Grapevines: Part 3

Mia did not wake up before ten o'clock. One of the perks of owning her own flower shop was paying any of the other right out of college, single girls around town to take the opening shift for her every day. She had gotten a head start on most of them, graduating a year early and using some of her inheritance to move back to her hometown and open a flower shop. Her mother always dreamed of starting one up on Main Street but she spent her time before the tumor raising four girls and when the cancer hit when Mia was ten, it was only a matter of months. After her father died right after her college graduation, she ditched her plans of backpacking across Europe to spend her parent's money the right way. Three years later, she ran the most successful business in Garner. 

Mia was a softy but not a pushover and she always got what she wanted. And what she wanted was to sleep until ten o'clock every day. It was a little hard to do that though when your phone screams at you five hours too early. Alice was a sweetheart but she didn't quite understand Mia's one rule. I'll listen to you talk about whatever you are whining on about as long as you do it after I've had my coffee and we all know that's AFTER ten o'clock. 

"Tyler Johnson's dead." That was a good reason to break the rule. 

Mia had made a move to hang up on Alice after she surely scared the mess out of the poor girl but  she managed to hear the three words crackle through the earpiece as she was setting it down. At first, Mia was sure she'd heard Alice wrong. After all, she'd seen Tyler just five hours ago when he'd kissed her goodnight right on her front doorstep. He was in a rush, having just jumped out of her bed, to get back home to his wife who had come home from a business trip early to surprise him and found an empty house. 

Mia never got nights with Tyler. Their love was reserved for the afternoon. His wife got eggs and bacon for breakfast, fancy restaurants and freckles on his chest. Mia had park benches after work and the back rows of matinees on Sunday. She got cheeseburgers in passenger seat lunch breaks and handshakes and "this is my...friend." They never spoke growing up but one day, two years ago, he showed up in the flower shop to buy flowers for his wife. Mia liked his accent and the freckle on his cheek and she wanted him and Mia always got what she wanted. 

"Did you hear me?" Alice moaned over the phone. 

Mia felt a heat begin to creep up her neck. Why was Alice calling to tell her this? She found out about us. She knows I'm banging the guy she's in love with. Alice had tried to keep her raging, slightly creepy, love from Mia but between the wordless staring that ensued whenever Tyler walked in the same room as her and the odd way she managed to work a man she never spoke to into daily conversation, the love was obvious. 

"Um, yeah," Mia began, reserved. "What happened?"

Alice relayed the story she learned from Mrs. Williams who heard it from her daughter's girlfriend who heard it from her girlfriend...

"Wait, what?" 

"Anyway, we should probably spread the news and such."

"Shouldn't his wife do that?" Mia asked as her voice broke. 

"Are you okay?" Alice asked, a sob escaping at the end of her question.

The line went silent as the two girls cried on their respective ends, covering the mouth pieces to keep their secrets from escaping. Mia pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling the salt well up in the back of her throat. The affair had only been going on for a couple months; it took a long time of creating the best floral arrangements of her career for the man's wife to finally lure him away. But the heart his wife kept locked up in a box on her shelf, was taken out and delivered to Mia every afternoon. 

"You should stay a little bit longer," she whispered to him one afternoon as he stroked her auburn hair in the middle of Old Miss Ethel's horse pasture. "We'll stay here all night 'til the stars come out and then we'll get your truck and leave. Go to New York or London or somewhere." 

"You wouldn't leave that store for anything," he began; she hoped he'd stop there. "And I'm a bit preoccupied myself."

"I guess, I did name the store after my mom," Mia sighed, thankful he didn't outright refer to his wife. "It wouldn't be the same not being asked if I'm Carolyn twenty-eight times a day. You'd think a town this small, after being open three years people would start to learn."

Mia let out a ragged breath, her lungs heavy with the weight of loss. She pushed back her bangs which had stuck to her salty face and gave herself a quick shake. Alice had already lost the love of her life, she didn't need more bad news to accompany it.

"You there, Al?" she waited for the sound of her friend's fake voice. "We should maybe tell some people; get a food schedule started for the family." 

Mia hung up the phone, letting the enormity of the situation wash over her without Alice on the other side of the line. She collapsed back onto the bed, her body heavy and her mind blank. She would give herself ten more minutes to cry then she would get up and go to the store to make two arrangements; one for Tyler's wife and one for his grave, the best arrangement she had ever and would ever make.