"Fallon? Where do you want me to put these?"
"Over by the Azaleas, please."
"Will do!"
No sooner had her assistant placed the newest flowers than the front door opened.
"Courtney! Hi! What brings you by today?"
"Hi, Mrs. Gregory. I need a boutonniere for Stone," the pretty 18-year old high school senior told the mother of her boyfriend.
"Yeah, I kinda thought that's why you stopped in," the shop's owner said with a smile. "Do you have something specific in mind or could I maybe you show some possible options?"
"No. Nothing specific. If you could help me that'd be fantastic," Courtney told her.
"Well, this is your lucky day. I not only have time, I have quite a few beautiful choices. I still have a few amazing Tulips if that interests you! Come on. Let's see if we can find something that catches your eye."
In less than ten minutes, Courtney had not only made her choice, Fallon Gregory had her assistant quickly set out the filler greenery for the background that would showcase the gorgeous yellow tulip she'd selected.
"I wasn't expecting preferential treatment, Mrs. Gregory," her young customer told her.
"Nonsense! If you're dating my handsome son, you're like family, and families take care of each other. And call me Fallon, for goodness sakes!"
Courtney paid using her mom's credit card and after another thank you and a brief hug, another satisfied customer left Fallon's Floral Boutique with a beautiful boutonniere in hand and a smile on her face.
The smile faded from Fallon's face, however, almost as soon as Courtney was outside. It was asking too much of her to pretend she was happy after saying what she'd just said. She knew firsthand that family didn't always take care of family. Were that true, she wouldn't be 51 years old and raising her only son by herself since right after his twelfth birthday. Her ex-husband, Jerome, had waited until two days after Stone's birthday party that year to inform her, and then their son, that he was leaving them.
To say she was caught off guard was an understatement in the extreme. She'd been floored by the sudden revelation, and now, some six years later, she was still dealing with the aftermath of learning that her former business partner, and former co-owner of the shop which then was open under a different name, had been having an affair with her husband right under her nose.
Fallon wasn't naive, but she'd been trusting to a fault. Never once did it occur to her that her two best friends, her husband, Jerome, and Alaina Maris, could be secretly meeting during long lunches and whenever else getting together was possible. Somehow they'd pulled it off flawlessly leaving Fallon and Stone as so much wreckage in their wake.
Alaina agreed to sell her half of the business to Fallon provided she didn't contest the divorce. Custody was never an issue as her former partner had no interest in children let alone having one who would be a teenager not long after she and Jerome would be starting their new lives together.
To his credit, Jerome helped her fund the purchase of the shop, but that, too, came with a price. She could either have child support for another six years, or a no-interest loan worth quite a bit more than the amount she'd receive in monthly payments. Since Stone and the business were all she had left, it was an easy choice.
She waived her right to child support in court and took the loan. From then on, Fallon shouldered the rest of the financial load by herself. Jerome still occasionally contributed here and there, but only when Stone wanted to attend baseball camp or times like this week when he was doing something special like taking his girlfriend to the senior prom. Jerome would shell out a few hundred dollars here and there hoping that would somehow compensate for his near total lack of interest in his son's life after virtually abandoning him six years ago.
In spite of her ex-husband's neglect, their son had grown up to become a very polite, very well-mannered young man who had his father's brains and his mother's looks. That wasn't to say Fallon wasn't a smart woman as she'd done a superb job running her business. But Jerome was chemical engineer and Einstein smart while Fallon had been gorgeous and was still a very attractive woman.
Even at 51, Fallon Gregory looked closer to 40 and many said 35, and that had made the divorce even harder. At 45, when he'd left her, she was definitely as hot as any woman in her early 30s with a body that matched her beautiful face. Her skin was firm and tight and her long, very-dark hair was thick yet soft and silky.
Fallow was aware that much of it was genetics, something that was completely out of her control. Her mother, who was now 75, had only really started showing her age after turning 70. Even now, she also looked remarkably good for someone closing in on 80.
The rest of it was the result of a total abstinence from tobacco, a near total absence from alcohol, and a lifetime of healthy eating coupled with regular exercise which regularly included yoga, aerobics, and swimming.
Even so, her husband had left her for a woman who was fifteen years her junior, and admittedly, a very attractive woman herself. Alaina wasn't any better looking than Fallon, she was just someone new. Someone...different.
Coming back to the comment she'd made to Courtney, Fallon had to admit the hurt was still there no matter how she looked or what she'd done to keep herself in superb shape. In the end, it was all for naught, and she'd been abandoned in spite of all those years of hard work and self sacrifice.
She was also well aware she'd more than done her part where marital intimacy was involved. Jerome had never wanted where making love was concerned, and Fallon was as open-minded as a woman could be about doing the kinds of things her husband liked. The truth was, she'd enjoyed them as much as him, and that kind of intimacy was one of the things she missed the most about being married.
She'd tried dating starting a year or so after Jerome moved out, but after giving it a full two-year 'go' without meeting anyone she found interesting enough to pursue, she made a conscious decision to stop dating and threw herself into her work and her fitness routine, and a new online blog she'd started and very much enjoyed.
The shop had been doing okay, but after that it began making some real money for her, and she'd recently expanded the shop to sell other items besides flowers, vases, and cards. They were now bringing in almost as much as the flowers themselves.
She also fully got involved in Stone's life trying her best to become mother, father, and best friend to the boy who soon realized his father's 'love' consisted of empty promises, the occasional phone call, and a check each year on his birthday.
Fallon threw out all the rules and gave Stone the kind of freedom kids in college had and yet he'd never abused it and had turned out quite well. Fallon prided herself for being a 'hands-off' parent who believed in being a best friend to her son rather a rigid, rule-setting tyrant—like Jerome.
That hadn't been a huge problem area between her and her ex-husband, but once he moved out, she felt, looking back, that it was just so...unnecessary.
On those rare occasions when he did spend time with their son, Fallon bristled every time Jerome imposed some kind of punishment for the slightest violation of any of the seemingly-endless rules he made their son live under.
She now took great delight in his having become such a fine young man in spite of her very lax style of parenting. Stone had nonetheless become a very pleasant, universally-liked young man.
What never crossed her mind was that the nearly twelve years of consistent discipline, which was never harsh, but always administered with love, had served to shape her son's personality. As a result, he was still very much rule-oriented, a fact lost on his doting mother who wasn't about to give her ex-husband an ounce of credit.
Her new issue with rules-oriented parenting was a common topic in her locally-popular online blog published under the screen name "The Stone-Cold Truth". Other than her son, and her assistant, Beth, who'd just done a bang-up job on Courtney's boutonniere, no one knew who the author of the blog was. But they did know she lived in their hometown of Auburn, Washington, located about 25 miles nearly due south of Seattle, and that she claimed to be a loving, caring mother of a 'wonderful high-school senior on his way to college' in the Fall.
The blog had a fairly large local following and had even picked up quite a few followers from around the country, and Fallon did her best to post something each night of the week sharing her thoughts on love, life, and parenting with the occasional rant about men.
She loved the quiet time where she could sit and compose her thoughts then share them with her readers. It was also another way to fill the void of spending nights alone in the beautiful home she was getting close to paying off—just like the loan her ex-husband had given her six years ago. She was 'cash poor' but wanted to be out of debt more than she wanted a large bank account. She'd saved many thousands in interest charges by paying off the mortgage early while interest rates (and returns) were too low to tempt her to 'invest the rest'. So she lived frugally now hoping to have more later on.
