Elly gave a nod. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
Kim squeezed her hand and headed inside. Wrapping her arms around herself, Elly stepped out from under the trellised patio and looked up at the sky. It churned in on itself, an angry green whirlpool. Tiny droplets of rain pelted Elly’s face, as sharp as needles. Warm wind rushed past her, pushing her almost off her feet. The clouds above erupted in a giant crack, and the rain began coming down in buckets. Elly let it wash the tears off her face. Oh God, what have I done? Leaves swirled around her, a cylinder of dirt and plants. A smattering of hail began to batter the yard. Elly was soaked to the bone, her legs shaking underneath her, feeling the hail pelt her skin. Everything was warm and chaotic, trees and earth and sky and rain. She felt a strong hand on her shoulder. Keith? She turned. Dennis looked down on her, rain dripping off his bangs as the sky roared around him. “Dennis,” she said, “you look like a hero.”
He shook his head. “What are you doing out here? There was a tornado sighting a few miles from here. Come on! We have to go downstairs.” He yanked her elbow.
She looked at him, miserable, screaming over the storm. “I lost him, Dennis. I lost him! What do I do now?”
Dennis’s eyes reflected that he thought she was absolutely nuts. A crazy older sister. “It will be okay!” he yelled back.
“What do I do?”
Dennis looked up at the sky, alarmed. He was silent for a minute. “You come inside. And then you do the BlissBride wedding, and you open Store B. But first, you come inside so that we don’t end up in Oz!”
Elly smiled at Dennis’s terrible attempt at humor. She took one last look at the yard. The patio swing thrashed about wildly, and Kim’s beautiful landscaping was being torn to shreds by the wind. “It was all so perfect,” she said. Dennis awkwardly put his arm around her. Elly allowed him to lead her inside, out of the rain.
Chapter Seventeen
Two weeks had passed, although when you factored in depression, that was like a year, Elly mused as she pulled her hair into a messy ponytail. Her eyes were raw and red, and she looked terrible in her ill-fitting navy shorts and yellow shirt. Elly applied some mascara to her thick lashes as she stared at herself in the mirror. Today is my day, she told herself. I will not think about Keith today. I will rejoice in this celebration of a new store, I will be the life of the party, I will be a confident, sexy, smart woman. The face in the mirror looked back skeptically. “This is going to be awful,” she said out loud.
Tucking the heels that Kim insisted she wear into a little backpack, along with a cute vintage gray dress, she absentmindedly wiped a stray tear that made its way down her cheek. Get it together, Jordan. Elly headed down her hallway, stopping to knock on Dennis’s door. “I’m leaving. Will you be there later for the open house?”
Elly heard a confirmation grunt. Dennis had been really supportive the first couple of days— bringing her Kleenex, trying to clean up his dishes, and even watching Titanic with her—and then fell back into old habits—playing MageCraft from dawn until dusk, and much, much later. Elly couldn’t muster the energy to care. It was hard enough to get out of bed these days, work downstairs at Posies, and then come back to bed. The smells from Keith’s deli were constantly drifting around her apartment and shop, as if she needed reminding of what she was missing. That warm bread and herb smell, something she once treasured, was now a constant torment, and Elly found herself shutting the windows tightly, even though it made the apartment stifling. She had seen Keith, too—once through the window of his deli when she walked to Ada’s. Once while he was taking out his trash in the back. And one time, though she couldn’t be sure, she thought she saw him staring up at her apartment window. With all her heart, she had hoped that he would rush up the stairs and take her in his strong arms, and all would be forgotten as they lost themselves in each other. It didn’t happen. Life dragged on, one asinine flower arrangement at a time.