Afternoon tea with Henry and Boris was a strong shot of strangeness, to be sure. Gathering around a table at Twist of Skate with Henry, Boris and a positively livid Giselle made out to be an ideal chaser. I held Henry's hand under the table and he, more than once, attempted to recreate our little scandal on the plane. Our decency was coming apart at the seams and, if I might be completely honest with you, I was more than eager to take him out to the Subaru and jump his bones in the back seat. But I kept my cool and brushed his hand off of my thigh before he even had the chance to reach the runway. "Cool your jet engines, Bub." I cringed at my words, my sheer lack of sex appeal. There was no telling what Henry saw in someone like me. I knew for a fact that Giselle would give me the "speech" when we got back to the apartment. Relationships and (although I never told her in so many words) intimacy, were the leading causes of relapses for me. I could love myself on my own just fine, but the second that another person held me in their arms- let alone, someone who I wanted as badly as Henry Anderson, I would start changing everything that made me Marigold without even realizing that I was losing myself in the pursuit of love.

Benny tossed Tommy our way. He was bussing tables for quarter machine money. This normally would have been a good job for him, but the kid had clearly been taking swigs of unfinished drinks in the corner when no one was looking. He passed out "menus" of greasy bar food, but not without giving poor Henry a death stare. The kid was telepathic. Well, I had my theories, anyway. We were nestled close, but that glare came along just as Henry's fingers ringed the expansion band on the back of my skirt. I sighed in relief, with satisfaction, too, when his warm palm became situated. I was still modestly covered, nobody else would have seen that tiny halfmoon of flesh at the innermost slope of my waist. It was perfectly innocent and yet, simply feeling his skin on my own made me want him even more. He must have known, must have felt my heartrate spike when he pulled me closer because he brushed my hair aside, making to whisper some sweet nothing in my ear. Tommy cleared his throat, loudly and made a face that I suppose was meant to imitate his father- or a very strict teacher whenever the little imp misbehaved.

"Your tab is on the house for the rest of the night," he slurred, part in inebriation and part… well… braces, "on one condition. You bring Elvis back whenever Dad breaks out the karaoke machine." Boris hid behind his menu like a frightened woodland creature. Tommy crossed his arms, "Nice pipes, Tamika. You have your pick of just about any woman in the roller rink! I'd be out there chasing some skirt if I were you!"

Poor Boris continued to hide his face, surfacing not a minute later and with a rather odd statement, no less. "You do not serve muffins in this establishment?"

Giselle, who was taking a final gulp from her watered down long island iced tea went from being an angry drunk to a hysterical one. I'll bet you any money there were dogs in Charleston who heard that shrill giggle of hers and barked all night long because of it! Benny, who I would later learn, was so intent on making Boris a patron of Twist of Skate that he had given Tommy a wire to wear and was listening to the conversation from some fifty feet away. When he rolled over to us, Giselle's laughter worsened. He was in full costume. Steampunk. With a nonfunctioning jetpack over the cape on his back and round goggles pulled over his eyes.

"Good evening. I am Benny Martin," as he extended his gloved hand to Boris, the poor fellow lost all of the color in his face and looked over to Henry, as if to ask permission to speak to the ominous, caped creature in front of him. Henry nodded. "What kind of a muffin would you like?"

The menu dropped from Boris' hands and flapped down onto the table. His eyes widened. "How did you know?!"

"Sorcery, my friend! Now, name a muffin, any muffin and it shall be yours!" Benny waved his arms around, as though he was about to conjure up a muffin out of thin air.

Everyone but Boris shrugged the silliness off. Benny was simply being Benny. "Blueberry. If you please."

The arm waving came to a sudden halt. I assume this was because the great sorcerer saw his son fishing out the maraschino cherry from Giselle's discarded glass. Benny lifted his right leg and stomped the wheels of his roller skates down on Tommy's foot. "Thomas," he hissed between his teeth, "take your allowance to Coffee n' San-tea and buy Mr…"

"Boris Bordon," Henry had to answer for his friend.

"… Mr. Bordon-Presley a blueberry muffin."

Tommy shook the pain out of his foot, his scowl growing by the minute. "Tess ran out this morning. She had to call Mrs. Appleby to have her make more of that organic blueberry goop-"

"- then go to Panera." The mysticism returned to Benny's voice as he resurrected the freakshow arm movements from earlier. Much to Boris' (and drunk Giselle's) delight.

It took a good ten minutes for Tommy to return with the muffin. Let me tell you, there was no living with Boris after that night. As the least inebriated in the bunch, I was deemed the group's designated driver and spent the remainder of the evening drinking strong coffee and trying to sober up. Moxie gained a certain appetite for my drink of choice and I would frequently have to push her snout away. I passed her to Henry when Giselle and I got up to sing and naturally, I could see the silly pupster dipping her nose in the coffee cup when Henry was supposedly "captivated" by my performance and voice. I knew that I was still a little bit buzzed when we migrated to the Subaru, but Benny and the Jetpacks- more like Tommy and the Jetpacks, were tackling the strangest rendition of Aerosmith's "Crying" in all of music history. Let me put it this way, Tommy started chomping on the microphone cord during the harmonica solo. I drove just about as slowly as any grandma and got Giselle to the apartment just fine. It was not my driving that was in question that night, really. Although, if Jake was on patrol, he would have pulled me over in a heartbeat. My judgement to go home with Henry… and Moxie and Boris… was the real whammy.

To begin, Boris asked for another muffin and I couldn't say "no". I liked him. I didn't know how long this opinion would stick. The mental image of him knocking on Henry's door and inquiring for muffin money while he and I were… indisposed… kept popping up in my mind. But, for the time being, I didn't mind his quirky presence. Everyone in Waterford, it seemed, had the same idea as us and were jam-packed into the line. I muttered a complaint or two about how Panera just started offering delivery in the Portland area right after I left. When I bemoaned fast food and delivery services, Henry was quick to defend it. Boris, too. I dismissed it as a "guy thing" and wagered that living in New York City must have turned them on to the convenience of it all. Once Boris was situated in the back with an entire paper sack full of muffins and the bowl of tomato soup that Henry and I were going to split, our little disagreement reached a beautiful denouement. Henry singing, "My Paneee-eee-eee-eee-era, I love youuu!" to the tune of "My Maria" helped matters along greatly. I took out my phone, found the actual song and we sang along to it the whole way home. Moxie howled, of course. Boris gravitated to the record player and even offered to hold on to Moxie while we talked. He seemed to understand what Henry and I needed and this made me like Boris even more. We took our tomato soup, bagel and single cup of iced green tea into the bedroom to make our amends.

"I want you to know that I haven't forgotten what you asked me on the plane," Henry stroked my back, watching me dip a small bit of bagel into the paper bowl. "I haven't forgotten, nor have I dismissed the notion. You just… you needed time to find help that I could not offer you. And what I said to you in the hospital-"

I shut my eyes. I knew what he was doing. He was turning over the stone, to see if the massive, grotesque spider that was my eating disorder had truly been crushed. It was the same stupid thing that I did with the biscuits when we were having tea. I ate my portion of the bagel without another word, hoping that it would make the statement that he was looking for. It was so much better than lying, than admitting the lengths that I would go to in order to be "perfect" for him. "I haven't forgotten, either," I didn't dare to look him in the eyes as I spoke, "and if you're thinking that it was just in the heat of the moment, it wasn't. I've had this dream for many years now and the way that you fit into it... oh!"

"Then tell me," his fingers moved to the bottom of my chin and he guided my head with the sweetest gentleness, "tell me about your dream, my little yellow flower."

My face might have blushed, my ears might have turned red, but I told him everything. I told him about that sweet yellow bungalow in the historic district, just within walking distance of the schoolhouse. I told him about the flowers and herbs that we would plant in our garden, the records that we would dance to in the evening and the park that we would take Moxie and our children to on morning and evening walks. Henry didn't laugh at my vision, he contributed to it by naming the books that we would have in our personal library and the destinations that we would travel to on our summer vacations. We started building our home together that night, on the foundation of my greatest lie. "Let's do it," Henry said to me, giving my hand a tight squeeze. I looked into those dazzling blue eyes and saw nothing but honestly gazing back, "let's get married."