upright with her shoulders back, head high.
Around noon, I catch myself touching the hickey again, fingertips grazing the tender edge. For a second, Lana’s voice from earlier flutters up, warning painted as wisdom. Best you’ll ever have. Don’t expect him to keep you. The old me would’ve swallowed that whole, called it realism, braced for the fall.