Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

13

Elliot

THREE YEARS, FOUR MONTHS, TWO WEEKS, AND TWO DAYS AGO

She might have outdone herself. I’ve done a fair number of weddings and events at the Old Sugar Mill, but none quite like this.

She’s rented tents and silks that seem to add to the height of the room instead of limit it. There are lamps hidden somewhere that are casting enough light over the ceiling to draw your eye up. She did farmhouse tables instead of rounds, and I’m just here to sprinkle some magic in.

I’m dragging the dolly into the reception venue when I finally catch sight of her. She’s got a Bluetooth in an ear, and she’s distributing a stack of name cards onto the table. She waves at me but doesn’t move to come say hi.

Which is fine.

Whatever.

We’re working.

I take my hand truck back to the parking lot to load up more flowers. I’m just stopping at the fork in the path where a basket of flowers will sit next to a sign directing the guests, when she appears out of nowhere, moving quickly.

“Oh, good! Can you grab the sandwich board and set it up? It’s against the wall.” She points and runs.

Before I can say no, she’s gone. Sighing, I heave the basket into one arm and grab the top of the sandwich board with the other. When I flip it over, the name of the wedding and the date are beautifully drawn in chalk, along with the social media hashtags. I kick it open and set it on the path, positioning the basket in front of it. I’m fixing the arrangement as I hear her heels click back from the parking lot.

“Great! Move it to the right of the path?”

I glare at her over my shoulder, but by the time her short legs have reached me, I’ve dragged it all to the other side.

“Awesome. Can you come be tall for me?”

And then she’s gone again.

“Be tall?” I call after her.

“Yeah! Two seconds!” She spins in a circle to respond, but continues her pace inside.

“Ama, you need an assistant!” She waves her hand over her head like she heard me. “Preferably a tall one,” I mumble.

I follow her back inside, catching up with her quickly. She snatches a poorly folded napkin from the table as she walks and, without breaking stride, hands it to the setup crew with the exact seat number she took it from.

“Whitney would be proud,” I say with a bit of a mocking tone.

She doesn’t pick up on it. “Really? You think so?” Looking me over, she says, “You look nice.”

And so dies my focus and confidence, in one fell swoop. I run a hand through my hair nervously. It’s just a plaid button-up and my best jeans, but the fact that she noticed anything means it’s too much. I knew I didn’t need to construct anything here, just bring the dolly back and forth to unload the centerpieces.

“Okay,” Ama says, pointing upward to the canopy. “This strand of lights got tugged and unplugged.”

“Ama … Not even I can reach this. It’s like, ten feet up.”

She nods jerkily. “Right. Okay. So maybe you can lift me and I’ll …”

“Get out of here.” I wave her off. “I’ll find a ladder.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she says. She squeezes my arm, and before I can wonder what she’s doing so close to my face, her lips peck my jaw.

She’s gone before she can see the heat spread across my neck. I run my knuckles over the spot, hoping there’s no lipstick there now, and watch her snatch two more napkins on her way outside to the ceremony seating.

By the time I find a ladder, fix the plug, and carry it back to the storage closet, she’s hot on my heels.

“God, Elliot. I fucked up.”

I look at her over my shoulder as I walk the ladder back into the closet. “Fucked up?”

“There’s not enough of them.” She’s frazzled, her eyes wild and her voice bubbling. “The centerpieces.”

My eyes move past her to where I can just make out the edge of the tables. “You can’t spread them out?”

“They’re too spread out.” Her hand drags through her hair, and I try not to watch the way it falls over her face again. “It’s not the floral. Honestly. It’s the rental. The globes and lights. I needed three more per table.”

I shut the closet door and move to get a better look at the reception area. It’s something I would see only if she’d pointed it out to me. Which she has. And now it’s all I see.

“I just didn’t want to overwhelm the tables, since this is much more minimalistic. Let the room shine, you know?” she says. “But now I think I should have just gone with floral. Do you have any spare vases in the truck? To hijack some of the arrangements and spread them out a bit?”

“When they’re glass, I bring spares, but these are buckets, so …”

She bites her lip, staring at the room in displeasure. “Can you run back to the shop and whip something up?”

“Whip something up?” I repeat drily. “Doesn’t the wedding start in an hour? It’s thirty minutes back to the shop alone.”

“The ceremony will take about forty-five minutes.” Her eyes are wide and begging. “Please, Elliot. This is so embarrassing. I thought I nailed it. I really did. I’ve been dreaming of designing this venue for three years—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I grab the dolly and wheel it to the parking lot. She’s yelling her thank-yous and apologies after me, and some sick part of my brain wonders if she’ll kiss my face again when it’s done.

The Old Sugar Mill is on a narrow road that runs along the Sacramento River, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room for speeding. I get back to the shop with ideas spinning in my mind already. I drag a box down with the rest of the buckets and take another box that has smaller versions. She had good instincts about minimalism, so I think peppering in the smaller versions along the empty spaces actually complements the original idea well.

My hands work on autopilot for twenty minutes, pulling white roses and eucalyptus stems from all directions. By the time I’m loading up the truck again, the wedding is ten minutes from starting.

When I arrive back, I can hear someone reading “Love is patient, love is kind” over the mic in the back garden as I load the cart. The rusty wheel isn’t meant for sneaking into a wedding that’s already started, so I move slowly to the side door of the reception. Once I’m indoors, I see Ama notice me from her post outside the glass doors, watching the ceremony. She slips inside and speeds to me as I pull the cart up to the first table.

“Smaller versions. They won’t overwhelm—”

“This is so perfect. God, it looks like I had a plan all along.” She takes two from me and crosses to the other end of the table.

“You did have a plan. It was good,” I say.

She tosses me a smile. “Throw these on a separate invoice? I may have to pay it myself.”

I’m about to do the very gentlemanly no charge thing, but then I see her fingers rip out a petal from one of the roses. Then two more.

“This one’s dead,” she says, yanking the whole bloom and stem out of the bundle.

“It’s not dead. It’s a fungal disease—”

“You want me to leave the disease-ridden ones?”

“I’m saying they’re leftovers.”

“And I’m just making them not look like leftovers,” she says matter-of-factly. Her eyes jump to the ceremony on the lawn and her hand comes up to the Bluetooth in her ear. “Got it,” she says. “I’ll be there in thirty seconds.” She spins to me. “Can you spread them? Get the smaller ones in the middle, larger on the ends?”

She pushes open the door and is gone. I move through the tables, respacing. When she ducks her head in again, I’m just about done, but she says, “Do you have two double-A batteries?”

I blink at her. “No.”

“Can you ask the staff? The remote for the slideshow isn’t working. I used all my AAs last week and forgot to restock.”

I scowl and say, “Ama, you need an assistant.”

“I have two today!” she says cheerfully, as if that answers my problem, then shuts the door again.

I roll my shoulders back and head into the catering room, asking all the workers what they might have with them or in their car. Finally the venue manager takes pity on me and opens the small flashlight she keeps in her purse. She pours the used batteries into my hand and I meet Ama at the door with them.

“Okay, is that it?” I ask with as much sarcasm as possible, but she just smiles and thanks me.

When she shuts the door on me, I jog to drag the cart around the side of the building, making as much noise as I want. I get to the back lawn just as the guests are coming to their feet for the walk down the aisle, and I barely wait for the last person to clear the chairs before starting to break down the ceremony floral. Some of it gets repurposed, some just gets donated.

Once it’s loaded in the truck, I pause in the parking lot. I should just jump in and head back to the shop—come back for cleanup. I get some guys in the afternoon coming in for flowers for Saturday night, but generally it’s slow. No phone orders until weekdays. I’d only be missing the vendor meal, as good as it is, but getting away from Ama’s insane requests and burgundy-tinted mouth seems like a bigger priority.

I’m closing the tailgate when my phone buzzes. It’s a text from Ama.

I saved us some canapés

I could leave right now. I should leave.

But instead, I’m texting Ben to ask if he can swing by the shop. I’m walking back to the side door and trekking through the now swarming winery as the guests run to drink as much free wine as they can.

She’s just beyond the door to the kitchen and has a napkin with a few quiche-looking things. Her eyes light up when she sees me, and maybe that’s worth it. I eat the appetizer and hum in surprise while she talks to someone on her Bluetooth.

“So good, right? There’s more, too. I’ll grab them.”

I’m still chewing when she disappears, trying to figure out if I’m her plus one to this wedding.

I hover in the kitchen and look through the window to the main hall. It’s gorgeous. Once the happy couple have made their way into the reception, Ama moves back toward me, jerking her head for me to follow her down a hall. She’s carrying a large tote bag.

“Do you think it looks nice?” she says, opening a door to a room where they store the wine. It’s huge and empty, except for the barrels stacked in pyramids against the wall.

“Yeah. You were right about the centerpieces. What’s … what’s this?”

“I need to put votive candles”—she takes a Walmart-sized bag of candles and a bundle of paper bags out of her tote just then—“into these paper bags. Kinda like a lantern thing. They’ll be outside when the sun goes down.”

“Why don’t you have an assistant for this?”

She rips open the bag of votive candles on the flat top of a barrel. “They’re monitoring the catering. And they’re mostly my younger stepsiblings, so I don’t fully trust them with fire.”

I feel wrung out, like all my energy got sucked from me. And I feel incredibly stupid for some reason. Even though I was contracted to be here, as her vendor, I’m not acting like her vendor.

“I can’t help with that.” My voice is gruff. Her eyes snap up to me.

“Okay. You need to get back, huh?”

Her hands are still moving quickly to open bags and tilt up wicks, and I’m irritated that she can’t just pause for a second and hear me be mad at her.

“You need another assistant. Probably a tall one. Because I can’t show up on Saturdays and help you run things.”

“No, yeah. Of course!” She smiles brightly, and that pisses me off more.

“And bill me for the publicity and marketing lessons you and Mar gave me last month. I appreciate the new shots I got for the website and Instagram, but I can’t have you just dropping in and taking over my store like that.”

My words are sharp, and she finally stops with the candles. “Okay—”

“And stop bringing goddamn donuts to my shop.” I point my finger in her face. “I don’t eat them. They’re disgusting. And you leave the box every time—”

“Maybe you need to try one to know if they’re disgusting!” She plants her hands on her hips.

“They’re unprofessional, Ama. I don’t want them in my shop.”

Something clicks behind her eyes. Her jaw tightens.

“Well, you won’t have them or me in your shop anymore,” she says hotly. “There are plenty of florists—”

“Oh, please,” I snap. “You think they’ll bend over backward for your attitude at Relles? Run errands back to the shop and let you slide into their DMs at eleven o’clock?”

She laughs, and there’s a sparking of flint behind her dark eyes. “If you don’t want me messaging you in bed, Elliot, you can just respond in the morning.” My eyes narrow at her, but she cuts me off. “What you do isn’t that special. I can get wedding arches and chandeliers made in San Francisco with much less fuss.”

“Fuss? I’m the fuss? You’re the fuss.”

“I don’t fuss!”

“You’re fussing right now!”

She steps around the barrel, poking her own finger back at me, and I want to grab her. “You’re the one who’s throwing a tantrum about a few votive candles. Just go. Send me a fucking bill for all the time you wasted today.”

I’m about to pivot and stomp off, but I find myself stepping toward her instead. “Get a fucking assistant. Don’t ask whatever chump you can bat your lashes at to grab ladders”—she gasps, outraged—“or redesign your reception tables.”

“Oh, boo-hoo. Add your emotional damage to your invoice. I’ll pay you one hundred dollars for skulking around to look for batteries today. And hey,” she snarls. My blood is pounding in my ears. “Here’s a pro tip. Don’t give every girl who ‘bats their lashes’ at you a rare South American flower. You’ll go out of business.”

My breath is heaving in my chest. I’m so close to her, I could kiss her if I only stepped forward—

And I guess she’s thinking the exact same thing because her hands reach up for my shoulders as I grab her waist. Two arms wind around my neck as she pushes herself against me.

The press of her lips on mine sets everything in my chest on fire, and my fingers curl into her hair like a lifeline. We stumble backward, and my shoulders land on the brick wall. I hear myself groan.

She’s tugging my head down to hers greedily, pressing herself close and keeping my back against the bricks. Her lips puff air against mine between rough kisses, and I want to pause and ask her—Which of us did this? But her fingers are in my hair and her tongue is slipping into my mouth, and my head spins.

I hear a soft sound from her throat, a mewl, a moan, and my hand tilts her head back, angling to kiss her deeper. It happens again when my other arm slips over her waist, our tongues dancing and lips nipping.

Her breath is hot against my mouth when she pauses, and as I open my eyes, I prepare for the worst—for her panicked expression or even laughing at me. But before my eyelids flutter open, her mouth is on my jaw, just where she kissed me earlier today.

My cock twitches, and I know she can feel it. She can feel everything with how close she’s pressed.

When her teeth run across my pulse, a groan pours out of my throat, and my arms wrap around her back, pulling her impossibly closer. She starts sucking on my neck, just above the collar, and I may pass out.

“Ama …”

Her fingers curl into my shoulders, and a whine pops from her throat. My hands move along her spine, lower and lower, and when her backside curves perfectly from her low back, my hips roll into her without permission. She gasps against my neck, and quickly forces our mouths together again.

I can’t bring myself to slide my hands down to her ass—her spectacular ass that she doesn’t even know I want in every way. I’m kissing her back with little to no finesse, completely overwhelmed by her body on mine, her mouth on mine, her tongue everywhere. Her teeth are becoming rougher, her mouth more insistent. I can hardly breathe.

Her hands disappear from my shoulders and start rucking up my shirt, pressing it higher until she has her fingers on my stomach.

I’m so fucking hard. My hands slip lower, and just my fingertips are curving over her backside, and then I feel I might dissolve into syllables and moans for the rest of my life.

I feel her hands dancing against my waist. And then the harsh click of my belt opening.

I grip her hips and push her back. Her mouth tugs from mine, and I swiftly turn to the side. “Okay, okay, okay,” I mutter. “Yeah, okay.”

“What’s wrong?” She’s breathless. And I wish I could see her face—see if her eyes are bright, if she’s flushed, see what her lips look like after I’ve kissed them. But I’m gonna come if I look at her. If I have my hands on her body for one more second, I’ll be done for.

So I say the first stupid thing that comes to my mind.

“Are you in charge of this wedding or what?”

I’m trying to catch my breath when I hear her scoff. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t you have to get back?”

Fuck, my dick is hard. Pressing against my zipper. My open belt mocks me.

“Are you joking?” Her voice is sharp. Angry.

I press my eyes shut and twist back to her, leaning back on the wall for support. “I’m sorry. I’m just … I’m gonna come.”

I’m back in freshman year, finding out from Madison Bailey and a room full of her friends that completion during Seven Minutes in Heaven is not impressive at all. Fuck, I really gotta get over this Madison chick.

She shifts, and I’m half hoping she’s leaving. I feel her warmth before I see her.

“That’s kinda the point.” Her breath is hot over my neck.

My eyes flutter open to her, and it’s worse. She’s flushed, she’s electric, she’s beautiful. Her lipstick isn’t even smeared, but there’s something about her mouth that makes it clear I’ve kissed her.

Her hands rise to my button and zipper slowly.

“It’s gonna be real quick,” I warn her.

She smiles. “Good. ’Cause I have a wedding to get back to …”

She tilts her head up to kiss me again, and my zipper slides down in the silence. My breath is quick and heavy, but I kiss her slowly, maybe a bit sloppy. She reaches down into my jeans and my air stutters out of me.

“Oh,” she whispers. My eyes can barely open with the soft press of her fingers over my briefs, but I panic now.

“What? What is it?”

Her gaze is aimed at my chin, but out of focus. Her lips are pulled into a beautiful oh, and if I wasn’t afraid she’s about to tell me something is wrong with my dick, I’d be kissing her again. Her fingers stretch, gliding down the length of my shaft, and I see her eyelashes flutter just as mine need to do the same.

“Everything’s good,” she says with a smile. “Everything’s really good.”

She looks up at me with some kind of secret smile, and I must be telling her I don’t get it with my expression.

“You’re a good size,” she clarifies, a blush staining her cheeks. She starts to rub me through my briefs, soft but firm. She’s staring right at me, and I can’t look away. Not while her hand is doing that to me.

“Oh, good. Yeah. Great,” I stammer.

And then she reaches into my briefs, and we’re back to the edge of climax. I grab her face and pull her to kiss me. I can feel her smile against my lips. She wraps her fingers around me and starts to pump.

I’m gonna fuck her. I’m gonna fuck her one day, and I’ll drive her just as crazy. She’s got her mouth open, accepting me as I taste her over and over. My hips are starting to jerk. She hasn’t even begun and I’m gonna pop. I moan into her mouth and she squeezes me harder—faster—

“Elliot,” she whimpers, and that’s the end.

White flashes behind my eyes. My mind bursts with color and sound. I’m emptying myself into my jeans with her hand pumping me quickly, her sweet breath on my face, her lips brushing softly over the corner of my mouth.

When I can open my eyes, she’s pulling her hand out of my jeans. I grab her wrist and clean her fingers on the inside of my shirt. Before she can say anything, I turn us around, press her into the wall, and push my tongue into her mouth. She gasps, and I kiss her deeper. My hands reach for the edge of her dress and roll it up her thighs.

She smiles against my cheek as I move to kiss her neck. “I have to get back.” She sounds wistful, undetermined.

“I can be quick,” I whisper into her ear. I slide her dress up to her waist, and finally fill my hands with her ass. She groans, and I suck at her pulse, slipping my fingers around to dip into the lace.

A soft beep beep sounds from somewhere, and before I can put together what it is, she reaches up to the Bluetooth that’s magically still in her ear, and taps it. “This is Ama.” I can’t hear what the other person says, but she replies, “Great. I’m on my way.”

“No, don’t,” I say once she ends the call. “Let me be quick.”

“I have to go. Catering needs to move their asses, apparently.” She smiles and brushes her hand through her hair.

I run my fingers over the band of lace across her belly. “I promise I can—”

She grabs my jaw and kisses me deep. It’s goodbye, but I have to try.

“I need to know how wet you are,” I whisper against her lips. “I need to know …” My fingers dance over the lace.

Her eyes are warm, and her lips are mischievous when she says, “Next time.”

She pushes my shoulders, and I step back reluctantly. There’s a mess in my jeans I need to deal with sooner rather than later, but I don’t want this to end.

With barely a tug to her dress, she’s ready to go back out. And I’m suddenly ashamed how different our experiences were. I shouldn’t have let her hand in my pants until I’d gotten her off.

But the echo of next time hums in my blood as she tosses a smile over her shoulder, tugs the door open, and waltzes out.

I stand alone for a few minutes, trying to figure out what just happened and how to make it happen again. I set up twenty of her votive candles before gingerly walking back to my truck, hoping my gym clothes are still under the seat.