Elly zipped up a pale-blue fleece and headed out to the car, grumbling the entire drive over about Snarky Teenager. Sure, Store B was doing awesome and was already on track to be solidly in the black in a few months. Sure, she was the talk of the town with a new article about her appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a (very) young manager, and sure, Elly was constantly being asked about Store B, but there were also these moments every week; moments where she called in a panic. Kim called them “growing pains.” Elly called them annoying, but understandable.
She pulled into the parking garage under the office tower and used her keycard to enter through the back. The building was eerily dark at night, and it gave Elly the creeps, glad that she didn’t have to close up here every night. Looking down at her phone, she made her way into the store, unlocking the door, noticing a strange glow emanating out from the glass walls. Stepping inside, she had to refrain from yelling. Candles! Candles everywhere!
“Really?” She called out in the darkness. “Candles again? Seriously?” This was not the first time that she had come in to candles burning in Store B, and she always lectured Snarky Teenager about how dangerous it was to have an open flame near very flammable wooden boxes, chemically treated flowers, and endless twine. “Arrrggh….” She began blowing them out, one by one, until only one remained, planted firmly in the middle of the room. As she stalked across the room, she noticed that there were some petals on the ground. Really? She can’t even clean up now?
“Hello?” she called out, annoyed. “Where are you? What is wrong with the cooler?” There was a heavy silence in the air.
“Elly?”
She practically leapt out of her skin at the sound of a male voice. “Keith?”
“Yes?” The voice was coming from below her. Her eyes traveled from the steel beams of the ceiling down to the floor. In the light of the remaining candle, she could see Keith kneeling on the floor in a sea of white petals. He was holding out a small teal box. A small box with a huge antique diamond ring in it. Oh. OH.
“You blew out all my candles,” he said.
“All except one.”
“All except one.”
She had never been happier.