Mari held up a pink peony and a white one. “Which do you like better?”“What is this for again?” I said.Mari sighed. “For my bouquet. Pink or white? My dress is white so I thought pink, but I kind of like the idea of having all the flowers be white, too.”A few days after that mind-blowing kiss with Jacob, Mari invited me to her place to help her with wedding planning. Kate had joined us as well, although she was busy studying for an exam. I didn’t know how she managed to concentrate while Mari and I talked bouquets, but Kate had always had a remarkable ability to retain information with little effort. I was surprised she was even studying at all.“Neither,” I said finally. I began to sketch a bouquet in pencil. “Since your bridesmaids are wearing pink, it’ll be pink overload if your bouquets are pink, too.”Mari nibbled her bottom lip. “That’s true.”I glanced at the color selection that Mari had chosen, my brain putting together arrangements and discarding them just as q
The second time I fell in love with Jacob, I was thirteen.That isn’t to say I’d fallenoutof love with him at any point between five and thirteen. It was just that he gave me another reason to love him. It was like he kept adding dandelions to my pile of love for him and then metaphorically making me tons of flower crowns with them.By eighth grade, Jacob was the golden boy of our junior high. He was, literally, golden: golden hair, golden skin. Every time he smiled, his teeth sparkled like out of some toothpaste commercial. I swear a theme song played in my head anytime he walked past me—that theme song being the saxophone solo from “Careless Whisper.” Every. Damn. Time. I heard that stupid saxophone in my brain when I saw Jacob.“Do you think he ever smells bad?” I asked Anna.It was two days before Valentine’s Day, aka the worst day ever when you didn’t have a boyfriend. Which was me. I had no boyfriend. Not even Tommy would date somebody like me, and that was saying
I hadn’t been able to figure out my own dilemma by the time I joined Anna that evening, a week after that kiss with Jacob. She had the rare night off, and we went to a fancy new bar only a few blocks from her apartment. During the day it was a coffee house that served deconstructed lattes (because of course it did), but at night it turned into a fancy cocktail restaurant that served things like deconstructed avocado toast. It was just an avocado that you had to peel yourself and a piece of bread on a wooden cutting board that cost $20.I was well into my third cocktail, feeling the delicious buzz of alcohol, when I bemoaned, “I’m a mess, Anna.”“We all are. But don’t blame yourself because Jacob left you high and dry. Well, not really. He left you wet and cockblocked.” She snickered.“I’m never going to get a guy to pop my cherry at this rate.” I stared at my martini, mostly hypnotized by the preserved lemon curl floating in the liquid. I wondered if I could eat it. Pulling it out o
Normally I enjoyed driving to Vancouver, but today had not been enjoyable. Not only had I gotten stuck in traffic on I-5, which doubled my travel time, but I realized after a half hour that I’d forgotten the box of brochures for Buds and Blossoms that I’d needed to bring.I’d told Judith and Will, our other employee, that I needed everything put together that afternoon, but Will had been out with the flu and Judith had been frazzled and distracted, so all my plans and instructions had gone to hell with alarming speed.By the time I crossed the border and got to the hotel, I was starving, sweaty from stress, and exhausted. I wanted to order room service, take a hot bath, and call it a night so I could function like a human being tomorrow.When I entered the hotel lobby and saw the wide shoulders, the golden hair, the tight ass, I didn’t need to wonder who it was. I wasn’t remotely surprised that Jacob was here. I’d often attended conventions like this with my dad, and the Wests w
I’d long since realized that plant people were all, collectively, a little strange. At conventions like this one, it was as if their strangeness was amplified tenfold. Suddenly it was perfectly socially acceptable to thrust a sample of soil macrobiotics in someone’s face, or wax poetic on the best kinds of rakes or shovels.I had a small booth where I was selling a variety of flower bulbs that we grew in our greenhouse: tulip, dahlia, and peony bulbs. Although we didn’t have a huge selection, people recognized our store and knew that our bulbs were some of the best in the state. I wondered if I was going to sell out before the convention was even over, which would be great, but also a little awkward since there was still one more day after this one.I was glad of the distraction of people wearing shirts that said things like I’m so excited I wet my plants as they asked me all sorts of questions about our bulbs. It allowed me to forget about that strange conversation with Jacob last n
After the convention was over for the day, I returned to my room and waited for Jacob. I planned to ask him if he wanted to go to dinner with me again. My heart fluttered, thinking about what could happen after dinner, if I just had the balls to grab the metaphorical bull by the horns.But time kept passing, and Jacob didn’t show. Twisted up inside while so hungry, I was basically hangry at this point. I went downstairs to get some food from the hotel restaurant. I had just sat down at the bar since the restaurant was full and saw Jacob at a booth with some other people. I watched him tip his head back and laugh at something the guy next to him said.Suddenly, my appetite disappeared. “Keep the change,” I said to the bartender, bile rising in my throat. I hurried upstairs before Jacob could spot me.I didn’t understand him one bit. I wasn’t stupid: he’d been flirting with me throughout this trip. He’d kissed me twice already.First comes kissing, then comes oral, then comes fucking
I fell in love with Jacob a third time when I was seventeen. I also felloutof love with him at seventeen.Yes, this is the prom story.In April of my senior year of high school, Anna came skipping up to me at lunch, her face flushed. She proceeded to tell me that Sam from band had asked her to prom, despite our pact that we wouldn’t attend because prom was dumb.“You know it’s going to be too many people packed into the Country Lodge, with the deer heads on the walls, and everyone’s going to be drunk and sweaty,” I said. “And Sam is probably going to try to grope you in the back of his pickup afterward. Wow, sounds fun.”“Now you’re just being a jerk.” Anna grabbed her lunch and stood up. “And Sam doesn’t drive a pickup. He drives his mom’s minivan.”With that parting shot, Anna left me to sit at lunch alone. She was always my lunch buddy—my only one. If either of us was sick, the days were long and lonely without each other. Guilt sat in my stomach like lead. I was ab
Kate snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Dani, are you even listening to me?”The answer to that was definitely no, but I lied and said, “Yes.”Kate snorted. “You know those hearts that float above anime characters’ heads when they’re in love? That’s what you looked like. Plus some major heart eyes. I’d throw up but I paid six dollars for this latte and that would be a waste of perfectly good coffee.”After my encounter with Jacob, things had…shifted. Good shifted. Since we’d both come back to Seattle—and he’d given me his phone number after laughing at me for at least five minutes—we’d been texting each other nonstop. The only reason we hadn’t continued our sex escapade was because I’d had to create a bunch of arrangements at the last minute for an elopement, and Jacob had had all kinds of work-related things pop up, although he never alluded to what, exactly, they were.“I wasn’t making heart eyes,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I was just thinking.”“Thinking about your one