This is mine, I remind myself. Country Colors was tiny when I started working here in college, just looking for any job in a town where there weren’t many employment opportunities. At the time, I was depressed and anxious, feeling like I’d been left behind by the friends who’d gone away to school while I stayed in place, attending Baileyvillle Community College. I’d dreamed of being an artist, but BCC didn’t even have art classes. I majored in marketing, which my mom insisted was very creative and basically the same thing as painting. She’s always known how to put a positive spin on things, my mom.
But what started as a way to make a few bucks grew (pun intended) into something so much more. Unlike marketing, gardening actually was creative. Planting things and watching them grow was rewarding in a way that little else in my life was, and more than that, it was unpredictable. Flowers, as it turned out, had minds of their own.
Soon, I was spending all my free time at the greenhouse, and when my boss retired, she asked me if I wanted to take over. And so Country Colors became mine—my sanctuary, my second home, my new dream. Did I still miss art, the feeling of paint under my fingernails? Sure, but now I had dirt under my fingernails. Maybe the dream hadn’t changed so much as the medium did.
I’m happy with the way things turned out. Really, I am. If only Hank Tillman hadn’t showed up to remind me of how different things could’ve been.
A bloodcurdling scream from Marcia jolts me out of my contemplation and I run into the break room, sure she’s been hacked to bits by a serial killer who targets greenhouses (which sounds like the plot of one of the cozy mysteries my parents keep stocked in their B and B).
“What happened?” I ask as I burst into the room.
Marcia is standing still, Diet Coke dripping off her face. She looks at me, her eyes wide in shock.
“Oh,” I say. “I should’ve warned you not to open it yet. I guess it got kind of shaken up when I dropped it.”
She slowly smiles. “This is disgusting.”
“You look very sticky,” I agree. “Why don’t you go home and get cleaned up? I think I can handle it here until close.”
“Fantastic,” she says. “That shaken-up can of Diet Coke was a blessing, not a curse, because tonight’s my and Aimee’s anniversary.”
I swat her on the arm, which was a bad idea, because that’s also covered in soda. “You should’ve told me! I would’ve let you leave early, anyway.”
She shrugs, and I smile as I think about her wedding to Aimee three years ago. It happened in her backyard, under an arbor covered in pink climbing roses, with the reverend from the Baileyville Unitarian Universalist church marrying them. We all blew bubbles at the end as they got on a tandem bike and rode to their reception in the park.
As I watch Marcia now, humming happily to herself as she attempts to dry off her shirt with paper towels, a pang of longing hits me. It’s not that I want what she has, exactly. . . . It’s that I want to even know what it’s like, to have someone waiting at home, someone I can’t wait to see. I’m happy with my life—my job, my friends, my home—but it would be nice, wouldn’t it, to have another person to share it all with?
Dating isn’t exactly easy in a small town, though. Apps have a very different vibe when everyone on them is someone you went to kindergarten with (or, in one case, is your recently divorced kindergarten teacher who wants to “get back out there”).
“Okay, I’m headed home,” Marcia says, tossing the soda-soaked paper towel into the trash.
“Happy anniversary,” I call after her, and she shoots me a quick smile as she hurries out to her car.
I head back up to the register and look out over the shop once more. And although I don’t want to, I find myself wondering again what, exactly, Hank Tillman is doing back in Baileyville.
Photo by Alex Winfrey
Kerry Winfrey writes romantic comedies for adults and teens. She is the author of Love and Other Alien Experiences, Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It, Waiting for Tom Hanks, and Not Like the Movies. When she’s not writing, she’s likely baking yet another pie or watching far too many romantic comedies. She lives with her husband, son, and dog in the middle of Ohio.
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