Suddenly, he was upon her, his arm sliding over hers and releasing her fingers, lacing them through his.
“You look like you are about to pass out. Come sit down, sweetheart.”
His scent washed over her, a sweet wave of Georgia air and sharp, crisp notes of paint. She inhaled deeply, breathing in every inch of him. Elly let Aaron lead her over to a chair. She sat heavily, aware as she did that she was crushing one of Ardelle’s arrangements in the process. Aaron’s arms held firm around her.
“There, there you go. Are you okay now?”
Elly nodded, trying to keep her unraveling grasp on staying conscious. She kept her eyes closed. His fingers trailed up her neck softly, pulling her chin upwards.
“Elles. Look at me.”
Elly opened her eyes reluctantly. He was the sun. His hazel eyes gazed at her seductively, tiny specks of gold dancing inside them. His soft baby cheeks with just a hint of pink looked out of place on his long, chiseled jaw. He had thin rose lips that opened slightly, framing his perfect white teeth. His lean body curled over the chair, Elly’s face in his rough artist’s hands. His tuxedo fit him like a glove, emphasizing his wide shoulders and long build. He was, after all this time, the most beautiful thing Elly had ever seen.
“Elly,” he murmured, staring into her face, “I forgot just how beautiful you were.”
Elly felt herself drifting happily away into his strong arms. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
“I missed you too,” he said, sounding heart-broken. “I think about you everyday, hell – every hour.”
“Really?” Elly whispered.
“Really. I lay awake at night and try to remember every inch of you.” Elly reached out her hand. “I can’t believe you’re here now, here with me.” Aaron took her hand softly and held it against his face. He breathed deeply. “I prayed that I would see you here today. I asked Sunny for inane wedding details, just to find you. I had to see you. I thought if I saw you then I would know.”
Elly’s lips curled into a soft smile. “Know what?”
Aaron brought his face close to hers – their lips were almost touching. “That I was wrong. I was wrong to leave. We are supposed to be together, Elles. I never knew how lucky I was until you had gone. I tried to find you, you know that?” Elly closed her eyes. These words, these were the words she had dreamed of hearing for so long. He loved her, he missed her…he had looked for her.
His hand trailed across her brow, his mouth whispering words into her own. “Come away with me. Be mine again. I have always loved you, and I made the biggest mistake of my life the day you left me. I should have crawled on my knees until you came back to me. Elly, you were my life.” His eyes simmered with pain. “I’ll do anything to be with you again. Elly. I choose you.”
With that, Elly pulled his lips violently to hers. The kiss was deep and passionate – waves of resentment and anger, love and want rolled over them and they clutched at each other with rough desperation. Aaron wrapped his hands into her hair and pulled her face against his. His breathing was labored and Elly gasped with joy. Aaron pulled her body roughly to his.
“I can’t believe you’re real,” he whispered, in between frantic kisses. “You’re here, with me, it’s incredible. I want to know everything about you. Where have you been?”
Elly buried her face in his warm neck, releasing all the passion that she had withheld from Isaac. “I’ve been making a life for myself. Wait until you see it.”
Their fingers intertwined, caressing and wandering.
“You and me, we belong with each other,” he breathed. Elly nodded, amazed at his presence. He was what she had wanted, for so long.
Two years, two years of never saying his name, of countless glasses of wine of the patio, followed by tears and drunk-dialing Kim; two long years, and this, this was all she needed. The flowers around them faded, the room shrinking gradually until all she could see was him; his lips, his arms, his eyes. There was no wedding, there was no Isaac. There was just Aaron. There had always been just Aaron.
His lips moved up from her cheek to her ear. “Look around. Look at how incredible you are. I can’t believe you did all this.”
Elly nodded, her messy hair falling over her face. “It was a lot of work.” She pulled his mouth back to hers, smiling. “I’m glad you noticed.”
Aaron’s hand crept up the back of her shirt. “Do you know that I dream of you, almost every night? You are there on the edge of my consciousness. Always.”
Elly felt tears of joy gathering in her eyes.
He kept murmuring. “How was I to know? I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. I’m a fool.”
Elly smiled, her lips still pressed against his. “You are a fool.” She nuzzled him affectionately. “I always knew you would come back.”
Aaron caressed her back softly. “I can remember each second of the day I found out where you were. I was painting in the living room, and Sunny came in and was raving about some local florist she had found in St. Louis. Truthfully, Sunny was always background noise to me, until she said the florist’s name: Elly.”
Elly stared up at him, captivated.
“Just hearing the name made my heart feel like it was about to break. I casually asked, ‘Elly who?’ When she said Jordan, I dropped my paint can, made a lame excuse about the stomach flu and ran upstairs. As quickly as I could, I got onto the internet and found the Posies website.” His grin stretched wide, the corners of his eyes twinkling with bliss. “And there you were, glorious. Everything that I remembered and more.”
Elly winced. The photo had been taken on a steaming hot summer day in August. Elly had been dripping with sweat, holding a bouquet of Ambience roses. Right before the picture had been taken, she had tripped down a hill and ended up with her hand in horse manure. It had not been a good day.
“I knew that I had to wait this thing out, just to see you again.” He shook his head. “The madness of wedding planning was worth it all to fall at your feet.” He raised her palm to his mouth. “Elles, I can’t live without you.” Elly closed her eyes, surrendering, having no mercy for herself. “Leave with me. Right now. We can go anywhere. I have the plane tickets for the honeymoon in my coat pocket.”
The honeymoon.
As soon as the words left his mouth, something inside her switched. The nervous butterflies in her stomach turned quickly to nausea. Anger flooded the place where an overabundant happiness had sprung. Her brain lit up with truth. Everything was so obvious. Elly’s eyes jerked open, to see Aaron’s face inches from hers, eyes closed. She pushed him back.
“Oh my GOSH - What am I doing!? Aaron, you are getting married today. TO LUCIA! Have you forgotten that? You are wearing a tuxedo, for God’s sake.”
Aaron grabbed her hands. “I know, that’s why we have to leave now. She can’t see me with you, otherwise she’ll flip out. She’s already threatened by you.”
Elly made a disgusted sound and stood up. “What is wrong with you? You left me for her, and now you are planning on leaving her at the altar?”
Aaron looked up at her, pleading. “You don’t know what she’s like, Elles. Ever since she found out that I’m not over you she has been insufferable.”
Elly made a face. “Don’t call me Elles. I can’t believe that I almost fell for this. I can’t believe that I almost fell…for you. Again! Aaron...” Her voice broke with tears and suddenly she was screaming. “YOU BROKE MY HEART! You cheated on me, IN MY BED, with Lucia. You chose her, over me. I was your WIFE.”
Aaron’s face contorted. He was losing control. “Love, I looked for you. I looked everywhere.”
“Where? Where did you look? Honestly, I wouldn’t have been that hard to find. I’m still using my maiden name.”
“How was I supposed to know that you drove all the way to St. Louis? That you picked up an entirely new profession? That you started a new life?”
Elly scoffed. “What else was I supposed to do, Aaron? Sit in Peachtree and wait for you to rebou
nd back to me? Buy an apartment in the town next door and bide my time? Sleep on the porch until you came home?” She pushed her hair out of her face with fury. “I was a wreck after what you did to me! I needed to erase you completely just to be able to get up in the morning. You took my LIFE away.”
Aaron moved swiftly, wrapping his arms around her in one quick motion. “You took mine away too, the day you left.”
Elly felt herself fading into his arms once again, the delirious delight returning. She shoved him roughly. “Don’t TOUCH me. I can’t think when you touch me. What is the last thing you remember when you left? Huh?”
Aaron bit his lip, looking like an adorable little boy. “Your face when I walked out the door. It haunts me to this day.”
Elly spun around. “I hope it does. Because the last thing I remember about you is that you left me sobbing on the floor. In the home that I created for us.”
“Baby, I never meant it…”
“Please. You knew exactly what you were doing.” She paused. “How long, Aaron? How long was it going on before I caught you?”
Aaron mumbled something quietly to himself.
“What was that?”
“I said three months.”
“Exactly. It wasn’t some mistake, Aaron, like she fell into your bed on accident. It was a conscious decision.” Her voice raised in a shrill strain of hysterics. “I’m sure you were both laughing at me behind my back. Stupid Elly, she has no idea!”
Aaron stood up and drew close to her. “It wasn’t like that at all. There were some days that I couldn’t bear to look at your face because of the guilt.”
“Then why didn’t you STOP?”
Aaron started pacing, his shiny black shoes making circles on the carpet. “Not that I would expect you to understand. My painting was suffering. I needed something to wake me up, to shake me to my core.”
Elly rolled her eyes. “Then you should have taken up rock climbing. You needed a hobby, not a mistress.”
Aaron’s eyes were red and watery. “You don’t know how she pursued me, Elly. I had no prayer. I didn’t even know that she had feelings for me until the day I came into my studio and found her naked, laying on a bare canvas.”
Elly shut her eyes. Thank you for that, she thought, what a wonderful image to have in my mind.
“Her only purpose was to seduce me. And she pursued it, single-mindedly, until I finally submitted.”
This, Elly actually believed. She had met Lucia. “How long?”
“Excuse me?”
“How long did you wait before giving in?”
Aaron nervously ran his long fingers over his lips. “It was that night. In the studio.”
Elly felt the righteous anger rise up inside her, like a cleansing lava. “It must have been difficult to wait so long.”
Aaron looked at her pleadingly. “Don’t be so mean, Elles. What do you want me to do?”
Elly turned and started walking quickly towards her supply table, ducking under the flower canopy. “I don’t want anything from you, Aaron.”
Aaron ran his hands through his hair and chased after her, grabbing her arm roughly.
“Elly. Don’t go. We can be happy. You know we can.”
Elly sighed, staring up into his eyes, aware of the twirling flowers all around them. “Do you remember those days? Where we would stay in bed? Where I would paint you, and we would eat grilled cheese together and stay up all night, lost in each other?”
Elly looked to the side as tears sprung to her eyes. “Those were the best days of my life Aaron. But the sum of them can never equal the pain you caused me that day, when you chose your mistress over your wife. And today? Today, you are marrying her. That doesn’t exactly reek of repentance.”
There was a moment of awkward silence.
“Elly. I don’t WANT to marry her, but…” Aaron paused, weighing his thoughts carefully. “Her family has money. They can support my art, and we travel whenever we would like. If I marry Lucia, I’ll never have to worry about getting a job, or where we will live. My art would always be the first priority and Sunny has offered to fund my own gallery. I would be very a well-kept man.” He smiled wryly. “I have all that at my fingertips, and I’m miserable. It’s because I don’t have you, because I lost you, and I have to live with that everyday. I had a diamond, and I threw it away for a trinket, a shiny new toy. Lucia means nothing to me, you hear me? Nothing. I’m not sure that I ever loved her – I think I loved the secret, and the newness of her, but not Lucia herself.”
He looked surprised. “It turns out I can’t stand her. I hate her friends, her childish outfits, her naïve outlook on life, and her silly sculptures. There was a time when I cared about her, but that time has long passed. We could be happy. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, showing you every single day that I will never stray again.”
He took her face tenderly in his hands and kissed her mouth with anguish. Elly looked into his face, a face that she had built up in her own memory, a presence that was more fantasy than reality. The Aaron of her memories was a perfect man, seduced away by a scheming home wrecker – he was the one who got away. The Aaron standing in front of her, looking glorious and handsome in his tuxedo was a coward of enormous proportions, someone barely in control of his own life.
Elly blinked hard. “Goodbye, Aaron.” She turned to leave, breathing him in one last time.
“Elly, Elly…” He was begging now, tripping after her. “I didn’t mean to cheat on you, I mean, I did, but - I didn’t! It was out of desperation, I was hurting, my art was suffering! You were sad all the time because of your mother, and I didn’t know where else to turn – Elles, you were my muse!”
Elly whirled around and slapped him across the face. It was a hard, sharp impact and it echoed across the room with a loud crack. He wasn’t expecting the full force of her weight behind her hand, and he sprawled onto the floor, holding his face. Elly stood over him, Isaac flashing in her mind.
“YOUR MUSE?? YOUR MUSE?? If I hear one more person call me their muse, I will kill myself!” Elly paced back and forth, wanting to experience the fullness of her epiphany. “I just realized that the worst thing you can make someone is your muse, Aaron! Yes, we may inspire creation, or sometimes just crappy paintings, but the minute the artist’s work starts suffering, then the muse is dismissed. You tied yourself to this idea of the muse, rather than just realizing that you are to blame for your own lack of talent!”
Aaron staggered to his knees and stared at Elly. She smiled broadly. “You told yourself that breaking my heart was just collateral damage in your search for a way to get control of a gift that you never HAD. And now poor Lucia,” I really mean that, thought Elly, “Poor Lucia has fallen in love with you, and she is the next muse who will fail you. But in truth, you will fail her. I imagine in no time, you will be throwing yourself at another woman, the way you are throwing yourself at me now. This is not about art.”
Aaron reached for her, a red welt rising across his face where Elly’s ring had struck him. “Elly…”
“Shut up, Aaron.” Aaron reeled back, shocked. “You have no claim over me, not anymore. I have been living half a life without you, thinking that I could never get back that part of myself you stole. But in truth, my life is fuller now than it has ever been.” Her mind lingered on Kim, Snarky Teenager, Cadbury…and Keith? She pushed him from her thoughts. “I have a successful business and friends I love. Friends who love me. Clayton is the perfect town for me and I love my shop. The mess you left me with has kept me from seeing the truth of that, all this time. But not anymore.” She looked down at him condescendingly, unable to believe the words that were about to come out of her lips.
“I’m going to live my life now, without your shadow lurking in the corner of my mind.” She bent over and kissed him quickly on his red cheek. “Marry your muse, Aaron, and stay the hell away from me. Forever.”
With that, Elly turned on her heel and walked slowly away, past the s
hocked waiter who stared at her wide-eyed, witness to the entire confrontation. He raised his hand in a high five, and Elly slapped her palm against his.
The room radiated a brilliant glow as the sun poured through the west windows, warming Elly’s skin. She could hear Aaron’s weeping fade into the background as she left the past behind her. It felt as if a giant yoke had been lifted from her neck and the result was a giddy freedom. She relished each light step out of the ballroom and down the hallway, admiring the incredible flower arrangements that she had made on her way. She hit the elevator button with gusto and grinned to herself down the ten floors to the lobby level. Turning towards the exit, Elly caught her breath and swiftly ducked back behind a corner.
Down the narrow corridor stood Lucia. Elly had never seen such a gorgeous bride. Her dress was an elaborate ballgown, with a tight fitted shell that barely covered the tops of her breasts. The bottom fanned out in layers upon layers of white feathers, only broken by a sweeping piece of satin that swirled around the waist. Her long cathedral veil floated behind her. She was bending over, her long red hair falling over her face as she talked to a tiny flower girl who nuzzled her nose. Lucia giggled and pulled the little girl into a hug, the girl’s flower pomander swinging wildly. The pride and bliss in Lucia’s face were obvious, even from fifty feet away.
Pity washed over Elly. As easy as it was to hate Lucia, she was nothing more than what Elly had been four years ago – a bride in love, ready to give everything to Aaron – Aaron, who would take it all away one day. She was struck by such a strange feeling, wanting to pull Lucia into her arms and steal her away, to save her from a fate that at times had felt worse than death. But she couldn’t. Lucia was embarking on the journey that Elly had already made – a journey through heaven, hell and back again. There was nothing she could do that wouldn’t appear done out of selfishness or jealously, aside from telling Aaron not to show up. But that would mean seeing his face again, and that was something Elly wouldn’t do. Not ever again.
She watched one of Lucia’s bridesmaids – holding a resplendent bouquet – walk over and whisper in Lucia’s ear. Lucia nodded and steadied herself, taking a deep breath in before an elated smile erupted on her radiant face. Elly ducked her head, feeling ashamed for seeing such a private moment, one that each bride had, a moment that should be hers alone. Her father walked up to her, swaying slightly, and took her arms in his. Awash in empathy, Elly quietly let herself out of a side door, not wanting Lucia to notice her. Without realizing it, she had forgiven her. Elly ducked under the vine covered arbor, staying perfectly still as Lucia walked past her, on her way to marry the man of her dreams. She smiled sadly as she turned toward the parking lot, her last thought of Aaron evaporating from her mind. The first strains of the wedding march rose up behind her as she looked to her new life ahead.
Elly In Bloom Page 30
