Page 25 of Worshipped by the BRATVA Grump

I pull up across the street and watch as Delilah carries a tray of cakes and sets them out on a table. Kimmie is in there too, straightening something on the wall.

The afternoon darkens into evening and people start turning up. Most of them I recognize from various places, my cousins, Daisy’s colleagues from the paper.

Then I see Daisy. She is wearing her hair down over her left shoulder, covering what’s left of the wound on her head, I suppose. And she is wearing a dress. The only other times I’ve seen her in a dress was at Jasper’s wedding. It was green. This one is a shade of copper that makes her hazel eyes flash gold. She is beautiful.

I thrust my hand in my pocket and palm the ring that I’ve been carrying with me since the day after the wedding.

It’s a vintage design. Rose gold with a diamond and citrine on the shoulders. Unusual, but the second I saw it I knew.

But what I knew and what Daisy knew were two very different things.

The night is winding down when Daisy goes to the door of the shop and opens it, glancing both ways down the street before crossing to my car and tapping on the window.

“Are you going to come in, or are you going to sit out here all night watching the shop like some weird book stalker?” she says.

I get out of the car without saying anything, because the truth is, I’m terrified of what might tumble out of my mouth if I open it right now.

I’d end up proposing to her again. Or telling her how beautiful she looks. Or how I’ve barely been able to eat since she walked out of my apartment.

We cross the road in silence and she pushes the door open.

It’s warm inside, and everything is cast in a cozy golden light that looks exactly right for this sort of shop. The sort of shop you could lose yourself for hours in.

The door through to the café is open, and two of the cats have wandered in and made themselves comfortable on the counter.

Lilah, Eduard’s daughter, is asleep on a beanbag under the stairs with a book under her hand and her thumb in her mouth.

Delilah and Jasper are laughing at something Natan just said. There are still a few others inside too. Bill has popped through from the café and a woman I recognize from Daisy’s street is pulling her coat on and preparing to head home with another young woman who I don’t recognize.

Demyan seems to know her, he is looking at her with a combination of recognition and confusion as the older woman kisses Daisy on both cheeks and then both women head out of the door.

“Here,” Daisy says, thrusting a glass of champagne into my hands. “I’m going to make a toast.”

She taps the side of her glass with her fingernail, and then says “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,” when no one notices.

Everyone turns to face her. Demyan coming down the steps to join us.

“I just want to say thank you for making tonight so wonderful. I couldn’t have done it without you all.”

Delilah shouts, “Hip hip!”

And everyone else follows with “hooray!”

The shop looks amazing. Just as she described it when we first stood in here together. The rolling ladder, the pale, dreamy walls, the floor to ceiling shelves.

Daisy is hugging Kimmie, Sammie and Delilah and waving goodbye to my cousins as Eduard scoops up Lilah and carries her out to his car.

I’m leaning against the counter, feeling something a little too close to envy for my liking, when Daisy locks the door behind them and turns to me.

“Thank you,” she says, tapping her glass to mine and taking a drink. I follow suit.

“You don’t need to thank me,” I reply. “I just want you to be happy.”

She pauses for a moment, watching me over the glass of gold fizz.

“I do need to thank you, because this happened because of you. I saw the invoices, Mechislav. Had an entire mental breakdown over them. Then with the accident and everything, I just got overwhelmed…” she trails off, twisting her mouth to the side as she figures out her next words.

“The truth is, you’re quite intense. In every possible way, and I’m not used to that.”