17
Thanksgiving, Three Years Ago
I became the owner of In Bloom at 12:01 a.m. on January 1. Stacy and I threw a party at the shop, a New Year’s Eve open house, where friends and customers dropped in and out. At midnight she made a speech and concluded it by taking a bow, handing me her keys, and declaring, “What’s mine is now yours.”
I had hoped to return to Prince Edward Island in the summer, but I wasn’t confident enough to leave the shop yet. Bridget was dating Miles, so she brought him home with her instead. Not wanting to miss our girls’ trip entirely that year, she convinced me to join her for a few nights over the Thanksgiving long weekend in early October.
I’d never been to PEI in the fall before, and Bridget said to bring sunglasses, a hat, and my warm sweaters. It was a sunny autumn, but it could get chilly. As I rolled up my clothing, I couldn’t help but think about seeing Felix again. It had been a year and a half since I’d seen him, and I wanted to look good in an effortless, breezy way. Not that we’d be repeating what happened the last time I visited. I would avoid narrow hallways, looking at his hands, and steam-filled bathrooms. I would keep my clothes on—and my towel on, too—no matter how suggestively his eyes sparkled or what words came out of his hot mouth.
Besides, I had just ended a four-month thing with a firefighter, and for all I knew, Felix was seeing someone. What I did know about him from Bridget didn’t involve his love life. He had scored a cheap flight to Lisbon and taken
off with a backpack. It was his first trip overseas, a short holiday before he and Zach began to work in earnest on the design plans for Salt Cottages. Our flight landed Friday morning, Felix’s that night.
Five minutes before Bridget and I left for the airport, I removed my nicest lace underwear from my suitcase, and then threw them back in again. Always good to have an extra pair. It had nothing to do with Felix. I was committed to rule number two—Felix and I would not be sleeping together again. This trip would not end up like the last one.
As soon as we stepped onto the tarmac, Bridget sprinted toward the bathroom. She had a bladder the size of an acorn and refused to use the toilet on the plane. While she waited in line, I went straight to the Cows Creamery cow, giving the statue a pat on its pink snout.
Ken drove us to Summer Wind. It was a postcard-perfect fall day. The roads were lined with pumpkin stands and the yellow and orange leaves that still clung to their branches shone in striking contrast to the sky. Most tourists to Prince Edward Island visited in the summer. They roamed Green Gables Heritage House, stuffed themselves silly with lobster, wiggled their toes in the sand at Cavendish Beach, bought tickets to Anne of Green Gables—The Musical, golfed. But early October was so stunning, I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful time or place. The colors of the island always astounded me— how green the grass, the neon canola fields, the rich rust of the soil and sand, the purple streaks of lupines. But under the bright blue fall skies, everything seemed more vivid. It felt like after the clammer of the summer high season, the island began to flat-out brag.
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers,” Anne Shirley said, and now I knew why.
Christine welcomed me with the same rib-squeezing hugs she gave Bridget, and I was directed to carry my bag up to Felix’s bedroom. He’d bought his own place on the eastern side of the island, and his bookshelf was gone, but otherwise the room looked the same. The antique post and spindle bed with a red-and-blue quilt folded at the end. A small desk under the window. Zero artwork. I unpacked my things and with them a memory of my
last night here—the hard thrust of Felix’s hips, the heat of his eyes on mine in the mirror, the ends of his hair curling in the steam. His Tic Tac kisses.
I want you to call me Felix.
I pushed it all aside, then went to the bathroom to douse my face in cold water. I needed to pull myself together before he arrived.
Bridget and I had just returned from a walk on the beach when Christine announced, “Bad news. Wolf’s flight was canceled. Mechanical issues. The earliest one he’s found is Wednesday morning.”
My stomach dropped. Bridget and I were leaving Tuesday. I shook off the disappointment. I should be celebrating—no Felix meant I would get through the weekend unscathed. This was a good thing. This was great.
• • •
“IS YOUR BROTHER SEEING ANYONE?” I ASKED BRIDGET AS I APPLIED LIQUID eyeliner on Saturday night. Zach was throwing a party, and we were invited.
Now that I wasn’t going to see Felix, I was hungry for details.
Bridget was pulling her hair into a slightly less haphazard bun. She paused and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
I narrowed mine back. “Because I’m planning to fall madly in love with him and just want to make sure I’m in the clear before I do,” I said, face heating despite the joke. “Also, just curious.”
She glared. Bridget loved a good glare, but then she rolled her eyes. “He hasn’t mentioned a girlfriend to me,” she said. “If there was someone in the picture, he would definitely tell Zach, and Zach would want to gossip about it with me. So unless he’s got some secret side piece, he still hasn’t seen anyone seriously since . . .”
“Joy,” I finished. Bridget avoided saying her name. Before Joy broke up with Felix, she had been Bridget’s best friend and was now her sorest spot.
They were joined at the hip from preschool through to Brownies then Guides, figure skating then hockey. Felix was the annoying baby brother, until he wasn’t annoying. He was Joy’s secret crush, and then her not-so-secret boyfriend.
“Yup.” The p came out of her mouth with a pop. “Rotten potato.”
• • •
ZACH LIVED IN A CHEERFUL BLUE-SIDED BUNGALOW IN SUMMERSIDE, WHICH belonged to his grandmother before she had moved into a retirement home.
We were greeted by an overstuffed hall closet, a pile of boots, ballet flats, running shoes, and a grinning Zach.
“It’s my favorite Clark,” he said, wrapping his arms around Bridget and then turning to me. “And Lucy! Welcome, welcome.”
Zach instructed Bridget and me to take ourselves on a tour. I bit back a smile at the mishmash of furniture—the dark polished-wood pieces he must have inherited from his grandmother and the stuff, like his gargantuan television, that screamed twenty-five-year-old dude.
We found the rest of the party in the kitchen. There were about twenty people jammed into the space. Zach stood next to the fridge, talking to a
woman with long strawberry-blond hair.
I felt Bridget tense beside me.
“Is that?” I asked.
“Yep. That’s—” I watched her swallow.
“Joy.”
If I had really looked at Joy, I would have noticed that her features were delicate and angular, but her mouth was round and sweet. I would have noticed that she’d slicked her lips with juicy cherry red gloss and that her bangs fell in a flawless heavy fringe to her lash line. I would have envied how she’d managed to make a Fair Isle sweater and jeans look alluring. But I wasn’t looking at her, not really. I was looking at my best friend, who had gone white.
As Joy and Felix got older and grew more serious, Bridget and Joy weren’t just friends; they were family. There was talk of weddings, and babies, and Auntie Bridget. There was a ring and a party with a surprise
proposal. There were plans.
Bridget sucked in a breath.
“Do you want to go?” I asked. “I won’t mind.”
She stared at Zach and Joy, shaking her head. “No. I can do this.”
We wove our way toward them and Bridget offered a shaky “Joy, hey.”
She turned toward us, and I almost recoiled with a hiss. Joy’s eyes were the most stunning amber, like fall in a bottle. Old-fashioneds and pumpkin spice and leaves crunching underfoot.
“Joy, this is Lucy, Bridget’s best friend and roommate in Toronto,” Zach said when Bridget didn’t.
Hurt, clear and quick, flashed in Joy’s gaze, but then she smiled. Oh god, she was even prettier when she smiled. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, offering her hand.
“Classic Zach,” called a man over my shoulder. “Always with the prettiest women in a room.”
I turned around and found myself facing a burly ginger. He wore a toque pulled over his forehead, red hair curling out the bottom.
He shook Zach’s hand and gave Joy a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Colin,” she said.
“We all went to school together,” Zach explained as Colin said hello to Bridget.
Colin gestured at Joy with his beer can. “I’d heard you and Wolf were back together. Is he here?”
Scarlet spread across Joy’s cheeks. She shook her head. “We aren’t together.”
Colin scratched his beard, and I thought he looked relieved. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I heard yous were talking again, and my brother said he ran into you together at Upstreet Brewing.”
“We’re just friends,” Joy said. She turned to me. “I follow In Bloom on Instagram. I love that wedding bouquet you posted last week. The one with the cabbages?”
I stared at her open-mouthed. The bride wanted something “unique” and “not girly,” and I responded with purple and green kale, sedum, amaranthus, sage, and rosemary. Even Farah was impressed.
“It was kale,” I said to Joy.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “And the herbs? Genius. You’re so talented.
And your shop looks so amazing. I want to stop in the next time I’m in Toronto.”
I was stunned. After everything Bridget told me, Joy was not what I expected.
Felix was twenty-two when he proposed. He and Joy had been together for seven years, but she broke off the engagement a week after saying yes.
Bridget and I were newly minted roommates back then, and she was shocked by the sudden way Joy dropped her brother, but she thought their friendship would endure. It had made it through Joy quitting hockey to get her grades up. It had weathered Bridget moving to Toronto and Joy to Nova Scotia for school. But it didn’t survive Felix, and Bridget was devastated.
The twin breakups—Joy’s with Felix and Joy’s with Bridget—brought us closer together. A good friendship origin story involves a villain. Ours was Joy.
“I need to find myself” and “I don’t know who I am”—two things Joy told Felix when she gave him back the ring—soon became part of our
lexicon. As in: “Can you take out the recycling?”
“I wish I could, but I need to find myself.”
I glanced at Bridget now, bewildered. Joy was lovely.
“Thanks,” I said. “I have a lot of help, especially from this one.” I bumped Bridget with my hip. “She’s the reason my accountant loves me.”
“Lucky. There’s no one who loves a spreadsheet more than you, right, Bridge?” Joy looked at Bridget with a shy smile.
Bridget didn’t reply. She blinked at Joy with a pained expression, like she was fighting back tears. She grabbed my arm and squeaked, “We have to go.”
She yanked me to the other side of the room to get ciders from an ice-filled
cooler on the mahogany dining table.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said, though obviously she wasn’t. “I can’t believe she and Wolf are friends again. We were friends first, and she abandoned me like I meant nothing. Obviously he always mattered more to her.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure she misses you. You’re the best. But it’s been a long time. Maybe she thinks you wouldn’t be interested in a
relationship.”
“I’m not.”
“Really? She seems nice.”
Bridget peered around me, taking a long sip of her cider. “I can’t go there again.”
I followed her line of sight. Zach and Joy were deep in conversation.
“Traitor,” she grumbled.
I finished my drink almost as fast as Bridget did hers, but I cut myself off on the next round because Bridget was throwing back ciders with slaphappy enthusiasm. I’d never seen her this thrown off by another person.
“Joy broke both our hearts.” That’s what she told me back then. But I hadn’t realized until now that there was only one ex in Bridget’s life who really mattered, and that ex was Joy. The person who held her childhood memories. The woman who saw her through braces and first boyfriends, who witnessed her break an arm on the ice, who helped skate her off, who came with her parents to the hospital. Her oldest friend.
An hour and two more ciders later, Bridget rejected my suggestion she switch to water. Another hour and one more cider after that, she was asleep on the pile of coats on Zach’s bed.
When the rest of the party had cleared out, Zach, Joy, and I sat Bridget up, got her to take a drink of water, and helped her into the passenger seat of her parents’ car.
“Do you want me to follow you home?” Joy asked. “I can help you get her up to her room.”
Blah. What an angel. “Yeah. That would be great.”
