Lady friend. I chuckle. “My cousin, actually. And maybe my mom too. Is it true that you can never send your mother too many flowers?”
“You bet your grass!” Bruce says enthusiastically, and I smile.
“Great. Maybe you can recommend a couple of arrangements, then.”
“Of course, son. What are ya lookin’ to spend?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Bruce’s eyes start to gleam, and I love the look on him. With how infrequently I see my own parents, this exchange with him feels like it’s filling a little bit of the void. “Something really obnoxious for my cousin Emory.”
He rubs his hands together and moves to step behind the counter, remarking, “Oh, you just wait.”
I put a quick but gentle hand to his arm to stop him before he gets too involved. “I’m also hoping you might know where I can find Maybe. I’ve been trying to get our schedules to line up, but it just hasn’t seemed to work out.”
He quirks a brow and, instantly, I feel the need to add some details. It’s not like Maybe and I have hung out over the years. I can imagine me asking for her now feels a little out of nowhere. “Evan asked me to help her get in contact with some publishing houses in the city.”
“Ah, okay,” he clucks with a pat to my back. “She’s in the back. Let me grab her for ya.”
She’s in the back? As in, she’s here?
Instead of physically going to the back, Bruce shouts, “Maybe! Come out front!”
I laugh a little to myself. I guess she’s in the back.
“Dammit, Bruce! Stop shouting like a banshee!” Evan’s mother, Betty Willis, shouts from somewhere in the shop. Her voice seems disembodied and omnipotent—which is a little creepy—but I’m guessing it’s just the acoustics of the building.
He is completely unfazed by her request. “Would ya tell Maybe to come out here? She’s got a customer.” He elbows me in the arm and winks.
“Oh my God! You’re killing me today!” Betty moans dramatically.
“Women, you know.” He shrugs. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em.”
My eyebrows draw together. “Don’t you mean can’t live without them?”
He chuckles boisterously, even grabbing his chest at one point, he’s laughing so hard. “Oh, son. No. No, I don’t.”
All I can do is grin, and thankfully, before Bruce can dive headfirst back into yelling, the back door pushes open and the gorgeous brunette from the other day comes through with a bucket of fresh flowers.
Her head is down, her eyes fixated on juggling the container in her hands, but I have to admit, I’d recognize her body anywhere. The subtly luscious curves made that big of an impression. “Jesus, Dad!” she snaps. “Could you be any more Effie Trinket right now?”
“Who the fun factory is Effie Trinket?” Bruce thunders back. He’s obviously confused by the reference, and honestly, I might be too if I were paying more attention.
But I’m not. I’m fucking fixated on her.
Maybe was the one who took my order the other day. The goddess with the big brown eyes and perfect skin, the woman with the figure I’ve been thinking about ever since the first time I saw it, the awkwardly adorable store employee—this woman—is Evan’s little sister. And it’s fucking jarring.
Between one breath and the next, my whole world slows down.
This is really Maybe Willis?
This can’t be the lanky, unsure thirteen-year-old girl who was obsessed with books and Janis Joplin and ate an entire box of Sour Patch Kids a day.
“It’s a Hunger Games reference,” she says to Bruce through a snort without looking up. “And it is not flattering.”
Either she’s been through one of the biggest transformations known to man, or my foggy memory of her really didn’t do her justice.
Long golden-brown locks flow past her petite shoulders and halfway down her back, and fuck, those chocolate eyes of hers could swallow galaxies.
Her skin is cream and ivory and silky smooth save a few tiny freckles that outlasted her adolescence and still dot her nose and cheeks. Her lashes are long and dark, and her lips are so full and pink, I’d think they were photoshopped if I weren’t witnessing them in person.
A small waist is hidden beneath a red ribbed top, and her dark-wash blue jeans fit perfectly over her curvy hips.
Maybe Willis isn’t a girl anymore.
No. She’s all woman.
“Where in the heck have ya been?” Bruce asks—loudly—and grabs my attention before my thoughts head toward places they shouldn’t be.
“In the back.” She rolls her eyes. “Working like a normal person.”
“Well, Milo is here to see ya,” he says. She stops mid-step and snaps her shocked gaze to mine.
“W-what?”
Her big brown eyes grow wide, her lips part into a perfect little O, and her cheeks turn a bright shade of red. Recognition has set in, but unlike me, it’s painfully obvious she’s known who I was all along.