The Key to Happily Ever After

by Tif Marcelo

  The hurt in her mother’s eyes was evident, and Mari said, “I know you are, and we’re going to do our best to make everything right. To be honest, though, we are going to need help. Pearl wants to leave, and I can’t lose another wedding planner. She is essential to this business, and I don’t know what to do. We can’t speak to each other without jumping down each other’s throats.”

  Her words caught up to her, causing her eyes to water. She is essential.

  Pearl was essential.

  “The three of you belong to me no matter how far away I am and no matter how old you are, and what I’m about to say is from me, your mom.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and collected herself. “There should never be a question: A business can be rebuilt. A business can be restructured. But your family must come first. Marisol, what have I always said should be your priority?”

  “To take care of the top.”

  “Right now, the top is Pearl.” Regina sighed. “Remember back then? I tried a million ways to keep you under my wing. Found all the reasons why you needed to be watched over and guided. All the while, you desperately tried to pry yourself away from me. The more I pushed, the harder you did, too. I didn’t consider how important it was for you to want to stay.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I let you go, Marisol. I let you go with a world full of pain and hurt and trust. You have to do the same with Pearl. And then, the hard part begins.”

  “And that is?”

  “You have to forgive yourself.”

  Business meeting, tomorrow, 10 a.m. in my office. Mandatory and please don’t be late.

  Mari sent the text and waited until two text bubbles appeared below it, acknowledging receipt.

  “Mari?” A knock sounded from her office door.

  Mari set the phone facedown on her desk. “Yes?”

  Carli stepped in with a long, thin box. “A package.”

  “Thanks.” The box was labeled with the 1-800-FlwrsRUs logo, and she peeled the tape off the sides. It wasn’t uncommon for Rings & Roses to receive thank-you notes and gifts from their clients, and she expected sunflowers or tulips that she would display in the foyer.

  Instead, what she uncovered was a single red rose. A card was attached to the package: The bloom is worth the prick of the thorn. Hope to see you on your patio this weekend.

  She put the rose up to her nose, inhaled its sweet scent. Her heart stretched at the thought of Reid’s gesture. She imagined something more with Reid, something that might be lasting and real. But as she slid her finger up the stem, her skin snagged on a small thorn missed by the flower shop’s garden shears. Mari brought her thumb to her mouth. She had to laugh.

  Back to reality.

  twenty

  Mood: “One Call Away” by Charlie Puth

  We’ve been summoned.” Pearl looked up from Mari’s text to Jane, who sat next to her on a park bench at the end of Burg Street. They both clutched clear cups of bubble tea they’d picked up at Superior Tea on their walk, thirsty from the uncharacteristically warm spring day. And yet Pearl still tasted the bitterness from the low blows she and Mari had slung at each other. “She wants to go another round, I guess.”

  “That kind of thinking doesn’t solve this problem,” Jane said, slurping her tea. The tapioca balls made shadows as they shimmied up the straw, and her sister chewed, still eyeing her. “I think the text shows she wants to meet you halfway.”

  “Humph.” It had been two hours since Pearl’s fight with Mari, when she had walked out of 2404 Duchess Street, and she hadn’t been back there or at work since. Jane had insisted on tagging along, managing her clients on the go. “Won’t believe it till I see it.”

  Jane reached over and squeezed Pearl’s hand. As beats of silence passed, Pearl attempted to calm her nerves by people watching.

  They were interrupted by Jane’s calendar notification. “That’s my cue. I wish I could stay out here in this gorgeous weather with you, but I unfortunately have to go,” Jane said softly. “I have to get some work done before Pio’s home from school. The pollen is also giving me a headache—damn allergies. Are you going to be okay the rest of the day?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Pearl nodded, and gave her best smile, despite feeling anything but happy. “What do you think Ate Mari will say at this meeting?”

  “I believe she’s going to give you what you asked for, Pearl, like, for real and concrete.” Her forehead wrinkled as she frowned. “Is this really what you want? Because it’s definitely not what I want. At the heart of it, the idea of you leaving is killing Ate Mari.”

  “I have to think about what’s best for me. I’ve asked myself time and again: What do I contribute that makes me indispensable? What will I take away from the team if I leave? As it is, Ate Mari’s and my relationship is . . . not doing so well. I don’t want to get to the point that I can’t even stand seeing her at home.”

  “Pearl, you leaving would render our team incomplete. Each of us brings something special to the table. What you forget, we pick up on and vice versa. Different doesn’t mean unsatisfactory or unacceptable—”

  “Yeah, you should say that to our sister.”

  “—but being different under an overarching set of rules is reality, Pearl. Opening a business on your own, and even jumping into someone else’s business model, doesn’t change the fact that there are standards, rules. Some are going to be hard no-gos. Like your fake relationship with Trenton.” She put both hands up in peace. “I’ve got nothing against Trenton. I love the guy. But the guise of this relationship to further yours with Daphne and Carter? It was borderline unethical, right? I’m just saying. It’s not just our sister who’s a hard nut to crack. You are, too.”

  Pearl looked into her sister’s eyes, which were full of love. Mari had said a version of these words before, but coming from Jane, it was digestible.

  “When do you have to give Heartfully Yours an answer?” Jane asked.

  Pearl touched her temples. “I don’t have a deadline, really. But if I accept, I would have Wendy Salazar as backup, so I wouldn’t have to do the Bling wedding on my own.”

  “Just consider all of your options before joining Heartfully Yours, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll think about it. I promise.”

  “So, that’s it?” Pearl leveled Mari with a gaze from across the table. At their meeting the next day, Mari had laid out a contract in bullet points that only could have come from Jane’s logical mind. True to her eldest sister’s word, the meeting was strictly business, with no other pleasantries or apologies or discussion about their personal differences. It was a relief that a cease-fire had been called but a disappointment that their separation would be official.

  “That’s it. We’ll pool our resources and buy you out. But we need time. September at the earliest so we can wrap up our summer weddings, if you don’t mind.” Mari’s gaze slid to Jane at her right, who wrung her hands. “We’re cutting down the shop’s hours to several days a week, and will readjust after that. I just . . . want for us to move on.”

  Pearl nodded. “Me, too.”

  “It will be fuzzy during the transition. I’d prefer we don’t announce the change until we’ve signed the paperwork in the next couple of weeks. Until then, we’d prefer you still work under the Rings and Roses banner.”

  “That’s fine.” Everything seemed fair and straightforward, but Pearl’s heart ached at what this all meant. Then she admonished herself. You wanted this. You asked for this.

  “I’ve already set up an appointment with our lawyer to draw up the contracts. Until then, we can figure out stipulations like a no-compete clause and the like.”

  Pearl started, and she shot a look to Jane.

  Jane nodded. “We have our vendors and our contacts, and ideally, we’d like those to stay with us.”

  “You’re saying I can’t partner with them?”

  “Not necessarily. But we developed those relationships as Rings and Roses, and we’d prefer
that you make your own connections with your own vendors.”

  Mari jumped in. “You do understand, right? Every business creates their own processes and contacts. You’ll need to start your accounts under your own name. Meaning, you can’t use our name in your conversations with them. We obviously can’t police that; we trust you’ll uphold that request. But it’s especially important to us if you’re working under another shop, especially one close by.”

  “For the record, I haven’t given Heartfully Yours an answer. I’m not doing this for them. I’m doing this for me.” Pearl waved a hand, annoyance zinging through her. She hadn’t thought of this. Vendors had given her the best deals and catered to her clients because of the shop she represented. “But fine, fine.”

  Mari stood from her chair and stretched a hand across the table. “Okay. It’s a deal, then.”

  Pearl returned her firm handshake with a smile. The moment was still formal and there would be the details to hash out, but she forced her body to relax. She’d done it, and Mari was letting her go.

  Mari stepped around the table. She hugged Pearl and said, “I love you.”

  “Love you,” Pearl said into her neck, patting Mari’s back. The words felt like the first shovel of dirt to fill the chasm between them, forced and seemingly futile. Jane stood and they huddled together into a group hug, anticlimactic, but necessary, until Mari let up, and their bubble broke.

  “Time for work,” Pearl said, ready to get on with it. She wanted her office to herself, needed the space to breathe and to understand what had just transpired.

  “It never ends, am I right?” Jane gathered her purse.

  “No rest for the ambitious,” Mari said.

  A knock on the door interrupted them. Carli spoke over their heads. “Jane? I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have someone here for you.”

  “Who is it?” Jane collected the papers on the table and stacked them.

  “Janelyn?”

  The sisters spun at the sound of a man’s voice.

  “Holy shit,” Pearl said, reaching out instinctively to a hand, any hand. She was met by Mari’s. In sync, they took their free hands and reached out to Jane. Now linked, they created a force field around their sister.

  The man who entered the room was formidable and handsome. Full, wavy dark brown hair, golden brown skin. And his eyes, his eyes were like Pio’s: round, smiling, soulful. “It’s me—”

  Mari sliced through the man’s introduction, voice unwavering. “We know who you are, Marco. What the hell are you doing here? Because you were not invited.”

  Pearl tightened her hold on Mari’s hand as a sign of support as well as to draw strength from the woman. The time-lapse of Jane’s child-rearing played in her head: The hard nights when Pio suffered from croup. When the only way he’d get to bed was for her sister to drive him around Old Town in the Volvo. The years she’d given up in her career because she didn’t have a dedicated partner. For even if Jane had her sisters, she hadn’t taken advantage of them; she’d often declined help. That’s how Jane was: she put others before herself.

  “I asked him to come.” Jane said.

  Pearl did a double take. “What?”

  “I said, I asked him to come. Sort of.”

  The link broke. Mari frowned. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

  “I said”—she tilted her head at Marco—“that if you want to know your son, this is your very last chance.”

  Marco spoke. “I didn’t know, Jane. I didn’t know about my . . . our . . . boy.”

  Pearl had had enough of this. This was ridiculous. “No. Absolutely not. You’re not going to come in here and spread some bullshit that you didn’t know. I was there when she sent you emails. She even sent you a Facebook message.”

  “I swear.” His eyes glistened. By God, he looked like he was going to cry.

  Mari snorted. “He’s an actor. He’s paid to shed tears.”

  “Just stop it.” Jane shook her hands free as if she was being held against her will. She spun around. “I’m going to handle this. Okay? Ate Mari, can we stay in your office?”

  “No. Not allowed,” Pearl declared. “You’re not allowed to be alone with him.”

  “As far as I remember, I’m an adult and I’m older than you. Leave, please.”

  Pearl shot a gaze to Mari, who was tight-lipped. Mari dipped her head, hesitantly, then pulled Pearl by the arm toward the door. As Mari passed Marco, she whispered, “We are right outside. One squeak, one tear, and we’ll be so far up your butt . . .”

  “Ate Mari,” Jane pleaded.

  Pearl followed her big sister out the door, which she shut behind her. In the second-floor hallway, still holding hands, they stared at each other, bewildered. “What does this mean?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mari said. “But we have to be here when it all shakes out.”

  “I’m always going to be here.”

  part five

  A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

  —Gertrude Stein

  twenty-one

  Mood: “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa

  Pearl howled and bent down to grab her toe. “Youch!” She cursed the culprit that had tripped her: a basket of sample favors Daphne had sifted through earlier today. Placed next to her desk, they were just one of a million things on her once clear floor.

  The perils of working from home—there wasn’t a separation between work and play. Her desk overflowed with paperwork, contracts, and stuff that came with planning a wedding and managing a start-up. Propped on her kitchen buffet was a corkboard covered with pictures and receipts, and a whiteboard scribbled with notes rested against the couch on the floor. Spread upon her kitchen countertops were wedding magazines of all sorts—her research—turned to specific pages.

  “Are you okay, Pearl?” the gentle voice of Pastor Denise Pfieffer said through her phone.

  “Yes, I’m so sorry. Um, where were we?” She hobbled to the whiteboard and hooked a dry erase marker in between her fingers.

  “August twenty-eighth for Daphne Brown and Carter Ling’s wedding. I cannot officiate it, unfortunately. I’m already booked for another ceremony.”

  Pearl winced. She was afraid that was what she’d said. Pastor Pfeiffer, a semiretired celebrity television evangelist, traveled all over the country to deliver deep sermons on love and commitment. “Will you be anywhere in the area? My couple and venue have some flexibility in the timing. We can do an earlier morning ceremony or even a late afternoon.”

  The woman hummed in thought. “Ummm. I can’t. I hate declining, but I can’t make it from Philadelphia.”

  “Can you suggest”—she paused and bit her lip, not wanting to sound desperate—“any other pastors who . . .”

  “No, unfortunately.”

  “No one at all?”

  “If anything changes, Pearl, I’ll give you a buzz, okay?” The pastor’s speech sped up. “All right. Thank you for inquiring and I wish you luck.”

  The click of the phone was swift.

  “Great work, Pearl.” She tapped her phone to her forehead, then drew a line across Pastor Pfeiffer’s name on the whiteboard. What would she do now? She didn’t have the contacts or the reach to acquire a high-profile officiant. She could technically ask Mari for help since she was still under the Rings & Roses banner. But she was in a weird limbo with the shop. She’d moved out of her office two days ago, after their last business meeting. Two days of confusion, of sorting out Jane’s drama with Marco, of cluttering her apartment with business stuff, of buying her web domain and cobbling together a beginner website for her brand-new business, perfectly called Pearls of Joy, Inc.

  Since then, she’d had bouts of loneliness. She couldn’t simply walk out of her office and commiserate with a sister. Her group text with her sisters had dwindled, too—she’d passed on her social media responsibilities to Mari and her only responsibilities were to her last two clients. She was no longer included in business chatter. In moments like these, w
hen work seemed insurmountable, she’d realized that in this wedding business world, she was a baby planner. And while she was an expert in social media and in customer relations, her relationships with vendors were essentially nonexistent.

  But damn it, despite currently feeling the opposite of her business name, she was going to “suck it up”—Trenton’s words—and charge forward. She had to prove to her sisters that the decision to break away was the right one.

  At this moment, Pearl literally did that; she took a deep, cleansing breath, hobbled to her computer, and plopped gingerly on her yoga ball, but not before she cleared the top of her keyboard of paperwork. In her Google browser, she searched “Television evangelists.”

  She clicked and clicked and took down names on a Post-it. When she filled one, she stuck it on her screen and wrote on another page.

  Then, her phone whistled an email notification. In her inbox, she clicked on her most recent received email. A triumphant smile grew on her face. Finally—a win. After downloading the email attachment, she pressed Control-P, and with a protracted whine, her printer across the room spit out two pieces of paper.

  With a hop, skip, a jump, and an accidental step on a pushpin (luckily on its side!), Pearl managed to cross the room to pull the papers from the printer. It was her mother’s leche flan recipe. Yes, the coveted Filipino flan recipe her sisters had begged for but had been denied—until today. After much groveling and talk of legacy from Pearl, her mother passed down the too-complicated recipe.

  She was going to make the dessert for Pio’s birthday party this afternoon, come hell or high water. Who cared if she hadn’t made a flan before? Showing up with the dessert, rather than her usual contribution of chips or soda, would be a statement that she was independent, grown, and reliable.

  Yes, it was a ridiculous notion if she thought about it hard enough, but she was sticking with it.

  Pearl’s phone dinged, notifying her of a text. She took two steps over boxes and stretched her body toward her computer table to grab it.