The Wedding Bees Read Free Page B

that,” she said. “I guess it’s a store.”
    â€œYeah, it looks real inviting,” said Jay, hitching up the empty hive boxes he was carrying.
    â€œI know what you mean,” Sugar agreed. “A balloon shop should always be open, just like a garden should always have flowers and a hive should always have bees. Closed is simply not a word that should be associated with something as bright and beautiful as balloons.”
    â€œThese balloons are not bright and beautiful,” Jay said, resting on the railing. “These balloons are pale and pitiful. In fact, unless ‘Lola’ is tying those things to herself and jumping out of cakes at bachelor parties she should probably rethink her business strategy.”
    â€œHow you get from an innocent child’s plaything to a girl jumping out of a cake, I just cannot fathom,” Sugar said. “Are you sure they even do that at bachelor parties these days?”
    â€œNot the bachelor parties I go to,” Jay admitted. “Come on now, can we get going?”
    They climbed the stoop to the apartment building’s weathered outer door, heavy and difficult to open, which led to a tiny stifling space where the mailboxes were, with a second door squeaking moodily before letting them into the lobby. This was dark and had seen better days, but the worn red-and-green tiled floor was clean, and the place smelled better than many of the ones Sugar had moved into over the past few years.
    The somber gray door to the only first-floor apartment had five locks on it, though, causing Jay to raise his eyes to the heavens instantly. “Please tell me this isn’t you.”
    â€œOf course not, sweetie pie. I can’t keep bees on the first floor!”
    Jay looked up the narrow stairwell. “Can you keep them on the second?”
    â€œNo, I cannot. And not the third or fourth either. It’s a climb, I admit it, but I do believe that when we get up there, there’ll be a lovely surprise for my girls.” She held up her bee box. “They’ll be so happy, they’ll make honey you will cry just thinking about.”
    â€œIs this your way of telling me there’s no elevator?”
    â€œThis is my way of telling you that nine out of ten health professionals say climbing stairs is the best way to maintain your cardiovascular fitness.”
    Jay owned a florist shop in Middleburg, Virginia, and usually maintained his cardiovascular fitness in an air-conditioned gym under the tutelage of a personal trainer with a beautiful body and a magnetic mean streak. It was testament to his love for Sugar that he was hauling heavy boxes up countless stairs and driving his assistant’s cruddy van, not his own spotless Miata. “You go on up, check the place out and find me the smelling salts,” he said. “I’ll keep unloading.”
    â€œAren’t you glad I have movers bringing the rest of my stock tomorrow?”
    â€œI’m glad you trust me with your precious essentials, sweetie, but one year it would be nice to see you without pulling a groin muscle.”
    Up on the fifth floor, Sugar unlocked the door of her new home and stepped inside.
    This was the fifteenth threshold she had stepped across in as many years and always she felt the thrill of the new, even if she sometimes felt the icy blast of a drafty window or the hot breath of a lecherous landlord as well.
    Apartment 5B, 33 Flores Street had neither.
    It was a 600-square-foot studio, with a bed in the middle of the far wall, although far was hardly the right word as nothing in a place that size was really far from anything else in it.
    But what Sugar had been promised by the landlady when she had called after finding the listing on a beekeepers’ website, what she could barely believe existed in the world, let alone in New York City, let alone that it was to be hers for the next year, was the terrace that ran the length of the apartment