I don’t want to think. I just want to forget.
But I don’t. It’s four a.m. and he’s asleep, after what I suspect was at least an hour of pretending to be. Even in the full darkness, I could sense that he was facing me rather than the back of the couch, and in my dizzy, floating state of sleep-deprivation, interpreted it as a sign of vulnerability. Forcing me to face him and all we have done to each other, bleeding hearts on sleeves, emotions drip drip dripping onto my floor. It is entirely out of order, that we’ve been apart for this long, that we’ve reconstructed our own adult identities with a chasm between us, and yet, a handful of days together is enough to wreck all of our load-bearing beams. Or maybe I stuffed too much lavender into my dream pillow and it’s making my head wonky.
Ah, the age-old question: Is it a breakthrough of clarity, or an incorrectly measured witchcraft recipe?
I end up in my garden, observing patches of starry sky between treetops that swish like black clouds, my senses settled all the way down into the pit of me, in an eerie calm as I replay the past from a new perspective, with new information. I want to think it would have changed nothing, to have better known Alex’s side of our catastrophe. I badly need to believe that.
I recall Alex’s face, every pixel in clear high definition when I suggested without preamble, “What if we get married?” His shock, pause, as he sized up whether I was serious. I couldn’t be serious, could I?
But as though a different memory has been stuck to the back of that one and forgotten, the page flips to one July night at the Moonville Fair, sparkling grit of sweat on his cheekbones, our lips tasting of soft pretzels and a shared Coke, Alex’s curls sticking to his temples. I was in a silky green halter dress, perfect for a summer date. A full Thunder Moon loomed close enough to distinguish every crater; the town was so warm that heat scattered off Vallis Boulevard, smoking upward, buildings wavering like mirages. Nothing felt real except for him, hands sure on my hips, treasuring me close as the evening cooled to night, until goosebumps prickled on my arms. He watched me like he’d never grow tired of it, like he was the luckiest boy to have ever lived.
“We’re going to dance to this song at our wedding,” he’d said in my ear. While he worked to keep his emotions level, his hand on my waist tightened, and I felt it, all of it, everything he tried to keep hidden below because he felt so much. So much that it stunned me, made my shoes fuse to pavement.
How had I forgotten the hitch in his voice, how deep it slid, when he threw out that casual remark? Why had I not taken that into account when I decided not to marry him after all? All I could think about at the time was his initial shock—understandable!—and Kristin’s marriage statistics, how we were too young, hadn’t seen the world yet. How she likely thought I was trying to trap him, and I loved her dearly, almost as much as I loved Alex. I wanted to prove to her that my intentions were good, that I was worthy of him.
I still haven’t seen most of the world that he and I broke up for. I visit the Netherlands via Google Earth because I don’t have travel-the-world money, but I flew to visit Zelda once when she was in Roanoke evacuating a hurricane. We holed up in a hotel room for three days, watching Hart of Dixie. I adopted five baby chicks. I can recite twenty uses for a quill of cinnamon bark. I can fix a mean tea that helps with both the common cold and the heartache that follows crushing mildly on a handsome man who walks by your store every afternoon, then one day vanishes, never to be seen again. I have yet to meet a ghost, but I have caught orbs on camera. I’ve earned a degree and found magic. I’ve been a mother. Romina Tempest has lived.
I must have met hundreds of men along the way. None of them made me feel the way Alex did. Too bad I messed it up, then made sure I couldn’t fix it by trying to teach him a lesson.
My face burns with shame, regret. I know only one thing for sure anymore—this stupid stunt with Trevor is going to the grave with me. Alex must never find out I’ve been lying again.
Luna, Trevor, and I fret all morning at work over our diminishing time available to secure a loan from Mr. Yoon.
“We should wait to ask him about it on the wedding day,” Trevor suggests. “He’ll be in a great mood, and more likely to say yes.”
“We can’t ask him for favors on his wedding day!” I exclaim.
“Ro, my love.” He settles a hand on top of my head. “You need to get a whole lot sneakier if you’re going to survive in this cutthroat world.”
“I feel plenty sneaky already.”
I think Trevor and Luna hear my guilt, because they exchange a concerned glance before advancing on me. Before they can dig in, however, our prayers are answered. Or perhaps, our bad news is expediated. Depends on which way this thing rolls.
Mr. Yoon stands in the doorway of our shop, face impassive, flanked by Kristin and Alex. “Dad?” Trevor jumps to attention. “I wasn’t expecting you to come by today.”
Mr. Yoon’s lips press together. Alex’s eyes flash to mine, and I read his thoughts easily. This was Kristin’s idea, and Mr. Yoon wasn’t thrilled to be dragged here.
My stomach drops but is swiftly caught by an unexpected net: Alex went out on a limb for me, and for Trevor by extension, coaxing Mr. Yoon to do this. He wanted to help.
“I’m Morgan.” Morgan sticks out his hand. “You look like a sensible man. The Magick Happens is an amazing business opportunity you’d have to be stupid to pass up.”
We all throw him evil looks.
“Don’t listen to him,” I cut in quickly. Morgan frowns at me, like, I’m trying to help!
“Does he work here?” Mr. Yoon asks, unimpressed.
“No,” we all hurry to say. Except for Morgan, who replies: “I’m a volunteer.”
As Luna launches into the specifics of the store, beginning with her candle-making process, I sneak a look at Alex, who’s watching me. We quickly avert our gazes.
“Here’s where you can find lighters, matches, natural oils to dress your candle, and votive holders,” Luna tells them, showing off her favorites. “I create batches of my love oil on the Friday before a full moon.”
“Oooh. Any particular reason?” Kristin wants to know.
“Friday belongs to Venus, and the moon rules passions such as love.” Next, she leads them through the step-by-step of practicing candle magic; each candle in the store comes with a brief instruction card of how to dress the candle, when to light it, how long to keep it lit, how to properly extinguish it without affecting the magic at work, and how to read flames. Candles with two wicks, for twin flames, are marginally more complex.
Kristin picks up a red seven-day candle called Make Your Wish and waves it under Mr. Yoon’s nose as if admiring a wine’s bouquet. “You’d like this one, Daniel. It smells like cinnamon.”
Mr. Yoon makes a noncommittal noise. He keeps his hands balled behind his back, not touching anything.
Trevor proudly educates them on candle disposal—if you don’t dispose of a candle responsibly after using it for magic, your spell might not work right, or it might draw curious or dark energies to the scene where the spell was conducted. You can either bury the candle in your front yard, bury it in a riverbank, or leave it next to railroad tracks. There are certain ones you can drip across the road outside your house or anoint your doorway with, for protection, before they’re deactivated.
“That’s Maxima,” Trevor tells Alex, whose gaze is locked on the crystal ball on the mantel. “It’s good luck, if you want to touch it.”
“I remember.”
I feel an ache in my ribs—the happy, yearning sort with a three-second delay of pain—remembering right along with him. Grandma referred to Alex as that boy.
That boy came by the store looking for you again. That boy needs a haircut. That boy better keep his pants on. You better be treating that boy right.
Alex’s gaze flickers from Trevor to me, assessing our proximity to each other; he looks swiftly away again, one hand resting on the carved wooden sign with arrows pointing in three directions: CANDLELAND, THE GARDEN, THE CAVERN OF PAPERBACK GEMS.
“How charming!” Kristin exclaims, rubbing Grandma’s crystal ball. “Daniel, isn’t that charming?”
He grunts. Luna and I cut each other nervous smiles, then I follow Kristin’s focus to our whiteboard, with a fundraising meter drawn on it. Thanks to Zelda generously adding more of her book royalty money to it yesterday, all we need at this point to fix the sewer line is two thousand dollars, which would surely be a drop in the bucket to the wealthy Mr. Yoon. As for fixing the greenhouse, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon. I’ll be lucky if we manage to tuck enough away to get that running before the end of the year.
I show them to the Garden, my fridge stocked with ready-made pieces (talismans for luck and love, mostly), the Wedding Bells wreath I was working on before their arrival. It’s outfitted in Canterbury bells, bluebells, bells of Ireland, white ribbon, and an actual bell, small and silver. The tour group is squeezed in due to the limited space, and all the heady scents mixed together makes Mr. Yoon sneeze.
“How cute!” Kristin gushes, accidentally knocking over a bottle of root hormone I use for propagation. When she replaces it, the neem oil goes tumbling. “Are you online, too?”
“Yes,” Luna responds before I get the chance. “We get a lot of business through our website. Fairly diverse business, too. While physical traffic comprises mostly women, roughly half of our online demographic is actually men between the ages of thirty-five to sixty-five.”
“I’d like to see the lot,” Mr. Yoon interjects, clearly not interested in my flowers or Luna’s stats.
“Oh. Uh, it’s this way.” Trevor glances at me, and I nod, feeling a bit outside of my body because this is our best shot, and I can’t tell if it’s going well or if I’m going to have to start downsizing. How will I choose between sea holly and red-hot poker plants? Blue poppies and Amethyst in Snow?
Luna droops after the two of them leave. I pull her close to my side, cheek against her shoulder. She tousles my hair. I can already hear the conversation we’ll have tonight, in which she’ll insist on getting rid of some candles to make more space for my flowers, which I’ll refuse. Around and around we’ll go, but in the end, I shouldn’t have gotten carried away planting all this stuff in the first place when I didn’t have proper room, so I’ll be the one digging up inventory with a trowel.
“What is it, exactly, that you need to do to the property?” Alex asks me.
“New sewer line, then repairing the asphalt afterward. The greenhouse needs a couple of panes replaced, and its floor is completely ruined thanks to backflow.”
“What sort of flooring are you looking to get?”
I shrug. “That’s kind of up in the air right now. I asked a contractor how much it would cost to pour concrete, and at six dollars per square foot, it comes out to almost seven hundred dollars, not including labor. But he also said that a rush job will cost more.”
Alex makes a face.
“It probably doesn’t sound like that much, but we’re a little in the red after pooling all of our money to buy the lot,” I tell him, rambling, “as well as other night market expenses. Farmers market tents, tables, industrial fans, heavy-duty extension cords, that sort of thing. Our priority right now is a fixed sewer line, so that we’ll have a paved parking lot to put all the booths on. Which is why we’re hoping Mr. Yoon helps us. If he says yes, we’ve got a guy who promised he’d get in here right away to work on it. We’d be able to launch the night market like we advertised, by the skin of our teeth. We wouldn’t break contracts with vendors.” We were quick to get business in motion, contracting all sorts of promises before we realized the full extent of sewer line damage.
“The night market,” he repeats, brows furrowed.
“Yes.” I can feel my eyes grow starry as I imagine it. “We want to create a labyrinth of outdoor tables and potted trees decorated in fairy lights and moonflowers. Colorful rugs, those little pouf things you can sit on. Other vendors can bring their own pieces to sell, for a fee, all of it magic-related. There isn’t any nightlife in this town except for Moonshine, the bar, so we think it’s an untapped market. Ours will be family-friendly. And then later, once I’m able to use the greenhouse, I’ll make it pretty and open it up for people to walk through. I can do special midnight flora fortunes.”
A smile spreads across his face as I chatter on. “What?” I hedge, self-conscious, but he just shakes his head, still smiling.
“These are lovely,” Kristin remarks, jolting us out of our bubble. She lifts a yellow carnation to her nose. “Do you think I could have one?”
I smile at her, taking the carnation. “This one,” I say conspiratorially, tapping her chin with it, “wouldn’t suit you, I’m afraid, unless you’re planning to jilt Mr. Yoon at the altar. It means rejection.”
She claps her hands. “Really! What would you pick instead?”
“For you?” I hum, perusing our options. “For you, I would pick lily of the valley, because you’ve found happiness in love again. Stephanotis, for marital bliss. And . . .” My fingers hover over a vivid orange bloom, waiting for my intuition, either a sticky sensation or one that sparkles. “Bird-of-paradise.”
“Ohh.” She peers at me with round eyes. “What made you pick that one?”
“In any flora fortune, one particular stem usually stands out to me above all the rest, sort of a lynchpin for the magic, which I call the queen. This is your queen—romantic with a dash of excitement. Love arrived unexpectedly for you.” I select grevillea as the greenery to fill out the arrangement, but magic responds with a phantom cicada hopping along my left wrist. Shuddering, I put it right back. I pluck purple statice instead and, having arrived upon the right combination, am immediately overpowered by vivid sensation.
Warm winds ripple over my skin, carrying a looming shadow I instantly recognize. I look down at the floor, and where hardwood is supposed to be, there’s asphalt, a puddle of rainwater reflecting a bold pair of eyes that know me all the way to the end. Instead of hearing his voice, I’m given the visualization of it—drizzling honey, each letter that spills from his mouth linked together, lovely amber words glittering in the sun. I see the notes of Alex’s laugh swirl around me, hear my name tumbling through his mind, desperate and heady as a kiss, and swallow hard against the thud of my heart in my throat.
When it all fades, I blink rapidly and catch myself before I swoon, hoping that none of what I just experienced is scribbled across my flushed face. To magic, I give my fiercest side-eye. Absolutely none of that was necessary! Or wanted! Please just give me tasty desserts.
Magic hums from leaf to leaf in my bouquet, satisfied and balanced. The energy I pick up from it is I’ll do what I want.
I clear my throat. “What I would do, ordinarily, is get some wire and—”
“Mom?”
I look up. Alex isn’t watching me, thankfully. He’s watching Kristin, who’s gone misty-eyed.
Oh, no. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, no.” She shakes her head, dabs her eyes with her sleeve. “It’s . . . the bird-of-paradise. Daniel brought me those on our third date.” She fans herself to dry the tears. “It was a special date, at a little diner in Hillsdale, Pennsylvania, the halfway point between Sandusky and Philadelphia. We’re going to be living in Hillsdale, did I tell you? The diner has amazing French toast, and I just think it’s so romantic how we fell in love halfway between my city and Daniel’s. I knew, then, at that third date, that he was somebody I needed to know better. Somebody who would become important to me.”
I melt. “He has excellent taste in flowers.”
“And these.” She taps the statice. “These were in my bouquet when I married Alex’s father.”
My mouth goes a bit wobbly. “They mean remembrance.”
“I didn’t know that.” A fluttery laugh. “I picked them because I liked the color.” She reaches for the flowers, which I pass to her. “You’ve got a real eye, you know.”
Kristin crying makes me want to cry, and her proud words certainly don’t help. I pull myself together. “Thank you. What sort of flowers did you pick out for your bouquet this time around?”
She hand-waves, frowning. “Originally, I thought I wouldn’t need any, that I’d just keep it simple since this wedding is so last-minute.”
My thoughts zigzag. I’d assumed that, like her cake and venue, she’d already had her floral decorations squared away. Very carefully, I venture, “Originally? Does that mean you’ve changed your mind? Because, if you have . . .” I gesture to the arrangement I made for her, letting the unspoken offer linger in the air.
I’ve never done arrangements for a wedding before, partly because I don’t have enough inventory for big events, but also because brides would naturally want to choose their own flowers, and I’m not an ordinary florist.
But this is different. This is Kristin.
Her mouth opens, eyes shining with hope. “It wouldn’t be too last-minute?”
It’s extremely too last-minute. Plus, an event like this one would clean me out—between this and May Day, my garden will be empty, which means no more flora fortunes until it all grows back. I glance at the fundraising meter on our whiteboard, recollecting Mr. Yoon’s skepticism. Our investment in the lot has left us hemorrhaging money and we need to recoup our losses before we collapse.
I decide to seize the chance.
“I’ll do your bouquets and boutonnieres. I can do aisle flowers that double as reception table flowers, the arbor if you have one.” I try to think of other wedding necessities. “The flower girl basket.”
She plasters a hand over her mouth. “You will? You’re sure?”
I nod. “Absolutely.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask for with such short notice, and I’m willing to pay extra—” She stops as she reads my face, a small smile forming. She knows exactly what I want. “Would two thousand cover it?”
Luna gasps.
I grin, reaching for Kristin’s hand. Give it a firm shake. “It’s a pleasure doing business.”
I’m afforded a brief glimpse of Alex, watching us with unbearable tenderness in his expression, before his mother throws her arms around me and pulls me in for a hug. I close my eyes against the brush of her hair on my cheek, her familiar scent—Happy, by Clinique, and cocoa butter lotion. Although I can tell that Kristin sincerely loves my flowers and wants me to provide this service, there is something else in this hug, too. It feels like atonement. Regret for pushing Alex and me apart. Love flares inside me, so much of it that some escapes through my tear ducts; I wipe it away with the back of my wrist as we finally part. She wipes away her own, sniffs, then pats my shoulder in silent communication that she knows I understand. That she loves me, too.
“We match.” She feathers her lily of the valley against the one inked into my skin. “Tattoos!” She tosses a short-lived, knowing smile up at her son. “Alex, I bet you like those.”
Alex is devastated to be called out like this. He scratches his jaw. “Mom.”
Luna is fairly vibrating at the news. “Thank you so much. Oh my goodness, thank you, I can’t—wow. This is amazing. Romina will do the best job in the history of jobs with your wedding, I swear. You will not regret this.”
I give her a look. “Why would you even say that? Why would she regret it?”
“She won’t!” Luna’s eyes are two spinning UFOs. “I have the utmost faith in you.”
I appraise her narrowly. “You’d better.”
Kristin only laughs. “I have no worries. I know Romina will do a marvelous job.”
Mr. Yoon and Trevor return, Trevor shaking his head in exasperation. Mr. Yoon, interestingly, is regarding the store with begrudging respect. “He’s a hard sell,” Trevor grumbles to us. “There should be a statute of limitations for how long he’s allowed to be upset about me spending my college money on businesses.”
“That isn’t it,” Mr. Yoon replies simply. “Actually, Trevor, I think you’ve done a terrific job here. I’m quite proud, even though you should have done your due diligence and gotten an inspection first.” He holds up a finger. “Always get an inspection before you purchase property.”
Trevor begins to build his defense, but Luna grabs his arm and whispers in his ear. He shouts, “Holy shit! Thanks, K!” Then he squeezes his soon-to-be stepmother. “Never mind, Dad. We don’t need you to invest anymore. Unless you wanna give us money for the hell of it—we’ve got a tip jar by the cash register.”
As Mr. Yoon and Kristin wander back into Candleland, Luna grabs her phone, rushing off to call the plumber. I give Trevor a bear hug, squealing. “We’re going to be able to open the night market!”
“Look at me!” His grin is huge. “Making Moonville less boring.”
There’s a heaviness in my chest at the thought of not being able to do many fortunes for the next couple of months. But this was the best decision. “Woo! Go you.”
Off to the side, Alex watches the two of us celebrate. I notice his profile turn away when Trevor kisses my cheek. At some point before everyone leaves, a sprig of yellow hyacinth is tucked into my hair, behind my ear, which I discover when I’m all alone again, leaning over my worktable. The soft, buttery blossoms fall upon a scattering of wild rose. Magic surges, encircling them in a vibrant glimmer that can only be felt, not seen.
I have to hunt for it in my notebook, because I’m so overcome with night market excitement that I can’t recall the meaning of yellow hyacinth off the top of my head. When I find it, my heart tumbles.
Jealousy.
