Chapter 57: Chapter 57: Simply Business

VOLUME THREE: SIMPLY BUSINESS

Lily

"COME ON, Lily Junior. You can’t give up now," I said, giving the pot a little shake. "You’re so young." She had many good years left to live.

It might have been a lie. In truth, I didn’t know how long ivy plants lived and I’d had Lily Junior since I was eighteen. She was close to her prime, but regardless, I didn’t want to give up on the one accomplishment I had in life.

I shook the pot again, just a fraction this time, but enough three brown, crispy leaves fell from her stems and floated to the dingy tile floor of my shop.

Damn.

Lily Junior was my namesake. She’d been a present from the same grandmother who left me the Pelican Bay flower shop in her will a few months earlier. She sat on my desk at Valiant Industries—the company I worked for right out of college. Lily Junior and I had history.

She was the only thing I’d ever successfully kept alive for more than a few months.

The goldfish, Steve, I bought my freshman year of college?