[Miles’ POV]
The Frederickson anniversary order arrives like a punishment designed by someone who understands irony at a molecular level. Three hundred stems—the exact flowers from Margaret Frederickson's 1985 wedding bouquet—because apparently forty years of marriage deserves botanical archaeology.
The back room is approximately twelve feet by fourteen feet. I've measured it during previous emotional crises because quantifying space feels safer than quantifying feelings. Today, those hundred and sixty-eight square feet contain me, Rae, and enough unspoken tension to power a small municipality.
"Coral charm peonies, forty stems." Rae reads from the order sheet with the clinical detachment of someone performing an autopsy on their own life choices. "Then the Sarah Bernhardt pinks, sixty stems."
I pull the coral charms from their bucket, muscle memory taking over while my brain catalogues every micromovement she makes. The way she shifts her weight. The pen tapping against the clipboard. The deliberate not-looking-at-me that requires more effort than actual eye contact.
"Got it." My voice sounds normal, which feels like an achievement deserving of awards and possibly therapy.
We fall into rhythm despite everything—her reading specifications, me retrieving stems, both of us processing flowers with the efficiency of people who've done this hundreds of times before.
It almost feels normal. Almost feels like before the golf course kiss rewired my nervous system and before the night at my apartment rewired everything else.
The peonies are cooperative, at least. Their petals unfurl exactly as expected, following botanical protocols without any inconvenient emotional subtext. I appreciate their professionalism. If only humans operated with such reliable programming.
"Grandmother scheduled another dinner," Rae says, and the words land like someone dropping a piano from the roof. Casual delivery, catastrophic impact. "With Dorian's family. Thursday."
My hands still on a peony stem. The flower doesn't deserve to be strangled, but my fingers haven't gotten the message yet.
"Are you going?" I keep my voice carefully neutral, the vocal equivalent of beige wallpaper—present but unremarkable. It requires more effort than defusing actual explosives, which I've never done but suspect involves less emotional shrapnel.
"I have to." She's still reading the order sheet, or pretending to, her eyes fixed on paper that suddenly requires archaeological study. "It's part of the arrangement. Beatrice expects—"
"Right." The word escapes before I can file down its edges. "Of course. The arrangement."
The word hangs between us, meaning too many things simultaneously. The fake relationship arrangement. The merger arrangement. The unspoken arrangement where we both pretend that night didn't fundamentally alter the chemical composition of everything we are.
Arrangement. It sounds so civilized. So controlled. Like we're discussing furniture placement instead of the systematic dismantling of an almost decade-long friendship.
"Miles." Rae sets down her clipboard with more force than necessary. The metal clip protests with a sound like a small mechanical scream. "Are you okay with this? With me continuing to see Dorian publicly?"
The laugh that builds in my chest could power a combustion engine. I want to ask if she's serious. I want to tell her that watching her with Dorian feels like performing surgery on myself with rusty kitchen implements. I want to confess that I've loved her since we were teenagers and that this entire situation is slowly converting my internal organs into something resembling wet newspaper.
Instead, I shrug and reach for more peonies. "It's not my place to be okay or not okay with it. We're friends, Rae. You can date whoever you want."
The word "friends" lands between us like a grenade with the pin already pulled. Rae flinches—actually, physically flinches—and I hate myself for the tiny flare of satisfaction that gives me. Evidence that I can still affect her. Proof that I exist as something other than a convenient prop in her inheritance drama.
"Friends," she repeats, and her voice has edges now, sharp enough to draw blood. "Right. Because that's all we've ever been."
"That's what we agreed." I'm sorting stems with aggressive precision, each movement calculated to convey maximum emotional unavailability. "Boundaries. Professional distance. Your exact words, I believe."
She's quiet for a moment, the silence filling the back room like something with weight and temperature. When she speaks again, her voice has shifted into something smaller, more uncertain. "I just thought, after what happened, maybe we should talk about—"
"There's nothing to talk about." I cut her off because letting her finish that sentence would require me to respond honestly, and honesty feels like a luxury I can't afford. "We agreed it was a mistake. Drunk. Regrettable. We're moving on. That's the plan."
The lie tastes like battery acid and expired optimism. That night wasn't a mistake—it was the most real thing I've experienced in years. But admitting that means admitting I'm exactly what her father accused me of being: someone desperately in love with a woman who sees him as furniture.
Rae nods, her face arranging itself into careful blankness like a document being wiped clean. "Moving on. Yes. That's... that's probably best."
"The freesia." I gesture toward the bucket near her elbow, because asking for flowers is safer than asking for anything that matters. "Pass me the freesia?"
She hands over the stems without comment. Our fingers brush during the transfer—a collision of skin that lasts maybe half a second but registers on some internal seismograph I didn't know I possessed.
Electricity crackles through that brief contact, the kind of spark that could restart a dead heart or burn down a building depending on the wiring.
Neither of us acknowledges it. We're both pretending the electricity doesn't exist, the same way we're pretending the tension doesn't exist, the same way we're pretending everything is fine when "fine" left the building approximately three panic attacks ago.
The freesia smells like innocence and poor decisions. I arrange it with the peonies, building something beautiful for someone else's love story while mine bleeds out on the floor of this twelve-by-fourteen-foot room.
"The white ranunculus next," Rae says, back to her clinical order-reading voice. "Forty stems. Margaret Frederickson specifically requested the variety with the green centers."
"Got it." I pull the ranunculus, grateful for instructions that don't require emotional interpretation. Green centers. Forty stems. Clear parameters with measurable outcomes. The kind of certainty that doesn't exist in any other part of my current existence.
We finish the arrangement in silence, moving around each other with the careful choreography of people trying very hard not to touch. The centerpiece takes shape—coral and pink and white, romantic in ways that feel like mockery.
Somewhere in this city, Margaret and Harold Frederickson are celebrating forty years of actually choosing each other, of waking up every day and deciding to stay. They get peonies that match their wedding bouquet. They get a love story with a happy ending.
I get to wrap their flowers in tissue paper while the woman I love plans dinner with her merger candidate.
The universe has a sense of humor. It's just not a particularly kind one.