Petal Plucker

by Iris Morland

  He grinned. “Never say never. You’ll get there.”

  I shivered from the promise in his eyes. Soon his grin faded, and before I knew it, he was naked, we were on the bed together, and he was thrusting inside my pussy. I was still sensitive from my orgasm, and I gasped when he filled me to the hilt.

  He stopped, but I arched my hips. “Why did you stop?”

  “You sounded like I hurt you.”

  “No, no, it doesn’t hurt, it hasn’t hurt in a while, if you don’t start moving I’m going to murder you—”

  He chuckled, pulled out, and slammed back into me. I groaned. He fucked me with relentless speed, the headboard banging against the wall. I had the stray thought that the hotel would be pretty pissed if their ugly paintings fell off the wall because we were having such intense sex.

  I started laughing, which made Jacob stop. “What’s so funny?” He looked on the verge of being offended.

  I touched his jaw, smiling. “Nothing. I mean, it’s not you. It’s me. I’m dumb. Oh, why did you stop?” I pushed at his chest, clawing at him like a kitten. “I was close to coming again.” I sounded like a whiny child and I didn’t even care.

  In a move that left me breathless, he turned me over onto my stomach and pinned me to the bed. He slid his cock inside me—slowly, because in this position, I was tighter than ever.

  “What makes you think you have any control?” he growled. He held still, my pussy fluttering around his cock. “Because you keep telling me what to do, and it’s not going to work, sweetheart.”

  “Because you keep stopping!” I wanted to claw his face off, the jerk-face.

  “How about you behave for once?”

  I scowled into the comforter, considering telling him to eat a dick. Until he began to thrust again. Apparently, I would do anything for an orgasm, especially when it was Jacob giving me one.

  With me pinned by his body, his legs keeping mine wide open, he was the one in complete control. And I loved it. He plunged into me in a steady rhythm, ignoring me begging him to go faster. He just laughed at me again because he was the fucking worst and the most amazing at the same time.

  My release was just out of reach. I tightened around him, and as he kept filling me, it was so good it almost hurt. I buried my face in the sheets and started screaming as my orgasm ripped through me.

  “Fuck!” Jacob roared and came at the same time as me. He gushed inside me in seemingly endless spurts. When he finally pulled out of me, I could feel his come dripping onto my thighs and the comforter.

  I couldn’t move. I could only stare into Jacob’s flushed face, watching the rise and fall of his chest as I tried to catch my breath.

  To my surprise, tears sprang to my eyes. How did I describe this intensity building inside me? I felt like I’d been turned inside out. Jacob stroked my spine as I closed my eyes and tried to calm my pounding heart.

  Maybe it was the afterglow, or the fact that I couldn’t hold the words back anymore. Maybe I’d gone temporarily insane. But the words, “I love you,” flew from my lips to rest between us like a curious bird.

  Jacob didn’t say anything. His forehead creased, then he got up and went to the bathroom. I stared at his naked back, the ripple of his ass as he walked.

  He returned with a wet washcloth and cleaned us both. I blushed, and I blushed because he hadn’t said anything to my declaration. God, I was an idiot.

  I found my bra in the corner, and I put it on so hastily that I missed a hook. Throwing my dress over my head, I was about to grab my purse when Jacob said, “Where are you going?”

  I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I’d start sobbing. “It’s late,” I managed in a voice that was somehow still steady. “I should go to my room. We have to be up early.”

  It wasn’t really late—only 10:00 PM. We didn’t really have to get up that early, either. But Jacob didn’t try to poke holes in my lie, and strangely, that hurt most of all.

  He just said, “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  And I left, feeling like my heart had been shredded.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I woke up the next morning with a giant headache like I was hung over. I’d barely slept, and I’d stopped myself from going back to Jacob’s room, banging on the door, and demanding to know what the hell his problem was.

  Except that meant having to hear the words I didn’t want to hear: I don’t love you. Sorry, Dani. This has just been a fling. You knew that, right?

  I forced my mind away from Jacob and his bullshit. Today was the competition. The judges would choose the winners midmorning. I was so close to that prize money and contract that I could smell it. I was immensely proud of my arrangement, despite my dad not being a fan of it. Even if the judges didn’t like it, at least I was proud of myself and my hard work.

  I left the hotel and walked to the convention center that was a block away. Since it was still early in the morning, it wasn’t packed, but it would be pretty soon. I grabbed coffee and began to wander through the gardens that had been created inside the convention center itself.

  Each garden was themed: a Mediterranean garden with a portico and an orange tree; a garden from Switzerland that looked like it had been transplanted from the Alps; and a garden that was only orchids. The orchids made me wish my dad were here. Listening to him telling me about how he would’ve done my arrangement differently would be preferable to this melancholy over Jacob.

  I didn’t want to consider that the reason he hadn’t said anything was because he didn’t love me. I pushed that thought away, put it in a safe, locked it, and then buried it six feet under. Metaphorically speaking. Except thoughts like that have a way of becoming zombies and rising from the dead. It kept poking at me throughout the morning like a total sadist.

  Later, I was considering buying a pillow shaped like a cactus when Jacob found me. I didn’t know how he always managed to find me. I would’ve accused him putting a tracking device on my phone, except guys who looked horrified when you told them you loved them weren’t particularly inclined to stalking, or so I assumed.

  Jacob had bags under his eyes; I wondered if he’d slept as little as me. Good. I hoped that his coffee would always be burnt and watery, that his food would taste like buttholes, and that he always forgot to pack underwear.

  “Are you going to buy that?” he said, pointing to the pillow I was holding.

  I had been going to buy it, but I didn’t want to prove that he’d been right about me. “No.”

  I walked away, but to my immense annoyance, Jacob followed me. He wrapped his hand around my elbow to get me to stop.

  “Dani, we need to talk—”

  “This is a change. You didn’t seem all that interested in talking last night.” I pulled my arm free and kept walking.

  I heard Jacob swear, and I knew I was being maybe a little bit unfair. He didn’t owe me the words “I love you.” And it wasn’t even that I wanted him to say them now: it was more that he hadn’t said anything at all. Couldn’t he have at least pulled a Han Solo and said, I know? That would’ve been preferable to what had amounted to no response.

  “Wait, Dani. Come on.”

  I had reached the end of the row of booths, and I had to either turn around and face Jacob or stare at the wall until we both died. I decided on the latter choice. I refused to look at him.

  “There are things you don’t understand,” said Jacob, “things that make this all really complicated.”

  “That is the vaguest explanation ever.” I crossed my arms, hugging myself. “And tells me absolutely nothing.”

  “I know, I just…”

  I could hear the frustration in his voice, and it took everything in me not to turn to him and say, It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Because then we could go on doing what we’d been doing, and I could ignore that this relationship meant more to me than it did to him.

  “Look, you don’t have to explain. You don’t love me. That’s fine.” I couldn’t stop the tremor from entering
my voice. “I shouldn’t have thrown that at you. Just forget about it.”

  Like Lot’s wife, I stupidly turned back to look at Jacob, and I saw hurt flash across his face. Hurt, frustration, confusion, the same emotions broiling inside me. We were mirrors of each other, and apparently incapable of explaining what we both felt.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice over the intercom boomed, “the floral design winners have been chosen! You can see the winning arrangements and all the entries in the atrium. Congratulations to the winners!”

  “I have to go,” I said, pushing past Jacob.

  I heard him say something that sounded like wait, but I darted into the crowd before he could catch me. I practically elbowed some woman out of the way when she stopped right in front of me, I was so edgy with anticipation.

  I could see that blue ribbon next to my arrangement in my mind. I could see people viewing my design and when I told them I had created it, everyone would tell me congratulations, complimenting me on how different and brilliant my design was. That first prize was mine—mine, mine, mine—

  They say when you almost die, your life flashes before your eyes. I didn’t almost die when I entered that atrium, but my brain flashed through a hodgepodge of memories before I could put words to what I was seeing.

  I saw myself a kindergartener, pulling up dandelions. I saw Kate as a little kid pulling apart daisies I’d put in my window. I saw Jacob driving off with Tiffany that fateful night nine years ago. I saw Jacob as an adult before he kissed me for that first time.

  Then my brain adjusted and I saw what was right in front of me.

  My arrangement, then next to it, a red ribbon.

  Second place. A red ribbon meant second.

  A red ribbon meant…I’d lost.

  I’d lost. I’d motherfucking lost.

  It was easy to see who’d won, because everyone was congregated around that arrangement. I hadn’t stopped to look at the entries earlier because I’d wanted to wait until they’d announced the winners. Now I almost wished I had looked at them, because then my curiosity wouldn’t need to be assuaged.

  My first thought when I saw the winning arrangement was that it was absolutely beautiful. It was delicate, deceptively simple, yet looking at it, I saw echoes—as much as you can see echoes.

  I took in the buckeye flowers—not purple this time, but pink—and the vine of dates instead of porcelain like the arrangement I’d been working on that first time Jacob had come into Buds and Blossoms. And to top it off: Black Wizard dahlias. Everything came together with a neat little click in my brain when I saw who’d designed the arrangement.

  Jacob and Kenneth West of Flowers, Seattle, WA

  “Fuck,” said Jacob over my shoulder.

  I didn’t need to look at his face now, but I did, because I was a masochist. Despite the anger—at me? Himself?—in his expression, he still managed to look absurdly handsome. I imagined clawing his eyeballs out and felt a little better.

  I pushed past him. He tried to catch my arm, but I whirled on him and hissed, “Touch me again and I’ll scream.”

  Jacob put up his hands, but he still followed me. He kept trying to get me to stop, to let him explain. When I got to my hotel room, my hands were shaking so hard that I dropped my key card on the ground. Jacob picked it up before I could and slid it into the lock, which meant that I could either leave the hotel or let him inside my room.

  I let him inside because I wanted to hear him try to talk himself out of this.

  We faced each other. I felt surprisingly calm, but I knew it was false. My knees were watery, and I was close to throwing up.

  “Why?” was the only word I could manage to croak. I held onto the back of a chair. “Why?”

  Jacob’s fists were clenched, his jaw tight. He looked ten years older in that moment. “I told them to take my name off the arrangement, Dani. I didn’t want you to know—”

  “You think I wouldn’t have noticed that you ripped off my design? How stupid do you think I am?”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I swear to God, I didn’t.” He came closer to me, until I could see the stubble on his cheeks.

  “What, did the mafia put a gun to your head and tell you to rip me off? Come on, Jacob. We’re talking about flowers, not cocaine.” I wanted to laugh, because it was absurd. We were talking about flowers, for Christ’s sake. The most benign thing on this earth besides puppies and rainbows.

  “No, there weren’t any guns. And the mafia doesn’t really care about bouquets, even though they probably would need them all the time, considering how often people get killed around them.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Just tell me this: was sleeping with me required, or was that just a bonus?”

  Jacob flinched. “It wasn’t like that. I swear.”

  “Well, then, explain it to me. Maybe use simple words, though. Apparently, I’m not getting anything today.”

  Pushing his fingers through his hair, he said, “I came into your store that first time because I wanted to see how you guys were running it. Because it’s doing well, whereas Flowers hasn’t been doing great. My dad, though, he wanted to enter the competition. He used to do it all the time, but since his stroke, he couldn’t put together arrangements like he used to. Not just design them, but physically put them together.”

  Jacob began to pace, looking rather like an agitated, golden lion. “Then I saw your arrangement, and when I told my dad about it, he was impressed. He began to use it as inspiration. He was sure we could win.”

  “And he was right. You did win.” In a fit of rage, I picked up the phone book and threw it at Jacob’s head. He ducked just in the nick of time. “You won, and I can’t call it cheating because you didn’t copy me exactly,” I said, throwing a pad of Post-its at him this time. “How clever of you! Except I guess taking inspiration from me wasn’t enough. How many other bits of information did you steal from us, Jacob?”

  At this point, I was right in front of him, and I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. He didn’t try to stop me. He just stood straight and tall, and I wanted to punch through his emotional armor. I wanted him on his knees, begging me for forgiveness.

  “I’m curious, though,” I said, “what was the point of fucking me? Wait!” My eyes widened mock-dramatically. “You were trying to get close to me to learn all my secrets. You thought, if I finger-bang her, she’ll tell me everything. It’s a foolproof plan! Who knew running flower shops could be so cutthroat?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “You’re not doing a great job of convincing me.”

  Apparently he’d had enough of me throwing things at him and wrinkling his shirt. He grabbed my hands and pushed them behind my back. “I never expected any of this to happen, okay? I went to your store that first day for one reason and I ended up going back for another. For you, Dani.”

  His grip was tight, almost hurting me, but I was glad of it. It kept my anger hot enough that I wouldn’t start crying.

  “After that night in Vancouver, I told my dad I wasn’t going to help him anymore. It was wrong, but it didn’t matter. It was too late,” he said.

  “How sad for you.”

  Jacob backed me up until I ran into the bed, and somehow, he was on top of me, pinning me down. I tried to kick him, but he was way bigger and stronger than me.

  I spat, “You could’ve tried being honest with me. Did you ever think about that? If you had come clean weeks ago, I might have forgiven you!”

  “You’re a liar.” Red slashed his cheeks. “You remember that conversation we had? About how you don’t trust people? It would’ve given you the perfect reason to call this whole thing off. You would’ve felt justified, because I would’ve been just another person who’d disappointed you. But I wasn’t going to let you run from me.”

  I arched my back, my neck, trying to put even an inch of space between us. “Fuck you, Jacob. Don’t put this on me! You’re the one who lied!”

  “I did. I m
otherfucking lied because I couldn’t let you go. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. I closed them, the hot tears trickling to my temples. “Why?” I gasped.

  “Because I fell in love with you. Christ, Dani, I love you.”

  It was strange, hearing those words, because I’d dreamed of hearing them for years and years. Yet now, they were completely hollow. My heart didn’t explode with happiness. My heart only hardened.

  “Get off of me,” I hissed. I dug my nails into his back. “Get. Off. Of. Me.”

  It took him a long moment, but he finally let me go. I scrambled away from him.

  I gasped out, “You lied to me. You stole from me. You used me.” I listed his sins, enjoying the way he winced when I said each one. “And now you want me to forget about all of that because you love me? Your arrogance is astonishing.”

  “You lied, too.”

  I stared up at him in shock.

  “You tell everyone you’re all about honesty, but you can’t even be honest with yourself. You push people away instead of letting them be human. You put me on this pedestal when we were kids. I’m not fucking perfect.” His voice rose with each word. “I knew then I couldn’t be your knight in shining armor because I knew I’d fail you. Because everyone is going to fail you, eventually, because nobody can live up to your insane expectations.”

  I sat on the bed, stunned. I wanted to tell him he was wrong; I wanted to deny every word, but I couldn’t, because it would be a lie.

  “You don’t get to absolve yourself and turn this on me. That’s unfair. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect. I just want them to tell me the fucking truth!” I let out a sob. “Just go. Leave me alone.”

  “Sweetheart—”

  “You don’t get to call me that!” I almost screamed. “Get out. Get out!”

  He sighed. With one last look over his shoulder, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  After I got home from Los Angeles, I avoided going to my parents’ house for dinner for two weeks in a row. The first week, I said I was too tired and wanted to stay home. The second week, I lied and said I had too much work to do. By the third, my mom pretty much came to my apartment and dragged me to dinner.