“You already do, baby. You just don’t see it.”
That was Graham. Quiet, steady, the kind of man who remembered I hated peppermint tea and loved chamomile with honey.
Every Saturday since we were seventeen, he’d shown up with grocery-store carnations because I once told him they reminded me of my grandmother.
My parents never saw any of that.
“The poorest loser we’ve ever seen.”
“He’s poor, sweetheart,” my mother said over lunch that same week, stirring her coffee as if the word tasted bitter. “You cannot build a life on carnations.”
“Mom, please.”
“Your father and I did not raise you to marry the poorest loser we’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“We’ll call him what he is,” my father said flatly. “A boy who works a register and thinks that’s enough for our daughter.”
I set my fork down.
