Chapter Twenty-Four

The flower market is far busier than anywhere has any right to be at three in the morning. While most people would be safely tucked away in bed – where we’d be, if there was any justice in the world – we’re surrounded by a hive of activity. Then again, if the past few days have taught me anything it’s that everything in New Orleans is a hive of activity. At three AM, the city is just about getting started. It reminds me a little of the fish markets down on the docks in Chicago, where my friends would occasionally go to snag a great bargain – except in amongst the forklift trucks and loading pallets there are bright splashes of every colour under the sun, and the shouts of vendors mingles with a thousand different overpowering scents, each of them jostling for attention.

It doesn’t take us long to find what we we’re looking for. In among all the traditional reds roses and prom carnations, we soon come to a display of bountiful, beautiful white: lilies as far as the eye can see. I clutch Danielle’s arm excitedly. It’s all I can do to stop myself from throwing down my credit card and exclaiming that we’ll take the lot.

‘Can I help you girls?’ the stall’s owner asks. He’s a small man in blue overalls, like some sort of wish-granting flower-stall leprechaun.

‘We need flowers,’ I say. ‘Lots of them.’

He smiles. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place,’ he says. ‘You got a resellers’ license?’

‘A… what?’

The old man sighs. ‘Come on, ladies,’ he says. ‘You know I can’t sell you anything unless you’ve got your florist’s license. No civilians.’

We do? I think. I’ve never even heard of a florist’s license.

‘But it’s an emergency!’ Danielle exclaims. ‘We came all the way out here because you’re the last damn place in the city that might…’

But he’s not listening. He just shrugs. ‘Sorry,’ he says, as though his hands are tied. ‘Nothing I can do.’

You could look the other way, I think. We’d probably be able to make it worth your while…

‘Or what?’ Danielle hisses. ‘You think the flower police are going to come and arrest us? You think you’re going to jail for selling us a few tulips?’

The man frowns. ‘I don’t like your tone, Missy,’ he says. ‘Do I need to call security?’

‘Security?’ she laughs. ‘At a flower market? Listen, buddy, I don’t know what you think…’

The little man glances over to the next stall; we’re making a scene, and there’s no way that’s going to act in our favour. ‘Leave it,’ I say. ‘Forget him, Danielle. We’ll figure something out.’

‘Like hell we will!’ she says, pulling her hand away from my grasp. ‘Let go of me, dick! I’m not done with this – I said, I’m not done!’

I manage to drag her out into the cool New Orleans air, but it’s a close-run thing. Danielle bull-in-a-china-shop routine draws stares as we go, but eventually she decides to stop trying to pick a fight with a sixtysomething florist and lets me lead her – if lead is the right word – away from the source of her outrage.

‘You OK?’ I ask.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think yelling at the flower guy at three in the morning isn’t going to help us out.’

‘You thought this whole thing was a bust anyway. At least I’m trying to do something.’

I grit my teeth, but it isn’t quite enough. ‘Because I’m not?’ I say. ‘Because I haven’t been busting my ass all day, trying to get these goddamn flowers while you sat on your ass and drank mimosas?’

I watch her tense up. For a moment, I’m convinced she’s going to spring at me – that we’re going to have a straight-up catfight in the middle of the parking lot outside a flower market at three in the morning, a thousand miles from home.

Right, I think. My hand clenches into a fist. If we’re going to throw down, I’m sure as shit not going to let her forget about it any time soon.

What the hell are you thinking? A street brawl? An assault charge? Over what, exactly? This isn’t you, Ella. This isn’t even close to you.

And yet my hand doesn’t relax. Whoever I am right now – whichever version of Ella I might be, whichever version of me stepped off the plane in in New Orleans – perhaps this is the kind of thing I do. After all, everything else I thought I knew about my life has been suddenly upended. Why not this too?

But Danielle doesn’t make a move; the moment passes, and she relaxes – not a lot, but enough. ‘You don’t like me all that much, do you, Ella?’ she says at last. Her voice is small, surprisingly calm. It’s unlike the Danielle I’ve come to know; if it weren’t for the fact that it was just the two of us in the parking lot, I would have sworn it came from someone else entirely.

‘I like you just fine.’ Considering.

Danielle shakes her head. ‘No, you don’t. I’m not blind. I can see it. You haven’t liked me from the minute we first met.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘That’s not a no, is it?’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. You just always seem to think you’re better than us. It’s like you think you’re better than everyone.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Is it?’ she asks. ‘You’ve always had that air of superiority about you. Like you’re better than us, because… what? You’ve known Lauren since you were kids? Like that somehow means you outrank us? That you care about her more than we do? And what about Drew?’

Oh, what about him? I want to snap, but I manage to hold my tongue. ‘Drew is…’

‘Not good enough for her?’

‘No.’

‘Yeah. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?’

Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I was going to say – and not for the first time, either.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘But you’ve met him, like, three times? Ever?’

‘Four.’

‘And that’s enough? You reckon you can get a good read on someone so quickly?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Yeah, he’s a bit of a schmuck at times – but he’s a nice enough guy, and he’s madly in love with her. He’s crazy about Lauren. But that doesn’t stop you looking down your nose at him, does it? I’m guessing you made your mind up about Drew five minutes after you met him, and you’ve never bothered to change it. Same with me and Jess and Paige too. We’re all just Lauren’s party-hard, woo-girl friends. Doesn’t matter that we’ve all got lives outside of this weekend. That’s the little box you put us in. Because that’s easier than thinking of us as being real people, who actually care about her. It means you still get to be the person who cares about her most in the world.’ By the time I look at her, her face is puckered up with anger. It’s a strange expression. I’ve seen her look annoyed, I’ve seen her look disdainful, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her angry before. ‘You don’t know him, Ella,’ she says quietly. ‘You don’t know any of us. We’re more than you give us credit for.’

Oh really? I think. Is that so? Then why am I the one who’s been busting my hump to get everything sorted?

I shouldn’t say it. I know I should let it go – but I can’t. I can feel it bubbling up inside me, aching to break out. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Sure you are. You and Paige and Jess… you all got to party with Lauren. Because that’s what she needed, right? She needed to have a little fun, to calm down. But all that stress doesn’t just disappear. It goes somewhere. It all flows to me, because I’m the person who knows how to deal with it. I’m the person Lauren knows will get shit done. I’m the person she trusted to make sure that everything went off without a hitch – and I fucked it up. The one time it mattered, and I fucked it up. And I did it while you were off drinking champagne and having a great time and no doubt complaining about what a boring bitch I am. How I’m always so focused on the plan that I can never just take the stick out of my ass and have fun. I know what people think about me, you know. I’m not an idiot. But someone has to be that person. And it’s always me. It’s always me. And that means it’s always my fault when it goes wrong.’

It’s always my fault.

With the flowers. With Carter. That’s the thing that no one seems to get. That’s the thing I can’t explain, no matter how hard I try.

I’m the one who has the plan. I’m the one who’s to blame when things go wrong. The buck stops with me, always. And who can live like that forever? Who can come to a place like New Orleans, where the entire city seems built on the idea of living for the moment, knowing that everything rests on their shoulders and can fall apart at any second?

I refuse to wipe my face dry with Danielle watching. I refuse to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry, of knowing just how much this is all getting to me. I ball my hands into tight little fists, so tight that my nails dig into my palms and I feel the distracting sting of pain – anything, anything at all, that might stop me from losing control.

It’s a while before Danielle says anything. ‘You’re not the only one who feels that way, you know,’ she says.

‘Oh yeah? Because it sure as hell feels like that sometimes.’

‘Oh, stop being such a martyr,’ she snaps. ‘For God’s sake, Ella… we’re doctors. You think we don’t know what it’s like to have people rely on us? To have people look to us when there’s a crisis? That’s our job. And we screw up, people die. Did you forget that?’

‘No, but…’

Well, yeah. Sort of.

‘You know what I did the day before I drove down here?’ she asks. ‘I told a fifty-two-year-old woman her breast cancer was inoperable. That there was nothing we could do for her. That she’d be lucky to see the end of the year. That she might not even live to see her daughter graduate this fall. And then I washed my hands, and I pulled on my coat, and I tried not to think too hard about it. I came down here to have a good time, and I damn well did my best. Because I know I can’t fix everything. I go out there, and I leave it all on the field. Because I have to. But things I can’t fix, I accept. You might want to try that sometime. This is… it’s small stakes, Ella. In the grand scheme of things.’

‘Not to me.’

‘Only to you. Tell me I’m wrong.’

‘That’s not your call to make. Lauren asked me to do this.’

‘She won’t blame you, you know,’ Danielle says. ‘She knows how hard you worked at this.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Yeah, it is.’ She scootches closer to me, and puts her hand on mine. It shouldn’t be comforting – part of me wants to snatch my hand away out of sheer spite – and yet somehow it is. ‘They’re just flowers,’ she says. ‘And it’s just a dress, and it’s just a reception hall. That’s all. None of that matters.’

‘Of course it does. It’s the wedding she’s wanted her whole damn life. I know. I was there.’

Danielle sighs. ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ she says. ‘It’s not the flowers. It’s Drew. It’s her family. It’s her friends. It’s you. She could get married in a hotel in New Orleans or on a beach in Tahiti or a barn in Nebraska wearing a garbage bag for a dress, and she’s going to be the happiest woman for miles around. As long as the people she loves are there with her. The flowers don’t matter. They’re the icing, not the cake.’ She pauses. ‘We do have a cake, right?’

I laugh, despite myself. ‘Yes, we have a cake.’

‘Good. Then everything will be fine. Cake and booze and a room full of her loved ones – the kind of loved ones who’ll spend a whole day and most of the night trying to make things just perfect, just because. What more could a girl ask for?’

‘You really think she’ll be fine?’

She shrugs. ‘You’ve known her for longer than any of us. What do you think?’

I nod, slowly. She’s right. Perhaps, deep down, I always knew that the flowers didn’t matter. Perhaps I realised that by fixating on the flowers, I was finally doing the one thing I knew I was good at: fixing problems as they came up. Focusing on anything except for Carter, who I had barely thought of all day. Trying my best not to think about Jack, and my disappointment at knowing that I’d probably never see him again.

But as long as I could get through the wedding, it didn’t matter. As long as I could make things perfect for Lauren, I’d be fine. I’d always have that memory. I’d always have that I could look back on.

I guess I’ll just have to make do with seeing my best friend marry the love of her life. That’s not so bad, is it? As far as memories go, that’s definitely a keeper.

‘Besides,’ Danielle says, ‘it doesn’t really matter either way. Even if we’d managed to get the flowers, we would never have been able to get them ready in time for the wedding. We’d need –’

Danielle pauses, midway through her thought. Her eyes run to the entrance to the parking lot. It’s not a miracle that comes round the corner; at least, not in the conventional sense. The halo of light that enters the parking lot and blinds us doesn’t come from a guardian angel, but from the highbeams of a white Ford transit van, mud spattered up the sides in sweeping arcs so high that it almost reaches the company logo painted in stylish black.

The car comes to a stop near us, and a man leans out. ‘Sorry,’ he says through the window. ‘Car trouble. You guys found it OK, though?’

What the hell?

Who the hell…?

‘Zach?’ Danielle asks, squinting against the headlights. ‘Zach the florist?’

Zach flicks a switch, and the parking lot drops back into darkness. ‘In the flesh,’ he says.

‘What are you doing here?’

He screws up his face. ‘I mean, you know… it’s sort of my job. Besides, I made you girls a promise.’

‘You did?’

‘Well, yeah,’ he says. ‘The fifty bucks you gave me. You didn’t think I was just going to leave you out here, did you? No one would have sold you anything without a license.’

You might have mentioned that, I think – but honestly, I’m so happy to see him I think I might cry. Zach strides into the warehouse, with the two of us following along like eager little puppies. Danielle at least has the good grace to look shamefaced at her earlier yelling as we approach the same old man – but this time, we’ve got our secret weapon: Zachary Kingston, florist and lifesaver.

‘They’re with me, Sal,’ he says. ‘Think you can hook them up?’

The old man – Sal, presumably – grumbles to himself like a car struggling to start on a cold day, but he doesn’t say no, and that’s just about all we’ve got. Between the three of us we bounce from stall to stall, picking out an array of flowers that seem to work well together – mostly, it has to be said, with Noah’s help. He raises a forgiving eyebrow at some of my more dubious choices, replacing my aesthetically-limited selections with things that just fit together. ‘Calla lilies,’ he says as he slides out a tray. ‘Small ones. Perfect for boutonnieres. And for the bouquet…’ He pauses, looking over the selection. ‘How about waterlilies?’ He pulls together a couple of vivid purple flowers, darker than any lily I’ve ever seen before, and some sprigs of decorative grass. ‘What do you think?’

I think we’re saved. ‘Perfect,’ I say, and Danielle agrees. ‘Absolutely perfect.’

He continues on his rounds, picking them out one by one while Sal makes a list. ‘Hold up,’ the old man says. ‘Gonna take me an hour or so to put this together.’

I check my watch. An hour to go, plus a half-hour back into town, will put us at… shit. 4.30am. That’s going to be cutting it fine by any measure. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘That’s great.’

Great, great, great.

~~~

Forty minutes later, the boxes of flowers are loaded into the back of Lauren’s minivan, Sal is counting a not-inconsiderable amount of newly-acquired cash, and the three of us – Danielle, Zach and me – are standing outside, grinning broadly despite the cold.

‘You sure I can’t do anything else for you guys? You need anything?’

I shake my head. ‘You’ve been wonderful, Zach,’ I say. ‘Really. Is there anything we can do for you? The money doesn’t seem like enough.’

He shrugs. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he says. ‘You two just have fun at your wedding, OK?’

‘You sure?’

‘What can I say?’ he says. ‘I didn’t go into being a florist for the money. I like making people happy. I like the way people look when they get a bunch of flowers just because, or to say thank you, or to make sure their wedding day looks exactly the same way it does in their photos as it does in their dreams. That’s why I do it. You guys seemed like you were in such a pickle, I figured… well, why not help you out? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?’

At that moment, I could kiss him.

‘Besides,’ he says, ‘fifty bucks is fifty bucks, right?’