Page 53 of Weekends with You

“Yes ma’am.” He put his hands behind his back and studied my technique. “Have you considered doing meat floristry for a living instead? I’d pay good money for a bouquet of these roses instead of real ones.”

“Good thinking, Hen. Maybe I’ll throw my whole careerout the window to roll salami around a teacup for the rest of my life. Then I’d definitely be able to afford to leave the warehouse.”

“You’re planning on leaving the warehouse?”

I’d meant it as a joke, but his concern told me it had come out otherwise. “I mean, it was only supposed to be temporary. I was hoping to find a way to make more money at the shop or find a flat cheaper than my last one that I could afford alone.” Truthfully, I hadn’t even thought about leaving the warehouse since I moved in, but that had been the plan once, hadn’t it?

“Bummer,” he said.

Finn and Jan’s fighting interrupted the moment, which was probably for the best.

“I think they look good over there,” Finn was saying, gesturing to a pile of almonds in the corner of the board.

“You don’t know the first thing about nuts, Finny,” Jan said.

“Ew, Jan,” Liv said from her bench. “Can’t you two just behave like adults?”

“If we wanted to die of boredom, maybe,” Jan shot back.

Margot and Cal seemed to be the only two totally focused, and their board was beautiful as a result. Bright slices of oranges cut through the otherwise neutral colors, and sprigs of fresh herbs gave the board quite a professional look. Cal was spooning chutney into a ramekin, and Margot was arranging crackers in a fan around the dish.

“Why don’t you two ever do this at home?” Raja asked, also admiring their handiwork. “I’d pay for something that looked that good.”

“Would you payus?” Margot asked.

“Well, no, but—”

“Then that’s why we don’t do it.” Margot smiled. “Quite a bit of work to be doing it for free, isn’t it?”

“But think about how happy you would make us,” I added. “Isn’t that worth more than a couple quid, anyway?”

“You’ve been hanging around Liv too much,” Margot said. “You’ve gone soft on us, Lucy.”

“Oh, please. She was soft before she got here,” Raja said. I offered just a shrug in response, looking to Liv in solidarity. Being soft wasn’t so bad. Sometimes.

“I like that about you,” Henry said.

“What?”

“That you’re soft. You aren’t shy about your feelings. Good or bad. It’s refreshing. Most people aren’t like that.”

I wanted to crawl under the table. I’d never been good at hiding how I felt, about anything, really, which had made for a lot of big, public, embarrassing feelings in my childhood.

“Refreshing, is it?” I said. “All the other girls you’ve dated have been, what? Too cold? Emotionally stunted? Unavailable?”

He laughed, which made me relieved. We’ve never addressed our dating histories, so I felt a bit bold going there.

“Nonexistent,” he said. “Not much of a relationship guy, what with traveling always on the horizon. Haven’t even been in a proper one, really. And my own emotional range hasn’t always been, er, developed.” It was his turn to stare at his shoes, which surprised me.

“You mean to tell me you haven’t always been so straightforward?”

“Far from it,” he said. “Still not even close, really. I might seem bold at the beginning, but if I’m honest, I have a habit of speaking before I’m finished thinking, which might also be the reason I haven’t dated much.” He occupied his hands arranging a pile of grapes between two wedges of cheese, so I did the same. If, for once, he didn’t want to be making extremelyintense eye contact, I could allow him that. “Not to say I haven’t been on dates,” he added, “because of course I have. Just nothing serious.”

“Never?” I asked. I couldn’t believe someone like Henry had never been in a serious relationship.

“Nope,” he said. “Bit embarrassing, now that I say it out loud.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about. Relationships aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be.”

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