The drive to the shop isn’t long, but I’m actually glad for the time alone with Mom. We haven’t seen much of each other since I’ve been back. She keeps saying she’ll knock out a draft of her script in a few days, by the Fourth of July, and then I’m hers for the rest of the month, but part of me doesn’t mind that she’s been so busy. It’s easier to hide what’s going on with Lionel, and also what happened with Iris.
Riding along in the passenger seat next to Mom reminds me of when I was little and it was just the two of us. I don’t remember much about those years between my father and Saul, and even less about my father. But Mom talks about those years sometimes; she’ll look at me with tear-filled eyes and say how happy she is that we’re part of a unit, but that we used to make a good team. I always like when she reminisces; there’s a fondness in her voice that I never hear when she talks about anything else. Only us.
“Did you and Lionel compare dates before you went to bed?” she asks as we pull out of the driveway. We pass his car parked on the street in front of the house as we drive away.
“No,” I say, but I don’t tell her that when I heard him come home, about an hour after Emil left, I quickly turned off my bedside lamp and pretended to be asleep, even when he tapped lightly on my door and said, “Little, you awake?”
“Well, I think it’s great that he’s getting out and meeting new people.” She pauses, then: “I think you being home this summer is good for him, Suz. He seems more like his old self than he has in a long time.”
I want to feel better about hearing that from the person who sent me away because of my brother, but I don’t know which Lionel she means. The one who was supposedly on the right combination of pills for his disorder or the one who went off them cold turkey?
“I like being home,” I say. I like being here for him. But I keep that to myself because if we continue talking about Lionel and his health, I’m going to slip. I know Mom and Saul monitor his moods, but if they don’t think he’s off his meds, they have less of a reason to worry.
“The school called yesterday.” Mom stops at a red light and turns to look at me. “They haven’t gotten your dorm request. Are you not rooming with Iris next semester?”
Shit.
“Um, we haven’t really talked about it.” I look down at my nails instead of at her. “We’re both so busy, being back at home.”
“Well.” She clears her throat and when I look over, she’s smiling. “You do seem to have a lot going on here, with your new job… your new friends… your new Emil.”
“Mom.”
“Sorry.” The light turns green and we’re moving again. “What I’m trying to say is that things are different now. This summer isn’t the same as last year, and Lionel is doing so well.… What would you think about staying home for your junior year? Going back to your old school with all your old friends?”
“What?” My voice is too loud for the car, but I don’t actually believe I just heard what I did. I didn’t know they’d make it so easy on me.
“Only if you want to. We’re done making decisions for you.”
“So that means I can start setting my own curfew?” I grin over at her.
“You wish.” She glances at me with a smile of her own. “You don’t have to figure out school right now, but… soon, so we can make some arrangements. The choice is totally yours, Suz.”
When I arrive at the shop, Ora is bending over the display of tropical plants with Tucker sitting tall at her feet, his orange striped tail curled regally around his legs.
“Do I have the wrong day?” I ask, looking behind me to see my mother’s car already pulling out onto the street.
“No, just a change in plans.” Ora moves a potted plant on the table and points to it. “What is this?”
I step closer and squint at it, taking in the wide leaves and pom-poms of flowers made up of tiny blue petals. Then I try to remember everything Rafaela has ever told me about the flowers in this room. “Hydrangea?”
“Good girl. Now, how do you care for it?”
“I, um…”
Ora pats my shoulder and smiles. “You’re still learning. When you drop your things, go out back and start helping Rafaela load up the van, please. Héctor’s sick today, so you two are taking over the deliveries.”
I blink at her. “Really?”
Her attention is already back on the table of flowering plants, so she doesn’t look up as she says, “I can’t believe I’m trusting her with it, either, but we don’t have much of a choice. You’ll keep an eye on her?” She looks over then and winks.
“I’ll do my best.”
In the back room, the door that leads to the parking lot is propped open with a brick. I poke my head out to see the delivery van backed up as close as Rafaela could get it, with the two doors in the rear wide open. Rafaela is perched on the back ledge, looking at her phone.
“We’re really doing this?” I nod toward the tops of flowers peeking out of the crates stacked behind her.
She looks up and grins as she sets her phone next to her. Some people, once you’ve known them for a while, start to look different from when you first met them. Like their face has blurred, become a thing you simply recognize instead of a landscape of the features that once made them stand out. But with Rafaela, it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time every time. I notice each part of her like it’s the first night we met—the vibrancy of her eyes, the bounce of her curls, the soft curves of her figure and the elegant lines of ink on her arm. I was hoping that sensation would go away when she started seeing Lionel or after I realized how I felt about Emil, and yet.
“We are so doing this,” she says. “Help me get the last few packed in here?”
I take the rest of the morning deliveries from the refrigerated case in the back room and carefully hand them to her as she secures them in the van. After we leave, Ora will restock the case with any deliveries scheduled for the afternoon.
“Why are both of us going out on deliveries when Héctor does this by himself every day?” I ask once we’re sitting in the front of the van, Rafaela behind the wheel.
“Because I told Ora I didn’t want to go out by myself.” She turns the key so the engine starts up with a rumble. “And Ora would rather hold down the shop than have anything to do with this.”
We have deliveries in two different directions and head west first, toward the office suite in Los Feliz, near the library. Rafaela says they have a business account, so we deliver to them pretty regularly. “Boring, but reliable business,” she muses, turning right from Sunset onto Hillhurst. “Weddings are the best because everyone wants something different, and you never know who you’re going to get.”
I’m prepared to wait in the van, but she shakes her head and motions for me to get out with her. “I’m not driving and doing the dirty work of talking to people by myself.”
We walk into the building, each holding a bouquet, and are greeted at the front desk by a girl with big green eyes and long, glossy dark hair. A man stands to the side of her chair; he’s tall and good-looking, which always feels weird to admit when someone appears to be Saul’s age.