Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

22

Elliot

THREE YEARS, ONE WEEK, AND SIX DAYS AGO

Ama’s cat is a menace.

We locked Lady Cat-ryn out of the bedroom, and still I woke up to a paw swiping at my face. The cat can open doors.

I’m appalled by this revelation, but Ama just nods sleepily and nudges the cat off the bed.

“Do you even like cats?”

“Mm-hmm,” she says as she curls up against my side. “They’re my favorite.”

Ama’s out in an instant, but I’m just staring at this cat who is sitting between me and the door, flicking her tail at me.

Contrary to what I believed of her, Ama does own a fridge and a stove, and she does eat other things aside from sugary crap in the morning. But by nine she’s tugging on my sleeve to get dressed so we can hit J Street Donuts on the way to the shop.

We haven’t had another conversation about what this is exactly. All I know is that if I want it to keep going, I should probably not label things. I’m still waiting for that moment when she gets tired of me being around or scared of this noncommittal committed relationship. But when I gave her two drawers and six hangers last month, she was ecstatic. And she shows no signs of being tired of my presence. For the past three weeks, she’s been spending ninety percent of her time at Blooming, working in a corner on her emails or designs and running out to get lunch for us about midday.

“You don’t have to stick around if you have work to do,” I tell her one day in October as I’m watching the clock tick toward five.

She looks up at me from where she’s been typing furiously at her laptop. “No! I love working here. I feel inspired, you know?”

I stare at the fertilizer and spare pots and vases on either side of her. “Okay …”

“I could set up a desk and run my business back here forever.” She gestures to the mess and rotting baseboards, and I try to see what she’s seeing.

“As long as I’m not keeping you.” I head back to the front counter to write up an invoice. “You could, you know,” I call back to her. “Set up a desk. It’s not much but … if you don’t mind the smell of fertilizer … and promise not to eat donuts—”

“Are you serious?”

She snuck up on me, now leaning in the doorway to the back room, a smile playing around her lips.

I shrug. “Yeah. I like having you around. Keeps the day interesting.”

Her eyes are glittering. “What if I were to take meetings back there? Not now, while it looks like this, obviously,” she says. “But … what if you were to move further into installations … and I were to start offering custom installation packages through you?”

My brows draw together. “It’s kind of what we’re already doing, right?”

“But officially. If—if—you ever decide to build a showroom back there, then I’d be meeting with clients in the middle of it.” She’s starting to speak quickly, ideas flowing, hands casting spells. “It wouldn’t be a partnership in business terms, but it could be—could be, I don’t know. Something new. Something that’s only really done in San Francisco and LA. If they want Ama Torres, they’re getting Elliot Bloom. If they want Blooming, they’re pushed toward Ama Torres.” She takes a breath. “Okay, that sounds … a little more opportunistic than I meant it to be, but—”

“It’s like having a Starbucks in the middle of your department store,” I say, seeing where she’s going.

“Exactly! It’s like, ‘Oh, now that I’m here, ya know what? I do want a Unicorn Frappuccino,’ or ‘I really only wanted a latte, but the shoe department is right there.’” Her eyes are bright, and I nod in agreement. I feel cautious though. Like maybe I’d be getting the better deal.

“I dunno,” she says, running a hand through her hair. “Maybe it’s elitist or exclusionary? Like, you might lose a lot of business from wedding planners and event coordinators who think you work exclusively with me.”

“Well, and the flip side,” I say. “You wouldn’t get to work with other florists or custom fabricators—”

“I don’t want to work with anybody else,” she cuts me off. “I want the best.”

I swallow thickly. I want to tell her that I’m only at my best when I’m working with her. But I think she knows it. I think she sees the whole picture here.

“It’s something to consider after my mom’s wedding,” I say. She beams at me. “You know, legally—for business reasons, you might have to pay me rent in something other than sex.”

“Donuts?”

I glare at her. “No.”

For the rest of the day, I fill an order, and she finishes up calling vendors before heading off to meet my mother. When I agreed to Ama doing my mother’s wedding, there were some things I didn’t think about. Namely, my mother and Ama meeting for coffee or vendor meetings once a week. There’s no reason for me to be there with them, seeing as Ama thinks we were quite sly about her coming in for her purse. She has no idea my mom knows we’re fucking. But every Thursday, my mother and my not-girlfriend sit at a café downtown to plan a wedding, and I stare at the wall of the shop, bouncing my knee for that entire hour.

Mom wants the wedding before the end of the year, and she has the budget to do it fast. Ama suggested a classy New Year’s Eve wedding, which my mom loved. Ama’s been hustling every day, trying to make it happen. She’ll show up at my place at eleven some nights, either bursting with ideas or slipping her jeans off. Sometimes both. When I get the text on my way now, I don’t know whether to brew a cup of Keurig and clear the coffee table or get hard.

Ama likes working on the floor around my coffee table—she also likes fucking on my coffee table, so you see the dilemma I’m in?—mainly because she doesn’t have a coffee table. Mine’s an IKEA thing that I’ve had since college and doesn’t match any of my furniture. One night after she’s dissected what we’ll need to do with the centerpieces—and after she’s writhed under me on my scratchy rug—I say, “I need a new coffee table.”

“Oh, can I have this one?!”

There’s a kid-at-Christmas joy in her eyes, like I’m giving away a Barbie Dream House. “You want it? This one?”

“Yeah, it’ll make me think of you. All of you.” She lifts her brows suggestively and kisses me so deeply that we end up fucking on said coffee table for the second time that week.

The next day, we’re coffee table shopping, and the day after that, we’re moving my old one into her house.

I lie in bed with her that night, my fingers playing with her hair. It’s November already. We’ve been doing this not-a-relationship thing for three months, and six weeks ago was the last time I slept alone. I keep waiting for the day she decides we’re done. I poke and prod at her rules of the game. I suggest we take a trip to Napa before wedding season starts next year. She loves that plan. I ask if she wants me at Mar’s birthday party, which she’s planning. “Of course I do!” she says. Her mother gets engaged, and she talks like I’m not just doing the flowers. She talks like I’m going to be her wedding date. Like she’ll introduce me to people there.

And the biggest dent in her rules—she keeps making plans for our combined studio space, wrapping herself around me, intertwining our lives for the future. Like she doesn’t see an ending.

After my mother’s wedding next month, I’m going to ask her if we can redefine the rules. She may not believe in relationships, but that’s what we’re in. She may not care to introduce me as her boyfriend, but I’d like to bring her to dinner with my mother and Stefan sometime. She may not need to define long-term, but to me, forever sounds nice.

If she doesn’t want to adjust her rules, I’ll be fine with it, I guess. But I need her to know I already think of us as long-term. I already see the business signs and the trips out of town and the slow dances in white dresses—even if she doesn’t want to name it.

She’s tapping away at her phone absentmindedly next to me in bed. I turn to her.

“What do you like most about weddings?”

“The proposal,” she answers quickly.

I look at her. “The part you have nothing to do with?”

Blinking rapidly, she looks at me. “Oh, wow. Yeah, I guess so.” She puts her phone down and twists on her side to face me. “Did you mean, like, flowers or food or DJs?”

I shrug. “No. Just what makes weddings the thing you want to do?”

“I like individualizing the wedding to the couple most. I love when I feel like I’ve truly nailed them. And for me, the proposal story is the thing that tells me exactly what to give them.”

My thumb swipes her bangs away from her eyes. “Why’s that?”

She thinks on it. “You really learn who a person is when they’re afraid, you know? And anyone who says they’re not afraid to propose is lying. I think the proposee has a moment too. Just terrified. ‘Is yes the right decision? Is this really how he’s proposing? I can’t believe he waited ten years; isn’t that a bad sign? Did I pressure him into doing this?’”

The questions spiral out of her, like steam from a kettle.

“I also think how the proposal is done is really telling. Specifically about the groom—or proposer.”

I don’t even need clarification on that. It makes sense.

“When they tell me about the proposal,” she says, “I get such a glimpse into them as a couple. It’s invaluable. One time, a couple refused to tell me! They said they’d prefer to keep it private, and I swear to god, that was the worst wedding I’ve ever done. It was under Whitney.”

She laughs and picks up her phone again.

I feel my heart pounding, and I can’t figure out why until the words spill out: “How would you like it?”

She turns. “Being proposed to?”

I nod, and it feels like I’m flying too close. Like maybe we could have held on to this moment forever if only I didn’t have to ask—but I have to ask. There’s a part of my heart that’s been planted for three months too long, unable to break the surface and stretch toward the light.

“What kind of fireworks do you want? A surprise or not? Intimate or crowds?” I say. “What do you imagine?”

Her eyes are soft, and I wonder if that fear that she’s talking about is there. The Is this right?

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t imagine. I don’t want one.”

I think I hear her. I think I understand. I think that there’s no complication, no oversimplification. I don’t want a proposal.

Especially when she leans forward and kisses me, tossing her phone away and running her hands over the kadupul tattoo. Her lips follow, curving over to kiss my inked shoulder blade. She’s done this dozens of times now, almost as if she has to say good night to each of them. She presses soft lips against my thigh and my calf, her tongue traces the cry violet at my ribs. She sucks at the two on my arms, and then she finally moves down the bed to where I’m hard again. Her mouth moves over me, and I’m lost to it all. Her tongue savors me, and my hands slide into her hair.

But I think I’ve heard her.

She doesn’t want a proposal. No spectacle.

I file it away for the day she finally tells me we can talk about forever.