Page 27 of The Pumpkin Spice Proposal
“Also, Mario’s jacket looks better on you than him. You should keep it.”
“Olivia—”
“What? It’s true! June says you two have chemistry. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I think it has to do with how Mario looks at you when you’re not looking, like you’re made of chocolate cake.”
“I do not—” I started.
“You totally do. It’s the same way Mom looks at the expensive cheese at Whole Foods. Like she wants it but thinks she shouldn’t have it.”
“OLIVIA.”
“Also, Grandma gave me five dollars to come in here and tell you to kiss in the rain like in her movies. She says it’s very important for your relationship development.”
Lily’s face had gone from pink to red. “Your grandmother paid you to?—”
“Five dollars is five dollars,” Olivia said pragmatically. “That’s halfway to a new glitter pen set.”
Thunder boomed again, and this time the emergency lights flickered.
“Ooh, are we having an adventure?” Olivia asked, bouncing on her toes and sending more water flying.
“We’re having a power outage,” Lily corrected, grabbing a towel from a shelf and wrapping it around her daughter.
“That’s basically an adventure. Mario, don’t you think this is an adventure?”
I looked at them—Lily trying to dry her daughter’s hair while muttering about meddling grandmothers, Olivia chattering about the romantic potential of thunderstorms, both of them lit by the greenish emergency lights like something out of a fairy tale—and felt something shift in my chest.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “It’s an adventure.”
“See?” Olivia beamed. “Mario gets it. Hey, can we light candles? Candles are very atmospheric. June says atmosphere is important for romance.”
“June needs a hobby,” Lily muttered.
“June HAS a hobby,” Olivia corrected. “It’s you two. She has a whole spreadsheet about your interactions. She showed me. There are color-coded columns and everything.”
“Of course there are.”
But Lily was smiling now, the tension from our almost-moment dissolving into something warmer, easier. She glanced at me over Olivia’s head, and there was a promise in her eyes—later, that look said. We’ll finish this conversation later.
The rain continued to pound against the windows, and somewhere in Italy, my father was probably still fuming about his disappointment of a son. But here, in this flower shop that smelled like roses and possibilities, with these two Sage women who made me feel like maybe I could be more than my achievements or failures, I felt something I hadn’t in eight months.
Hope.
It was terrifying.
It was perfect.
CHAPTER11
Lily
The next evening,my kitchen smelled like a Hallmark movie had exploded—vanilla, cinnamon, and enough pumpkin spice to make June weep with joy. We were supposedly making cookies for tomorrow’s fundraiser, but really, I was trying not to think about yesterday’s almost-moment in the flower shop, when Mario and I had been one thunderclap away from... something.
I was wearing my favorite worn jeans and a cream sweater that had somehow become permanently flecked with paint and garden soil; tonight I’d tied on a plaid apron that still had a faint smear of last week’s berry jam across the pocket. Olivia had on her unicorn pajamas—pink, slightly too small, and smeared with evidence of earlier frosting experiments—and she balanced on the stepstool like a tiny, glittery general.
“Mom, you’re murdering that dough,” Olivia observed from her perch. She had flour in her hair, frosting on her nose, and the kind of manic energy that only came from sneaking chocolate chips when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“I’m kneading it.”
