“MAISEY! THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE EARLY!”
Maisey’s head whipped up as she shuffled into the chaos that was the Favorite Flower. Her new boss, Lyndi, was neck deep in roses, as was everyone else. Red roses, pink roses, white roses, yellow roses, and for some reason, a small pocket of blue roses that didn’t seem to be getting as much play as the others.
Maisey’s eyes went wide, awake for the first time that morning. “Holy crap,” she said.
“Holy crap is right,” Lyndi said, on a small disbelieving laugh. “We got thirty percent more last-minute orders overnight than we were expecting. We had to beg our suppliers for emergency stock.”
“Wow.” They knew there might be a last-minute rush . . . but thirty percent more orders than they had planned for?
“Never underestimate the ability of guys to completely forget that it’s Valentine’s Day. Can you join the line? Throw some bouquets together?”
Maisey nodded. She’d only been on the job for a week—and granted, only as a delivery girl—but she had the basics of arranging down. She joined the assembly line right behind the head arranger, Judy, who showed her the order and sketch for the day’s arrangement, and led her through her first bouquet.
And she worked like that, intensely, mindlessly, focused, for a solid forty minutes assembling bouquets. And to be honest, it was a complete relief to have that time without having to think about . . . anything.
Without having to think about her mom, or her college applications, or how she just wanted to go to the library and read for the next four to six months. Lose herself in story after story so she wouldn’t have to focus on her own.
Her mother had been so . . . earnest lately. The week of night shoots—usually a really dull time for Maisey where she used the quiet time at home to either read a couple of manga she got from the library or watch the latest cool sci-fi show with hot midtwenties “teenagers” staring longingly at each other—were suddenly fraught with tension. She was wary at all times that her mom would come home from work unexpectedly, and want to talk more. That she would want an explanation for why Maisey hadn’t done her college applications yet.
The problem was, Maisey didn’t have a reason. Not a good one anyway.
Her intentions had been strong. The second she read the rejection email she got from Stanford, she immediately printed it out, reread it, set it on fire along with her Stanford T-shirt (if they were gonna crush her dreams they weren’t gonna get free advertising out of her) and set about downloading and printing out the application forms for all the other schools they visited.
But as she began the tedious task of going through all those applications—filling out the same information over and over again—her name, her birthdate, her unending desire to attend [INSERT SCHOOL NAME HERE]—she began to feel tired.
Physically, emotionally. Her body felt like it was seventy-one, and not seventeen. She just didn’t want to look at the papers anymore after a while.
And so, she didn’t.
For far too many weeks now.
Because why get your hopes up for an application to somewhere you didn’t even know if you wanted to be?
Stanford . . . she had known she wanted it. The minute they walked onto campus, she’d felt this “oomph” in her stomach. She didn’t feel that at UC Davis, UC San Diego (she was the only Southern Californian she knew that hated the beach with a passion bordering on fury), or Sacramento State. Just thinking about those other, lesser schools made her heart ache.
To be fair, there were two other schools that gave her a modicum of the same “oomph” as Stanford: Cal Berkeley, and UCLA. Both of which were just as difficult to get into, just as much of long shots. And if Stanford didn’t want her, with her 4.5 GPA, her county-wide poetry and essay contest wins, her before- and-after-school tutoring, and her frankly amazing personal essay, then why on earth would the other two?
So she shelved her applications. And then, she found herself sitting in her classes, and her mind would wander to the same point that the applications had painted in neon: What did it matter? If she wasn’t going to have the future she wanted, why was she still working so hard to achieve it?
So she sort of . . . stopped. Not entirely of course, that just wasn’t in her. But she stopped doing extra. Stopped reading beyond the assigned chapters or trying to find out context. She would simply learn what they wanted her to learn, and nothing more.
Part of her just wanted to blow everything off. To ignore everything, and lose herself in trolling through her new favorite YouTube star’s Instagram, or in reading a book that wasn’t assigned coursework. To hole up in her room and stake that claim to it.
Because dammit, it was her room. She’d made that little two-bedroom apartment a home as much as her mom had. She’d chosen the colors, they’d done the painting together. It was hers. This was her home! Why should she make any effort to be anywhere else?
Because part of her—a much smaller part—knew that her mom was going to need her.
After all, she always had. A long time ago, it was Maisey who had taken over the organizing of their lives. It was Maisey who figured out their weekly schedules, where she had to be and when she had to be picked up—if she would spend the afternoon hours of the day studying in her mom’s makeup trailer or if she would have soccer practice or Spanish club. It was Maisey who had put a pad of paper on the refrigerator and begun to keep a grocery list. And it was Maisey who showed her mom how to set up automatic bill pay via her bank’s website.
Whether or not Sophia would have gotten around to figuring out these things eventually wasn’t the point. It was Maisey who had made their lives run easier.
Was Sebastian, with his musician’s priorities and unwashed hair, going to be able to fill that role? Did Sebastian even have any idea what kind of Drano to buy to deal with their problematic bathtub drain?
Would he even give a shit?
Surely, it was better if she stayed right where she was, and helped take care of her mom.
But then . . . an even smaller part—an insidious little swirl in her brain—would whisper that her mom wouldn’t need her. That she and Sebastian and their new bouncing baby boy would be just fine without her. Building a new life without Maisey in it.
No doubt they’d move into their own place. And Sebastian would insist that Sophia hire help—someone else to keep track of the groceries, the schedule, the web bill pay feature on her bank app. Her mother—her creative, free-spirited, determined mother—would transmogrify into this new person, who would survive and succeed without Maisey’s help.
And Maisey would be alone in the world.
Maybe that was why she was spending more and more time at her dad’s. He didn’t need her, but then again, he never had. It was kind of nice to not have that expectation of yourself. That you didn’t have to be the responsible one. You could just be the kid, and hang out.
But even though her dad welcomed her, he didn’t have much room for her either, not with toddlers running around. And Christy—his wife—was nice enough, but she had never found the ability to talk to Maisey about anything more substantial than the weather, which made her feel like a perpetual guest, and not a member of the family.
So when she saw the posting at school looking to hire delivery drivers for a florist, Maisey took the little flyer tag on impulse. She wouldn’t be in the house in the mornings when her mother would try to ambush her with waffles. She would be making money. She could . . . be something else for a little while. Not Maisey the high-achieving high school student, or the failed Stanford applicant. And definitely not Maisey the responsible daughter. Just, Maisey: here to deliver your flowers.
The job had turned out to be pretty chill, with the exception of the crazy of Valentine’s Day prep. Lyndi had told her she was being hired to replace someone named Stan, but since she drove a car, and his route was through downtown and better suited to a bike, they switched her out with someone else, so she had a route that took her back up to Burbank and North Hollywood. Meaning she did her deliveries, and would pull into the parking lot of school with whole minutes to spare before she had her first class of the day.
At least, that’s how it had been for the first week. Now that she saw the boxes and boxes of Valentine’s bouquets beginning to pile up as they went down the assembly line, she wondered if she was even going to make it to school by lunch.
She was just reaching for a stem of pink striated tea roses when another hand reached in from her left for the same stem.
“Sorry!” he said, immediately, drawing back his hand, then turning to squint at the bouquet instructions written on the big whiteboard on the wall. “I think I’m out of order.”
“ . . . Foz?”
The mop top of perpetual bed head whipped around. “Hey, Maisey,” he said, blinking behind heavy-rimmed hipster glasses. “What are you doing here?”
The last time Maisey had seen Foz, it had been in her English Lit class last semester. But he didn’t have the same class with her this semester, so the tuft of hair sticking out from a folded-over set of arms, virtually asleep on the desk, had been a missing feature in her daily life.
Normally, she would have wondered what had happened to him. AP English was a yearlong course—you didn’t take it one semester and then drop it when it came time to take the actual test. Not to mention, they’d been in almost every upper level class together since the beginning of ninth grade.
But then again, she’d been preoccupied. And the whereabouts of Foz Craley were not foremost in her mind.
But now, he was standing in front of her, not slouched over, not half-asleep in class. Instead he looked very tall, very awake, and very sweaty.
“I work here,” she said, once she came to her senses. “I’m the new delivery driver.”
A confused look crinkled his brow. “No . . . I thought I was the new delivery driver.”
“Actually, you are both the new delivery drivers,” Lyndi said, coming up behind them. “We needed a new Stan, but we decided with all the extra work we’d had since Christmas to put on another. Foz is the new Stan, you’re the new Diaz, who used to drive the North Hollywood route, and Diaz is now our swing driver, taking on whichever route needs extra help. Today, that’s the west side.”
Lyndi then checked her clipboard, then the clock, and with a “Judy, we need to start loading!” she moved off.
“Can you show me what I’m doing wrong?” Foz said, indicating the bouquet in his hand, which was, to put it kindly, lopsided. “I’m not an arranger.”
“Neither am I, but I figured it out,” Maisey snorted.
“Okay, fine,” Foz grumbled, holding his hands up. “It’s not like we’re getting graded on it.”
Maisey let out a long sigh. “You missed the base leaves in the beginning. They act as a cradle for the rest of the bouquet. And you have to line up the stems correctly, crisscross them, or else it looks all—”
“Like it got chewed by a dog?”
Maisey stifled a laugh. “Maybe not a dog. Maybe a vigorous gerbil.”
Foz snorted at that. “Might as well start over then.” He put the lumpy half arrangement in an unused bucket under the table.
“Might as well,” she conceded. Then, a bit more kind, “Just follow me and do what I do.”
They worked like that, side by side, quietly, for another fifteen minutes or so. Foz watched Maisey like a hawk for the first couple bouquets, but then he seemed to have it down enough to hum a song under his breath as he worked. And Maisey found it to be kind of nice. She was strangely used to Foz’s presence, since he’d always been within her peripheral vision at school. It lent a normalcy to the weirdness of the new job, the new spaces she found herself in.
After a while, she found her voice enough to ask casually, “So how come I haven’t seen you in AP English Lit this semester?”
He paused in his arranging. Gave her a funny look, which she caught out of the corner of her eye before continuing his latest bouquet. “I transferred schools.”
She looked up. “You did?”
“Yeah. Seriously, it took you this long to notice? Man, there goes my ego.”
“I . . . I didn’t just notice, I just didn’t know,” she fumbled. “If you’ve transferred, it’s not like we run into each other in the halls and I can ask, you know? Or that we ever really talked to begin with.”
“True,” he said with a nod. “We never really have talked.” Then turned back to his bouquet.
They worked a little while longer in silence. But this time, instead of the silence being comfortable, Maisey was burning with questions.
“Why?” she finally asked.
“Why?”
“Why did you transfer,” she clarified.
He didn’t look up this time. “I wanted to be closer to my grandfather. He lives in Whittier.”
Whittier was a suburb of Los Angeles to the east of downtown. “I’ve never been there. What’s it like?” she asked.
“Same as anywhere.” He shrugged.
“Still . . . sucks you transferred second semester senior year. That’s practically cruel and unusual punishment.”
He looked up at her then, and she had this weird feeling in her gut. Like his eyes were a really peculiar color green, and she had to keep holding his gaze to figure out if she’d ever seen this particular color green before.
“Life’s full of changes, Maisey,” he said, his voice softening. “You just have to roll with them.”
“Still,” she said, her breath strangely catching.
He shook his head. “It’s not so bad. I basically have enough credits to graduate anyway, the only classes I’m taking are mandatory gym and computer tech credits. That leaves me half the day to ride my bike around delivering flowers.”
“But, you’re not getting your AP credits.”
“Actually, I’ll still be able to sit for the tests—technically you don’t have to be in the class to take them.”
“Oh,” Maisey said. Why on earth didn’t she know that? She wondered if she could register for a couple extra AP tests before end of semester . . . she’d had to sacrifice AP US History because the class was the same time as AP Spanish . . .
No. No, she told herself. She didn’t care about that stuff, remember?
“Ms. Kneller is letting me keep up with the coursework on the side, too—I do the readings, turn in a paper once a week. In fact, I was dropping off a paper when I saw the job listing on the bulletin board for the delivery job. It seemed like a good way to make use of my mornings.”
So Foz had been the one to tear the other tag on the flyer sheet. It was almost too perfect.
They’d always been matched pretty evenly, ever since freshman year.
“You dropped off a paper? You didn’t email it?” she questioned.
He gave a quizzical little smile. “You with the logic. You’re like Sherlock Holmes.”
She simply blinked at him, waiting for an answer.
“Hey, maybe it’s nice to visit the old stomping grounds every now and then. The principal said I can even walk the stage at graduation, since I did most of my coursework there. And I already got early admission to USC, so I’m not too worried about my transcripts.”
Maisey felt that flip in her stomach again. But this time it was due not to Foz’s strangely green eyes, but to the acid that had begun churning.
“USC,” she said, choking the words down. “Awesome.”
“What about you?” he asked. “You were applying to Stanford early admission, right?”
He was watching her carefully. And she could have made some flippant answer, brushed off her rejection. Or just have lied outright and said she was keeping her options open. But mercifully, before she could open her mouth to answer, Lyndi’s voice rang out from her position on the stairs.
“All bouquets are accounted for—that should do it, everyone!”
They began moving the heavy boxes of bouquets from their assembly line on the floor to the back loading dock where the delivery drivers were lining up. Maisey had parked her dad’s old Corolla there when she came in early, so naturally she was first in line. She popped the trunk, and opened the back doors, and began sorting through the boxes to find the ones with the Burbank/North Hollywood code that let her know they were hers to deliver.
She found the right pallet. Then, she looked at it.
Maybe her Dad’s Corolla wasn’t built for the flower delivery service.
There were boxes on boxes on boxes. And somehow, they had to all fit inside the four-door sedan.
“Welp,” Foz said, coming up beside her. “This is going to take some physics. Or you could just do two runs. That’s what I did this morning.”
So, Foz had already gone on one bike run this morning. No wonder he had been all sweaty and, er . . . glistening when he came in.
Maisey shook her head. “I have to be in class after this.”
“Well, then let’s start playing our game of car Tetris.”
They worked side by side, trying to fit the boxes into the Corolla’s trunk, then the backseat, and finally the front passenger seat.
By the time they were done, Maisey was as sweaty as Foz.
“Never let it be said that two overachieving kids can’t accomplish anything together,” she said between heavy breaths.
“Oh no, you’re not all loaded already?” Lyndi said, coming up behind them, making Maisey jump. Seriously, how did she do that? Lyndi was like this little sprite hovering over your shoulder—you don’t realize it’s there until your conscience needs a poke.
“These three boxes were on the wrong pallet—they belong on your route, Maisey,” Lyndi said, indicating the triple stack next to her.
Foz and Maisey looked from the three boxes, to the overstuffed car, then back to Lyndi.
“You might have to do two runs after all,” Foz said.
“School, remember?”
“No worries, Maisey, you’ll make it to school, I promise,” Lyndi said. “I can take some of the route, ride my bike up—”
“No you can’t, Lyndi!” Judy’s voice rang out. “You know what Paula said about riding in your condition.”
“Condition?” Maisey asked, trying not to notice the crestfallen look on her immediate superior’s face.
“I’m pregnant,” Lyndi said, matter-of-factly.
Well. There seemed to be nothing but pregnant people around her these days, Maisey thought.
She wasn’t the only one who felt the awkwardness of knowing more about her boss’s reproductive health than she should. Foz ducked it entirely, grabbing one of the boxes and saying, “Let me see what I can do.”
Maisey and Lyndi stood, watching Foz bend and twist and find a way to fit three extra boxes of flowers in the already jam-packed car.
“So . . . how far along are you?” Maisey asked. She’d been around her mother long enough to know this was a question that pregnant ladies got asked.
“Twenty-one weeks,” she replied. “Halfway there.”
“And . . . how are you feeling?”
Lyndi snorted. “Annoyed, mostly. Like the only thing important about me at the moment is what’s in my uterus.”
She’d directed this comment at the passing Judy, who ignored her with her nose in the air.
“Can I ask you a question?” Maisey said suddenly.
“Sure.”
“Is it weird?”
Lyndi regarded her. “Yes. But it’s also weirdly normal. This is something that happens all the time. You just gotta roll with it.”
Roll with it.
Was that what her mom was doing—rolling with it? Working, trying to keep Maisey in check, taking her blood pressure daily, and making all those incremental adjustments that led to the big one?
It sounded exhausting.
“And . . . how do you roll with it?” she asked.
A smile softened Lyndi’s face. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”
“That’s what happens when your roommate makes you his baby mama.” Judy clucked her tongue as she passed. “Confusion.”
“He’s not my roommate, he’s my boyfriend,” Lyndi said through gritted teeth.
“Not according to him,” Judy singsonged as she pushed a new pallet of bouquets.
“Wait . . . what did you say?” Lyndi said, immediately frowning as she followed after. “Judy!”
But Judy was giggling with the other arrangers as they helped the drivers load their flowers, looking at something on their phones.
Just then, Foz ducked back out of the car, breathing heavy, but triumphant.
“Okay!” he said, brushing imaginary dust off his hands. “You are all set. I have no idea how you’re going to deliver all of these before class starts, but good luck.”
He flipped her car keys around his fingers, catching them in his hand before holding them out to her.
“Thanks,” she said. “And thanks for loading my car.”
“No problem. Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day. To that end . . .” Foz reached behind him, and into a bucket that she hadn’t noticed by the car. “Here. You deserve these.”
He held out the abandoned lopsided bouquet, his first attempt at flower arranging.
“For teaching me.”
She took the flowers, gingerly. Uncertain what to do with them, she held them between herself and Foz, like a barricade made of petals and missing thorns.
“Well, I should . . . get going,” she said.
“Me, too. I have to load my bike for my next run.”
She climbed into the driver’s seat. She turned the engine on (once she shoved back the flowers that were blocking the ignition)—then, abruptly turned it off.
“What’s wrong?” Foz asked immediately.
“Nothing. Hey—if you went on a run this morning, did you go to the LA Center Studios?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have any deliveries there today.”
“But my moth—I mean, isn’t there usually a delivery to one of the shows? Fargone?”
“Yeah, but that’s on Mondays.” Foz shrugged. “It’s not Monday.”
As he moved off, Maisey chewed her lip.
Her mom wasn’t getting any flowers today. Which meant Sebastian had forgotten Valentine’s Day.
It took Maisey the better part of three hours to make all of her deliveries in the North Hollywood/Burbank route. Thankfully, she didn’t have to be in school until second period, but she was still so late when she pulled into the school parking lot, she had already missed half of AP Spanish.
So, she could either sit in her car for another twenty minutes, waiting for the school bell to ring, or she could try and sneak in the back of class.
Or, she could make one last delivery.
After all, the lopsided flowers Foz had given her couldn’t sit in her car all day. And home was mere blocks away.
A vase, spread out the arrangement in some water, and it wouldn’t look so lumpy anymore. It might even look like something that Sebastian had special ordered.
Because as much as she hated to admit it, she had seen her mother these past few weeks. No matter how much she tried to ignore her, and stay in her own, angsty headspace, she could still see Sophia out of her peripheral vision. Worried. Waiting. Wanting.
And just yesterday, red-nosed from crying.
That had almost made Maisey stay home that morning. Instead, coward that she was, she ran out the door even earlier, to avoid seeing any more evidence of her parent’s pain.
She parked on the street, trotted up the steps, and unlocked the door to their apartment. She would just pop these on the kitchen table in the bright Fiestaware vase she’d given her mother as a Christmas gift when she was six. That way, the flowers could be credited to both of them—her and Sebastian.
That lanky idiot was lucky she was there to cover for him.
But the moment she walked into the kitchen, she was assaulted by the realization that said lanky idiot didn’t require her to cover for him.
Because he was there.
And he was basically licking her mother.
“Oh—oh, Maisey!” her mom said in between giggles. “Sebastian—stop that!” She gently pushed Sebastian on the chest and got him to retract his tongue from her ear. “What are you doing home?”
“I . . . I had a free period and I needed to grab something I forgot. For class,” she finished lamely. “What are you doing home?”
“Well, I was on my way to work when I opened the door, and found this magnificent gentleman on our doorstep,” her mother cooed into Sebastian’s adoring ( . . . gak . . . ) face.
“I drove all night from our gig in Phoenix. I wasn’t going to let this little lady spend V-Day without her baby daddy. So I told her to call in sick.”
Considering her mother was not in work clothes and wearing her flowered satin bathrobe—and Sebastian was wearing her blue polka-dotted one—Maisey did not like to guess what had happened in the interim between her mother leaving for work and Maisey walking in the door.
But something else irked Maisey more. “You told her? To compromise her job?” The last time her mother had ever taken sick days was when Maisey had mono in eighth grade. That game of spin the bottle had taken down half the class.
“They don’t need me today anyway.” Sophia sighed. “There are no department meetings, and it’s just the principals filming, and Vanessa won’t let me touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
“Nessa’s just been bitchy because her movie got completely shut out for Oscar noms, so she doesn’t get to go to the awards,” Sebastian said. “I’ll talk to her, baby, don’t you worry.”
“Oh, Sebastian,” her mother sniffled. The tears were welling again. No doubt a great deal of emotions and hormones and endorphins were rushing through her body, making her horribly sentimental and girly.
That was the only excuse for the sappy look she had on her face. And the fact that she would ever, ever let this guy intervene in her work.
“I have no doubt my mom can handle it, Sebastian,” Maisey said, hard.
“Maisey’s right, babe,” Sophia said, looking between her absolutely correct daughter and her overstepping boyfriend. “Although I appreciate it. Just like I appreciate your Valentine’s Day present.”
“What present?” Maisey asked, kicking herself for letting her curiosity get the better of her, because now she was subject to Sebastian taking off the robe (gak!) and exposing his shoulder.
Where there was a fresh, shiny tattoo, with the name Sophia in elaborate script.
“What do you think, Maisey?” he asked. “Got it last week. Couldn’t stop thinking about your mom when we were in San Antonio, so I decided to give my thoughts some permanence.”
San Antonio. If memory served, that was where the groupie pic from that article was taken. Her mom didn’t think she knew about it, but she wasn’t the only one with web notifications.
“Cool,” Maisey said through clenched teeth.
Then her mom’s gaze fell to the flowers in Maisey’s hand.
“Where did you get the flowers, honey?” Then her eyes lit up. “Are they from a boy?”
Technically, yes. But . . . “Um, no. They are from work. Extras. Here. Put them in a vase, would you?”
She handed them lamely to her mom.
“Thank you, honey!” she said, burying her nose in them, then took in their half-formed arrangement. “They’re . . . er . . . gorgeous.”
“Need to work on your flower arranging skills,” Sebastian said. “If you want to keep your job, kid.”
“Sebastian!” her mother said in mock outrage. “Maisey can do anything she sets her mind to.”
“Right. Totally. Except flower arranging. And she works at a flower shop.”
As her mother swatted Sebastian playfully, and he wrapped himself around her again like the octopus he was, Maisey cleared her throat.
“ANYWAY.” Her mom glanced her way, but Sebastian’s tongue was aiming for the right ear again. “I’m just gonna grab that thing from my room.”
“Okay, hon. You want anything? I made waffles . . . well I made them a while ago but they can be nuked.”
“Nope, I’m good,” Maisey said, stalking away to her room before she vomited.
“Yeah, we sort of forgot about the waffles, didn’t we?” she heard Sebastian purr, and her mother’s corresponding giggle.
Once safely in her room, Maisey pushed her back against the door in relief. The walls of their apartment were just getting more and more stifling. Then, her eyes fell to her little desk.
And the pile of college applications sitting on top.
Before she could change her mind, she grabbed them all, and stuffed them into her bag.
Time to get this done, she decided.
Every single rationalization she had for avoiding it had fled as she watched her mother only have eyes for Sebastian. And Maisey would be damned if she stuck around to watch out of fear or spite or whatever it was that had her acting like such a coward.
No. She was going to get the hell out of there.