Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

15

Elliot

THREE YEARS, FOUR MONTHS, AND TWO WEEKS AGO

Toward the end of their marriage, my father and mother were clearly not seeing eye to eye on much anymore. He wanted to send me to science camp; she signed me up for a set-building apprenticeship at the local theater. He wanted to buy a larger house in the suburbs; she had a political career taking off and needed to be close to the capitol. He liked scrambled; she liked over easy.

But the one thing they would have agreed on is that I should have called Ama on Sunday.

Dad would have argued Saturday night on her way home, just to be ornery. And Mom would have countered that I never should have left—I should have been there to walk her to her car.

Even with Dad dead and Mom clearly not being told about the hand job I got at a stranger’s wedding, I am their son enough to know that by Monday morning, I’ve fucked it.

I drag myself into the shop early to try to get my head on straight. Calling her today is better than calling her never, so that’s on my to-do list, but there’s a message on the shop voicemail already. It’s eight a.m.

Hi, it’s Ama.

My muscles freeze, and I turn to the black box that holds my fate.

I have a couple who wants a chandelier for their wedding in June. It’s short notice, again, and I’m sorry. I’m bringing them in today to hopefully sweet-talk you into it.

I can hear the smile in her words before the message ends. I run my hand through my hair, looking around the shop a bit helplessly. I look up at the chandelier I have hanging above my head. Should I refresh some of the flowers?

Instead, I replay the message, hoping to get a read on how she feels about what happened on Saturday. Maybe the lift in her vowels says she can’t wait to see me again. Maybe I’m not imagining the hum of sweet-talk pouring out of her smiling lips.

It’s only five minutes past opening when the door tugs open and my father’s bell announces visitors. A young couple enters, looking around, and Ama shuts the door behind them. They’re commenting on how “cute” the shop is as I meander back to the counter.

“I know, right?” Ama says to them. “This is Elliot Bloom. It was his father’s place before he took over, and he’s transitioning into custom installations too.”

I’m almost annoyed that she’s talking about me instead of to me, but then she steps up to the counter and produces a pink donut box with a sly grin to meet my scowl. Like she knows the donuts push my buttons, and she brought them anyway.

I meet the couple, decline a donut, and try to have a normal conversation with the bride about a baby’s breath chandelier while Ama leans against my front counter, doing suggestive things with a cinnamon twist bar. Either that or I’ve completely lost my mind and she’s just eating a donut like a normal person.

As the bride tells me how much she hates baby’s breath and can we find an alternative in the chandelier, my eyes catch on Ama as she looks me dead in the eye, parts her dark, full lips, and slips the long donut between them slowly—way more of it than necessary.

“Do you think that would work?” the woman asks me, and I have to trace back the last words I heard before Ama decided to deep-throat a donut in front of me.

“Absolutely,” I croak, then clear my throat. “There are options besides baby’s breath.” I take her through a few possibilities before we settle on hydrangeas in white.

Once I confirm that the chandelier is all they need, Ama starts walking them to the door, and I feel my moment slipping through my fingers. I see the pink box still open on the counter.

“Take your donuts,” I bark after her.

She spins to me at the door. “Oh, I know how much you love them.” Her lips curve and her lashes flutter. And then she says, “I’ll be right back,” and lets the door swing closed behind her.

I glare at the offending box, tempted to just throw it in the trash and lock the door behind her. It’s not that I have an irrational hatred of deep-fried dough; it’s that Laura Gilbert didn’t keep sugar in the house. Therefore, I don’t drink soda, eat Halloween candy, or order ice cream. It made me a real popular kid, clearly.

I pick up one of the frosted monstrosities, and I can feel the sugar seeping into my skin through osmosis. I’ll try it so I can tell her I hate it, and that will be the end of that.

I shove the dough into my mouth, and the second I chew, I know it’s a mistake. I see the virtues. I do. But for someone who doesn’t put cream in their coffee because it makes it too sweet, I can barely get it down. I throw away the rest of the donut and do my best to swallow. It was filled with something too, and now that’s on my tongue. I close the box, push it toward the edge of the counter, and hope she just takes them with her.

I start cleaning up. I’m not just gonna stand around and wait for her to come back in. I’m in the back when I hear the bell over the door, and it should irritate me how she just waltzes into the back room.

“You should consider a showroom.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m serious.” She moves to the solitary worktable and pulls herself up on it. “If you want to continue doing custom installations, you’ll need a studio, Elliot.”

I look away from the flutter of her dress on her thighs and grumble, “I made a couple of things. I’m not converting the shop just to play ball with Whitney’s high-end clients. My dad would never have wanted that.”

She seems to think about it. “Why not both? What about the back room?” She looks around, and I can see her designing the space like she designs a reception. “If you had some clever storage in here, you could have whatever you want while still using the walls and floor space for a showroom.” She turns back to me. “Does Whitney even know what you’ve been making? She really should contract you more.”

“Whitney Harrison Weddings follows me on Instagram, but I know—”

“That means nothing,” she finishes for me, nodding. “It’s all assistants. You can reach out? Tell her what you’re intending to do more of in case she ever wants more than just centerpieces.”

I reach for a leftover bundle of astilbe next to where she’s sitting on the table. “You’re still really loyal to her, huh?”

Her eyes glitter back at me. “Yeah. She made me everything I am today.”

I have to disagree with her there, but that’s for another day. “What have I told you about walking around my shop like you own it?” I say softly, looking down to where she’s sitting in the middle of my workstation.

Her lips press together. “Hm. That you love it?”

I shake my head and step closer. She parts her knees, and I almost drop to mine.

She hums again, tapping her chin. “Was it along the lines of ‘Thank you for bringing donuts to my place of work, and thank you for the free publicity you and your photographer gave me’?”

I place my hands on the table on either side of her hips and lean forward. She’s taller than me like this, and I think she likes it.

“You’ll have to forgive me forgetting,” she says, reaching forward to finger the button at my collar. “You were in those skinny jeans and that plaid shirt. It made you look like a missionary come to save my filthy soul.”

She presses forward, and her lips brush over my temple.

“Those aren’t skinny jeans,” I argue.

“I could barely get my hand in them,” she whispers against my cheek.

I swallow, and I know she hears it. I lift my hands from the table and place them gently on her knees. They open wider.

“Tell me where another tattoo is,” she sighs into my neck, feathering kisses along my jaw. “One of the other four. I’m desperate to know.”

My eyes flutter closed as her teeth skate over my ear. “There’s a cry violet on my ribs.”

“How endangered is it?” Her breath hitches as I glide my hands up her thighs.

“Very. Extinct.”

“I want to see. I want to see them all,” she whispers, and the air sends shivers across my shoulders. “I want to put my mouth on every last one of them.”

I’m half hard again. I grip her thighs, watching my hands as I drag the edge of her dress up to her hips. She’s sucking at my neck now, whimpering puffs of air as I reach the lace of her underwear. I skim over them, round her hips, up to her waist. I can almost touch my fingertips around her back.

My hands stretch upward, spanning over her stomach. I push the padding of her bra aside and find her nipples tight and hard. She whines and grabs my neck, pulling my mouth to hers. I can feel her shifting forward, bringing her center closer to mine. My tongue sweeps through her mouth, and my cock has gotten the message that yes, I’m going to fuck her on this table.

I flick at her breasts, rubbing softly over the tight skin. She gasps, and her knees bracket my hips. She’s panting into my mouth, wheezing. Her fingers curl into my collar, and just as I get the idea to pull her panties down and taste her, she pulls back from my mouth.

Her eyes look between each of mine quickly. “Did you … You had a donut?”

I laugh, sliding my hands down her stomach to hold her waist. “Caught me. It was disgusting. I hate them.”

She’s breathing hard, and there’s something behind her smile. “Okay, okay.” She looks down at the ground. “Okay, so—” There’s a rattle in her throat. “Everything’s good. But you need to call 9-1-1 and grab the EpiPen in my purse.”

I blink at her. And before I can ask if she’s joking—or take my fingers out of the waist of her panties—her eyes roll back and she slumps against my shoulder.

I’m frozen. Is she joking?

“What the fuck?”

I shake her. I tip her back and pull her eyelids back to check her eyes. My heart is struggling to pump because all the blood is still in my cock, but I think she said something about an EpiPen? I lay her on the table as gently as I can and search the room for her purse. My phone flies out of my hands as I yank it out of my pocket. It clatters on the floor and I have to go digging for it under a storage shelf. I come back to her and check her pulse while I dial 9-1-1.

“What’s your emergency?”

I stare at this beautiful girl I’ve clearly killed and say, “I don’t know, but she’s passed out? She said she has an EpiPen?”

“Does she have an allergy?”

“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know her!” I start digging in her purse, victoriously grabbing a tube before I realize it’s a tampon. “What do I do with an EpiPen?”

“Sir, what’s your location?”

I tell her the address as I finally locate the EpiPen.

“And this is her EpiPen? She indicated she had an allergy? Maybe peanuts?”

“She didn’t eat any peanuts! I was kissing her—”

I jerk my gaze to the front counter, where a purely innocent pink box sits.

“Did I just kill her with a peanut butter donut?”

“Sir, I’m sure she’s not dead, but she needs your help. Can you follow instructions?”

I’m thinking of Mrs. Tarico in third grade, who told me I have a terrible time following instructions.

“No. Probably not.”

Maybe this is shock. Maybe this is a dream. Has she been passed out for too long?

“Do you have the EpiPen, sir?”

“Yeah, what do I do with it?”

The woman talks me through some bullshit about orange to the skin, blue to the sky. I pull back the tab, shove it against her thigh, and listen to a hiss.

Ama sucks in air like a Disney princess waking up from a curse. And then promptly turns over and vomits on my workbench.

The hospital is only eight blocks away, so there are paramedics in my shop before I can properly react to the vomit and the shaking.

She won’t look me in the eyes as the EMTs load her up on a gurney, and it’s probably because I just tried to kill her. It may put a damper on what was turning out to be a truly incredible first date.

They have her wash her mouth out once they learn it was her tongue that came in contact with another person’s tongue that came in contact with peanut butter. I stand stupidly as they wrap her in a space blanket and wheel her out.

“Are you coming?” one of the guys asks.

“Uh, yes. Yes.” I grab my keys and her purse, flip the sign to CLOSED, and follow them into the ambulance.

When the nurses ask me to fill out forms for her, I can’t explain that I only just started touching her tits and I’m not really her boyfriend, so I spend twenty minutes in her purse, looking for information. Once they have her medical cards and driver’s license—birthday May 10—I sit in the waiting room until a blond woman approaches me two hours later. She doesn’t look like a doctor, but I stand when she says, “Are you Elliot?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She extends her hand with a wide smile. “I’m Cynthia, Ama’s mother.”

Well, fuck. “Hi, good. I mean, good to meet you.”

I shove my hands back in my pockets as soon as possible—the hands that had only hours ago been rubbing her daughter’s nipples—and say, “Is she better?”

“Yes, she’s good. They’ll release her momentarily.” Cynthia’s smile is sweet as honey, and I’m staring at her trying to find the pieces of Ama. She gets her dark hair from her dad, but I guess I can see her mother’s nose and the shape of her jaw. “So, you’re the florist that did my wedding in April!”

“Yes, uh-huh, yes, I am.” Good. That’s safe.

“And you’re also … dating my daughter?”

Not safe. “Um, no. Not as far as I know.”

“But you were kissing her …” Cynthia rolls her hand in the air as if casting a spell to make it so.

“Yeah. Yes. That’s … a medical fact.”

“On her chart, actually!” She laughs.

“Wonderful.”

“Mom, please don’t marry him,” I hear behind us. I turn to see Ama being rolled out in a wheelchair.

I’ve paralyzed her.

And before I can start mentally drafting up plans for widening doorways at the shop and installing ramps at my house, she stands up gingerly with her mother’s assistance.

“So, thanks for that EpiPen,” she says with a tight smile. “Nice to know you can keep a cool head under pressure.”

I feel like today was anything but “a cool head under pressure,” but I guess we’ll leave that between me and Josephine, the 9-1-1 operator.

“Yeah.” I nod. “So you’re allergic to peanut butter, but you buy a peanut butter donut anyway.”

“It’s wrapped separate.” She shrugs. I bristle at that. Like today’s events could be shrugged away. “Sorry I threw up on you.”

“Right. Well, I should go—clean that up.” I hand her purse to her and step back toward the sliding glass doors. There’s no formality here for ending a conversation in a hospital after your mouth has given the girl you like anaphylactic shock, so—

“Elliot, would you like to join us for lunch?” Cynthia asks with the sparkle of grandchildren in her eye.

I’m about to stammer a response when Ama cuts me off: “He’s gotta run the flower shop, Mom. And it’s not like I’m quite ready to head over for a martini at Bistro 33.” She heaves her purse up onto her shoulder and smiles at me. “I’ll see you at the Gordon wedding next Saturday.”

“Right. See you next Saturday.” I watch them walk toward the parking lot. Ama looks back at me once with a soft smile.

Once they’re gone, I turn in a circle a few times until I realize I came in the ambulance with her. I stick my hands in my pockets and walk back to the shop in the May breeze.