“WELL, I WAS WONDERING WHAT CRAWLED up Nat’s butt to make her crazy about Thanksgiving this year. Now I know.”
Lyndi threw herself on the faded striped couch that dominated their little living room. It had been Marcus’s mom’s, purchased sometime in the ’70s. She’d been happy to gift it to Marcus when he moved halfway across the country, ready to upgrade to something from this century.
Their loss, because it was the comfiest couch Lyndi had ever lain upon. Especially after a whole day of being in Nat’s perfect IKEA-catalogue-with-aspirations-of-Pottery-Barn home.
With Nat staring daggers at her the whole dinner.
“I thought it was pretty funny,” Marcus said, sitting down next to her, pulling her feet onto his lap and beginning what Lyndi could only hope was an hour-long foot rub.
“I thought she was going to kill me for ruining her cornucopia—ooooohhh, right there.” His thumb pressed into her arch in a way that seduced her now just the way it had seduced her six months ago, when she first moved in.
She’d gone to art school, but due to her father’s worries about her future job prospects, Lyndi had minored in business, and so knew her way around a spreadsheet. A sprawling metropolis with creativity at its core seemed like the right place to be.
She’d thought about moving to the East Coast—New York, or DC, or the exotic wilds of Buffalo—but when you’re a California girl . . . there’s no place like Pacific sun.
Maybe she just wasn’t that brave. She didn’t know anyone on the other side of the country. And stepping out into the world was hard enough—doing it in an entirely unfamiliar environment was downright crazy to her.
But, she always figured, if life took her there, she’d go.
“I don’t think it was the cornucopia she was pissed about, babe,” Marcus said. And Lyndi, for all the foot rubbing, couldn’t ignore the tension that immediately bunched up inside her.
“She’ll get over it,” she replied nonchalantly. And Nat totally would, she decided. It was just today that had been sucky. Lyndi would apologize for the vomiting and the screwing up Nat’s speech, and everything would be fine.
In fact, one of the reasons she felt safe moving to LA was the fact that Nat was there. She knew that she could always turn to her sister if she needed something.
Just like she always had.
Nathalie was nine years older than Lyndi—and technically her half sister, Lyndi being a product of their dad’s second marriage. But from the very beginning Nat had always been Lyndi’s guide through girldom, her protector from all things stupid (like ice-blue eyeliner, and boys who insist that you can’t like X-Men comics), and her teacher about adult things—like how to do laundry, and how to tell Dad she blew all of her textbook money on art supplies.
Having Nat in LA (and David, too, who’d been with Nat since Lyndi was ten) made LA just a little bit safer.
So she moved. She bounced around on different friends’ couches and sublets, and bounced around trying different kinds of work. But nothing ever seemed to fit.
Her degree was in design . . . but she kind of hated graphic design. Spending all day on a computer made her feel like she didn’t have anything to show for her efforts beyond a jpeg file.
She decided what she wanted was something real. When what she created had form, shape, and weight. Something that she could stand back and look at, and something that would evoke a reaction.
That’s why she liked working at the floral start-up. She worked with real things—stems cut just that morning, bending and molding them into an explosion of color that made people inevitably smile.
That’s why she liked Marcus, too.
He felt real to her, in a way none of the other guys in college ever had. With his skinny build and ’70s furniture, his warm eyes and excellent foot rubs, he had so much more substance than all the boys who wore only flannel shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons, and man buns, and their never-finished screenplays that they spent all day in a coffee shop theoretically working on.
Marcus was actually doing what he wanted to do. He was a writer. Not for TV or anything as striving as that. He wrote for a digital media company, one that made its money with funny listicles and gifs, but still had really awesome reporting on important subjects that affected their generation. Marcus was on the listicle beat, but just recently they published a really insightful long-form article he wrote about growing up biracial, bisexual, and in Missouri.
The article had gotten more hits than anything he’d ever written before. They commissioned more long-form articles from him, two a month, on top of his listicle duties.
The day the article came out, they’d celebrated. Three weeks later, Lyndi had taken a pregnancy test.
She remembered exactly how he had looked when she told him. She was pale and shaking, and generally freaking out. But he . . . he just smiled. Wide and warm, and wrapped his arms around her.
“I never thought I’d have the chance to have a kid,” he’d said. He’d kissed her temple. “Thank you.”
And suddenly it felt like everything was going to be okay.
“I think it’ll be a good thing, you know?” Marcus was saying.
“Hmm?” Lyndi replied.
“You were just saying the other day that you don’t have any friends who’ve been pregnant. Now, you have someone that you can talk to about it, and ask questions.”
True, she mused. She would be able to ask Nathalie all the questions she had, because Nathalie would have gone through it too—just a month or so ahead of her.
“Maybe she can even recommend a doctor. We need to make an appointment, you know.”
“I know . . .” Lyndi replied on a sigh. “I still need to get my insurance sorted out through work.” She’d only been promoted a couple weeks ago, to head floral designer and full-time employee. There was still a lot of paperwork she hadn’t filled out. She was going to ask David to help her with that. There were pluses to a lawyer for a brother-in-law. “I need to do that, too.”
“Well, you should do it soon, okay? I want to make sure you’re covered. And the baby.” Marcus hesitated. “If neither of those pan out . . . we could put you under my insurance. But I think we’d have to, you know . . . get married.”
Lyndi froze. There was no possible way to respond to that. As much as she liked Marcus, and loved their life, marriage was just so . . . permanent. Marriage was for people like Nat and David—pairs who only knew how to function with each other.
But babies were pretty permanent, too.
“I’m sure that I’m covered. I’m probably double covered.”
“Okay, good.” The relief in his voice matched her own. “Oh, I almost forgot! I got you something.”
Her feet were abandoned as Marcus leaped up, and moved to their little kitchenette. He got something out of the cabinet, came back, and handed her a canister-looking package with a bow on it.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.
She smiled at him as she carefully unwrapped the colorful magazine pages he’d wrapped it in. Of course he got her a present. That’s the kind of guy Marcus was. Always thinking of her, and what might make her smile, and . . .
“Prenatal vitamins?” she asked. The bottle marked them as organic, healthy, and of course, gluten-free.
“Yeah.” He grinned wide. “You’re supposed to be taking them every day now. I actually read you’re supposed to be taking them even before you get pregnant, but better late than never to get your folic acid up.”
“Oh. Right,” Lyndi replied, her brow coming down. “I didn’t even think about it.”
Marcus’s smile dimmed a little.
“Lynds, babe . . . you got to start thinking about this stuff, okay?”
She looked down at the vitamins, and back up at him.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll start thinking about it.”
THREE DAYS LATER, she was still thinking about it. The Monday after Thanksgiving was quiet as Lyndi rode to work—then again, it was always quiet at 5 AM. Biking south on Echo Park Avenue, the street lamps guiding her path, Lyndi found this to be the best time in the world. She didn’t have to fight traffic. No one would bother her. She could let her mind wander.
She really hadn’t been thinking much about the logistics of being pregnant. Only that she was. Her body was keen on reminding her that things were changing though, even more so than Marcus was. Not only was morning sickness an all-day occurrence, her boobs felt like angry, tenderized meat that should never be touched by anyone or anything ever. And there was the smell thing. Everything smelled like metal. Chocolate, coffee, the garbage on the street corner as she cruised past—if it had a smell, that smell was now “pennies.”
This made life at the floral co-op a little challenging lately.
She could have called Nat, asked her about doctors, about all the amorphous unknown stuff she was staring down, but Lyndi figured Nat needed a little more time between the dropped bomb and being asked for favors. She thought about calling her mom—but that just seemed exhausting, on top of an exhausting Thanksgiving.
So she turned to where everything began and ended: Google.
That led her to various baby and pregnancy oriented websites. They were all varying shades of pastel.
Fucking pastels.
But once she got past the offending color scheme, she plugged in when her last period was (or at least approximately, she’d never really kept track) and they told her the due date.
Then they told her what was going to happen to her body.
In horrifying detail.
Oh, they tried to make it less horrifying, by reminding the reader that there was a “snuggly little bundle” at the other end of “this journey,” but still . . .
. . . Was the human body really meant to function this way? This many . . . fluids? And formations?
Overwhelmed, she shut down her computer. But then, her phone dinged.
Idiotically, when she’d typed in her due date, she’d also typed in her email address. And now she was signed up for daily reminders and helpful hints, flooding her inbox with more pastel.
But this one came with headlines, like 9 Amazing Facts about Your Vagina! and Cord Blood Banking—Should You? (You Should.), and endless offers on deals if and when she made her baby registry.
Lyndi shut down her phone for the rest of the weekend after that, too.
Thank God she had work today.
She biked down past City Hall, the Disney Concert Hall . . . all the prominent buildings that were the linchpin of their wacky, diverse city. And made her way to 7th Street, where the LA flower district thrived.
She needed to get there before the shipments arrived at dawn. Their morning deliveries would go out by eight, and they usually had nearly 250 bouquets to make in that time. Usually. They were now in the post-Thanksgiving rush, and everyone—everyone—wanted Christmas decorations. They’d had a mad Black Friday rush from their retail and department store clients. Lyndi counted herself lucky she’d had Friday off.
Although after a weekend of pastels and prenatal vitamins, maybe not.
As she coasted her bike into the booth of the Favorite Flower, Lyndi smiled as she saw Paula already in the middle of everything, sorting greens, reading the arrangement chart for the day with the rest of the team, and frowning at a pile of white flowers.
And suddenly, Lyndi was happy to let everything go with the flow again. The baby, the pregnancy, it was all going to be okay, right? At that moment, she had flowers to arrange.
“Hey, girl!” Paula called out as Lyndi dismounted. “We can’t put zinnias in this arrangement.”
“What?” Lyndi said. “No zinnias today?”
“Not any that looked good enough for our purposes. I grabbed these gerbera daisies from the wholesaler instead, but . . .”
Lyndi examined the wide, flat blossoms. She’d wanted the zinnias for their fatness, for their weight. Gerbera daisies always required a stem support to hold them up, as their heavy heads dropped quickly as they wilted. At least Paula had chosen the right colors—whites and blood reds, a nod to the holidays without leaning on holly and poinsettias.
“They were five cents a stem cheaper, too,” Paula said, trying to find the silver lining. And that was the difference between Lyndi and Paula. Lyndi only looked at the composition of the flowers, the bouquet as a whole and what pieces she needed. Paula had a lot of other variables to consider.
So, even though Lyndi thought the arrangements would look cheaper for the five-cent savings, she couldn’t say that to Paula. After all—Paula was the boss, the founder and CEO of the Favorite Flower.
A really impressive feat for someone who was only twenty-eight.
The Favorite Flower was only founded a year ago, with a website and an idea. They would only make one arrangement a day, in a couple different sizes, out of the best the flower market had to offer that day. That would cut down on flower waste (because if you offer variety, and people don’t buy them, all those other flowers will end up as compost and red on your balance book) and they would be an online-only business. You could place an order for one day, or you could make a standing order for a weekly flower delivery. They had individual clients, but also corporate clients, providing arrangements for entire buildings.
And she started the entire thing out of her van.
“I can make it work,” Lyndi said. “What if we . . . used the stem as the tie for the bouquet?”
“Love it!” Paula said. “No wonder you’re the artistic genius. Okay, everyone!”
The arrangers—four women of varying ages, but all older than Lyndi—brought their heads up from their flower sorting.
“Lyndi’s making a quick change to the design.”
Some of the women groaned, which made Lyndi’s cheeks pink. She wasn’t used to being in charge of things yet. Part of her wished she could just arrange flowers with everyone else like she had been up until a couple weeks ago. But even then, she would always make slight adjustments to the arrangements. Making them just a bit bolder, and brighter and interesting.
Paula had seen something in her, and gave her new responsibilities.
“I promise, it’s a little one this time.” And Lyndi detailed how to use the gerbera daisies, and adjust for the lack of zinnias.
Soon enough, everyone was up to date, and they went to work.
That morning, due to an influx of online orders over the weekend, they had 312 bouquets to make. The flowers were laid out on large tables, in assembly line fashion. Two people per table went down the lines and assembled the flowers into their arrangement for the day. Lyndi took her spot at the table and got to work.
There was something incredibly soothing about repetitive tasks. She could blank out everything else—the way the other women at work looked at her, worries about her sister being mad, prenatal vitamins—and just do the work. And at the end of the row, the flowers were tied together into existence as a beautiful bouquet. The satisfaction of accomplishment was real, and there for everyone to see.
The six of them working together made quick work of the 312 arrangements. At 8 AM on the dot, the couriers arrived.
Some of the couriers drove vans—but the kids on the bikes were her favorites. They were loaded down with a front basket, two saddlebags, and a backpack all bursting with flowers. They maneuvered through the streets of LA to do the geographically closest deliveries with the grace and fearlessness of extreme sport athletes.
“Hold on, where’s Stan?” Lyndi said, as they loaded up one of the bike kids.
“Dunno,” said the flower-laden kid, shrugging as best he could.
“I’ll check my messages.” Paula sighed. Sure enough there was a message from Stan, saying he was sick, with obligatory apologies and conspicuous coughs.
“What’s that, the second time this month?”
“Third,” Paula replied grimly. “With all these extra orders, we need all hands on deck today.”
“I can take Stan’s run,” Lyndi said immediately. “I’ve done it before.” Twice that month, at least.
“Are you sure? I wanted to walk the market floor with you, get a head start on tomorrow’s arrangement. Also, you still have a bunch of paperwork to fill out.”
“Health insurance and stuff, right,” Lyndi said. “But we’re short-staffed, so when needs must . . .”
Paula thought it over. “Okay, we’ll walk the market when you get back.”
“Awesome!” Lyndi said as she grabbed her bike, and Paula and the other women loaded her down. “I wanted to talk to you about wreaths! Maybe we open up a wreath category on the website? Just for the holidays? Use up some of the leftover branches that don’t make our general arrangement.”
“That’s a fantastic idea!” Paula said, her face lighting up. “We could do magnolia branches, or holly, or—”
While Paula mused on the possibilities of wreaths, Lyndi lifted the bike off her kickstand and headed out.
Once out the door, Lyndi could smile and relax. Secretly, she really liked doing Stan’s route. Not just because she got to get out of the flower market during her most morning-sickness-prone hours, but because she felt whimsical, a girl on a bike exploding with flowers.
Plus Stan had the best route of all the couriers.
Because it included a weekly delivery to one of the major movie studios.
Biking onto the lot of a movie studio was always a trip. The second she passed through the visitors and deliveries gate, she could feel herself smiling. It was like stepping into another world. A completely fake, immaculately curated world. The shrubbery was trimmed to perfection. Stray litter was not tolerated. Little bungalows, lining perfect streets like the most idealized neighborhoods in idealized USA Town, encircling the larger, warehouse-like buildings (the sound stages) all in varying shades of beige.
It was toward one of these sound stages she headed, but instead of going into the big, open bay doors, she headed around to the side, where a small, normal-sized door led to the production offices.
The production offices of a TV show looked like anyone else’s office. There were desks, and papers, and a photocopier in the middle that didn’t seem to be working right, given the young guy who was two arms deep in the machine.
But other than photocopier guy, the place was empty.
“Hi, I’m from the Favorite Flower,” Lyndi said. “I have a delivery for Sophia Nunez?”
“Oh, um . . .” said the guy. “She’s in the makeup trailer.”
“I usually just leave them here, if you can sign for them?” Lyndi replied.
But the guy didn’t move. “Well, the thing is . . . I’m stuck? And everyone is in a production meeting . . . and my other co-worker went to get help. It’s my first week and apparently I didn’t know the copy machine was a carnivore.” He laughed weakly.
“Oh,” Lyndi said. “I . . . I’ll just take these to the makeup trailer then?”
“Um, sure,” said the guy. “It’s around the back. And if you see any of my co-workers with hand tools, can you tell them this really hurts?”
“Sure,” said Lyndi, swallowing a laugh. “No problem.”
So she went around to the side and back. And saw an entire parking lot filled with trailers.
Which one was the makeup trailer?
How could she tell?
She wandered around for five minutes, looking for someone to ask. Eventually, she knocked on a door labeled Waitress #1 and found an actress that she’d seen in a ketchup commercial changing into a waitress uniform. After being disappointed that the flowers in Lyndi’s hands weren’t for her, the ketchup actress kindly pointed her to the makeup trailer.
The door was opened by a round-faced young man in a checkered shirt with a shiny collar. His hair stood up straight from his head, revealing a comb tucked behind his ear. His eyes lit up at the sight of the flowers.
“Hi, I’m from the Favorite Flower, I have a delivery for—”
“Sophia, darling!” he called over his shoulder. “Your weekly proof of devotion has arrived!”
The young man ushered Lyndi into the trailer, which was expansive, a stylist’s studio on wheels. And there, sitting in one of the well-lit chairs, having a small trail of blood painted coming out of the corner of her mouth, was Vanessa Faire.
Just about the biggest new star in Hollywood.
Lyndi nearly dropped the flowers.
“Soph, better get your flowers before they fall on the floor,” Vanessa Faire said in that catlike purr she was so well known for.
“I told you no talking,” the makeup artist painting the blood singsonged. “There,” she said finally, lifting her brush off of Vanessa’s perfect (and now perfectly wounded) face. The makeup artist turned to Lyndi and smiled wide. Her eyes sparked with joy seeing the flowers.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said, pushing a thick strand of dark hair behind her ear. “You can put them over there. Let me get my purse.”
“Oh. Oh! There’s no tip. Or, er, it’s already included in the bill,” Lyndi said, tearing her eyes away from Vanessa and back to the person who actually received the flowers. “Enjoy your bouquet!”
“Thank you. They’re gorgeous,” Sophia said.
“Just like your Sebastian,” the young man in the checkered shirt said, as Lyndi turned to step down from the makeup trailer.
“Just like your love,” Vanessa said with emphasis. “Do they smell as nice as they look?”
Just before the door closed on Lyndi, she heard Sophia say, “Huh. That’s funny. They smell kind of like pennies.”