Page 42 of He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

He asked me to help with deliveries this morning, and it’s the least I can do. Plus, maybe today will end up a jump start to the training I’m most definitely going to need.

As I walk to the parking lot, I spot Dax at the most adorable delivery truck I ever did see. It looks like an old UPS truck that he’s converted into a mobile florist. It’s navy blue, with colorful flowers and vines painted all over it and his business name, The Flower Boy, is written in romantic scrolly lettering along each side.

‘Dax!’ I say, the hugest grin on my face. He closes the double doors at the back when he hears my voice. ‘This is seriously cute.’ I run my fingers along the outline of a painted flower.

‘It does the job. The girl who painted it did me well.’

I raise a single eyebrow, a half-cocked grin on my face.

‘Not in the way you’re picturing, perv.’ He laughs. ‘Get in.’

We both climb into his truck. I breathe in deeply as I get settled, glancing into the back, the flowers making me smile immediately.

‘It smells so good in here.’

‘Perk of the job.’

He fidgets with the radio, eventually settling on a station playing a Justin Timberlake song. Dax glances over, waggling his eyebrows.

The memories of my youth are coming back to me quickly. He and River competed to get the louder stereo systems in their cars back in their teens and River always won. But the summer before my senior year, Dax pulled ahead. He’d been working evenings for a pizza delivery place, and with his charm, I don’t doubt he killed it in tips alone. He dumped every dime he made into his car and stereo.

I was the judge that year. Usually, it was some other friend of theirs, but this day, I was the only one home when Dax finished installing the last speaker in the trunk of his car. So, on a hot July afternoon, we started the competition in my parents’ driveway.

My job was to sit in the passenger seat of each vehicle with them and decide whose stereo gave me a bigger headache. River played some rapper I was offended by and demanded I shut up when I objected. Dax read the room and turned on the air conditioning while he blasted Justin Timberlake’s ‘SexyBack’ because he knew I was smitten. As if his attention to the heat outside and the judge’s music preference wasn’t enough, the dancing in his seat as he performed the song into his makeshift microphone cell phone sold me. I laughed a lot that day and stayed in his car with him for far longer than I needed to.

I glance over at him as he drives. Why can’t life be that simple now?

‘Do you remember the stereo wars of twenty-ten?’

He laughs. ‘Oh yeah. We were nerdy as fuck, weren’t we?’

‘Were, yeah.’ I bite my lips together to prevent the goofy grin from taking over my face.

‘We had fun back then. Didn’t we?’ he asks, side-eying me.

I nod. ‘Made me smile just remembering it.’

He turns up the song, singing terribly. ‘Still bad?’

‘Somehow worse?’ I laugh, encouraging him to get louder.

‘Stop number one,’ he says once we’re in the city, pulling up to the curb in front of an office building.

We both get out, walking to the back of the truck. He pulls a bouquet of rainbow roses before closing the doors.

‘Wow! These are gorgeous.Howare they rainbow-colored?’

‘It’s actually really cool,’ he says. ‘I order them like this, but I’ve read up on them. It’s a white rose, dyed by injecting color through the stem as they grow to create rainbow-colored buds. These are headed to a woman who’s just come out to her family. Her dad wanted her to know how much she’s loved.’

I put a hand to my chest. ‘Really?’ That is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘If this is what you feel every time you do this, I can see why you chose this profession.’

‘We haven’t even gone in yet, Hols. Don’t start crying already.’

‘Right.’ I sniffle away the tears threatening to emerge. ‘I can do this,’ I say, taking a breath and following him into the building and to the second floor.

‘Hi,’ he says to the receptionist. ‘I have a delivery for a…’ He rechecks the order. ‘Teagen?’

The woman nods, almost immediately even more emotional than I was. I lift a hand to my mouth, so I don’t cry with this total stranger. Crying at ridiculous things is kind of who I am. Commercials, YouTube videos, Instagram reels of complete strangers, they all get me. This is no different.

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