‘I sat in this park, on this bench, wrestling with my fingers... you know, the way I do. It was nice, the sun was out, cloudless. It just didn’t matter...
I must've been the only guy in all of England to be freezing that day, in the middle of a summer heat wave. It was as if a shower head was following me around, dousing me in freezing air, you know what I mean?
Point is I realised there was something missing, but I couldn’t...I couldn't grasp what it was I needed. There was something absent, something...that I was supposed to have but didn’t. Something missing from my fingers, something to hold.
So, I went for a wander away from the park, into the sardine tin esque alley that was our towns high-street. Around the shops and such, Woollies, WHSmith, you know all the corporate crap and then there, right in front of me, was a florist....maybe it was fate or something.
The place smelt girly, so I went in. Heh, it felt right initially.
But I'm walking, and walking, and this place...its a small place. Jill’s on the high street, no room to swing a baby in there, so I'm walking round and round and round, in circles, checking out these nice laminated pictures of flowers and... the girl behind the desk was laughing as she walked up to me and asked if I wanted any help picking.
I told her no, I was just browsing. She said I had been browsing for a half an hour. She even did the quote fingers as she burst into hysterics. I may as well have just been pacing up and down in the shop, just ignoring the photos completely.
I told her that I wanted to find a flower for someone. A special one, one that jumped out and grabbed me by the arms and said She will love this! She will cherish this!
She said that she could find just the thing.
She beckoned me over to the chair behind the desk, pushed me into it, and wandered off, into one of her back rooms. “What are you doing?” I called. She said that she had no other customers, and that I had her all to myself. Maybe she was just being friendly, although my over-active imagination thought otherwise...
She brought back a flower, a tall, butter-yellow petalled thing. “Sunflower.” She said with a grin. “A flower of loyalty. Beautiful as a Florida day and this is going to make her know, that you will love her forever. And you will. I can tell.”
She's right. Unfortunately.
I roll the stem in my fingers, looking up at it’s petals, almost flapping like it would take off any moment. It felt like too...much. I shook my head. She looked almost affronted, and I didn’t really blame her to be honest. She was playing me like a saleswoman.
“Ya sure?” She asked, leaning forward and playing with the petals. “I would love this type of flower. I would have it in a big pot, in the hallway. It would be the first thing guests would see when they came in the house...”
I said that the girl the flower was for didn’t have a big pot. She raised an eyebrow, looking falsely offended.
“I guess I best stop flirting with you then!”
“Guess you’d better.”
“Well... it works on the rest.” She said, taking the sunflower back from me. “I do it with every guy that comes in, because you never know, when true love is going to walk through that glass pane door.”
“Does it work?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. Sometimes, two, three...even four days in a row.”
A few moments later, she was back again, and she had this heavenly white bunch of tiny flowers, their petals were the nicest, most delicate white petals you ever saw, like coloured tears clinging to a piece of green rope.
“Those are nice...” I even raised a surprised eyebrow as she sat down, delicately handing the stem to me. I lightly twirled it in my hands, watching the petals spin and spin.
“They should be. They’re mine.” She said. She was so proud of her flowers, like a young gardeners world type.
But it happened again. I found myself staring into the pollen, observing and judging every tiny detail. this one still didn’t feel right.
“Lilys.” She said, this time the pride obvious, and that saleswoman like tone came back again, that fearsome tone of hers.
“The flower of innocent love. Perfect if you are about to confess your lurve so some saucy minx.'
'Really?'
'Well...' She flashed a ...saucy grin before getting back to salesmanship. 'Want them? Fiver for a bunch?”
“They are good...and yes, I am about to tell her-“
“Oh, you are quick...”
“Har har, but these aren’t right.”
She looked crestfallen. “Why? Those are perfect!”
“They’re not.” I said, and I was trying in my own head to figure out what was wrong as I said this. They were nice...perfectly nice...but they weren’t perfect, you know?
But then...I bet you’re wondering what I was really looking for.
“You are an irritant.” She said, giving me the baleful glare as she got up. “This is war. I’m finding you a flower you’ll love if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Okay...” I said, and I was a little embarrassed as she left the room so I tried to change the subject as she was leaving.
“What’s your name anyway?”
“Ill tell you when you buy a flower... a*s!”
I couldn’t help but laugh as her swing door swung closed behind her and I was left to wait for the next petalled candidate. And guess what it was...
“Okay.” She said, flustered, sitting back down opposite me and shoving a very familiar flower in my direction. “ If this, a sunflower or a Lily doesn’t do it nothing will. A rose. A good old fashioned, freaking rose.”
“Oh comeon.” I said. “If I wanted one of these, I would’ve just picked one up.”
Okay, that was true. But it hardly helped my cause.
“You- are- an- irritant.” She said, jabbing a finger at me while I twirled the thornless Rose in my hand. “I honestly don’t think I’ve had a worse customer.”
“Thanks.” I smiled ruefully, my hands behind my head as I sighed and she looked at me nonplussed.
“You don’t want any of them?” She asked. “None of them?”
I shook my head. Something was wrong here...
“Not one customer of mine has come out of here without a flower for two years. And you are not busting that record. Sunflowers, Lilys, Roses, all beautiful, all wonderful to receive!”
“Couldn’t you get some more flowers out?” I asked. “What about all the others in the photos, surely you can recommend some more of them?’
“But that’s not your problem is it?” She asked.
And there it was.
I knew she had struck upon the right chord because I was about to say the same thing.
“It’s not about the flowers.”
“To be fair...” She began, taking the rose back, stroking the petals with one finger. “It never is about the flowers themselves. They’re beautiful, yes.” She sniffed the rose, and shrugged. “But it’s not about the flowers when it comes to love. It’s about what they mean.”
In my head, I already had an idea. An insane idea...but an idea.
“Thanks very much.” I said, getting up to leave. And she blocked me in. Holding her arms across the way out from behind the desk.
“You still need to buy a flower.”’
-----------------
‘Wow. What a b***h.’
Dess, who sat on the bench beside Glen shook her head as Glen laughed, beaming bright. ‘Nah, she was alright. You should go visit her sometime. She’ll sell you a good flower!’
‘Yeah I’ll go visit her. I’ll leave with her eyes.’ Glen bursting into further laughter as she bared her teeth in that unattractive way.
‘Someone get out on the wrong side of bed.’ Glen teased.
‘Well...I haven’t seen Ben since we got back from uni.’
‘Ah...sounds a bit crap.’
‘It is a bit crap, it’s more than a bit crap. It’s like the sky is raining crap.’
Glen patted her sympathetically on the shoulder. ‘Has he called?’
‘Nope.’
‘It’s only been four days, don’t worry about it...’
‘Its four days! That’s a long time for people to not talk. You’ll know that soon, if this girl gets with you...’
‘Maybe...’
‘Oh come-on, have some optimism. Tell me about her. Have you met her before?’
‘Oh yeah. Plenty of times.’
‘Oooh...’ Dess grinned at the thought of pumping more knowledge about Glen’s love-object. ‘What’s she like?’
‘What’s she like?’ Glen laughed, as Dess watched on, on of her eyebrows arched. ‘She’s like...'
Glen looked into Dess's face, unable to decide what best to say.
'She is it...’ Glen managed.
Then he beamed uncontrollably.
'She is the only one I want to be with, she is beautiful, and she is funny, and she is...utterly, brilliantly...brilliant.'
‘Hmm...she sounds alright.’ Dess had raised a nonchalant eyebrow. ‘What flowers did you get her?’
At this, Glen turned bright red.
‘Er...no. Its embarrassing.’
‘Why do people say that to me?’ Dess said, in fake wonderment as she leaned toward him. ‘It just means I am going to try and find out...’
Glen didn’t say anything. He was chewing his lip, fingers threading through each other, over and over.
‘...comeon then.’ She muttered to his ear. ‘Where are they anyway? Thought you were giving them to her today?’
Glen looked at her. Dess saw, and she saw the uncertainty in his eyes. She grinned like a hyena scavenging.
'Comeon then. I have to see them at some point.'
Glen looked away into the grass at his feet. Colour was draining from his face.
Then he smiled, a thin thing flicking up one side of his face as if his head was lopsided.
He delved into his jacket. Dess smiled a little bit – she hadn’t seen his jacket as baggy before.
He drew out the flowers, making sure they were alright, not bent by the inside of his jacket, and handed them to Dess. Who's smile faded and a confused eyebrow arched into her black fringe.
‘....wildflowers and sticky weed?’
‘Yeah...’ Glen said, watching her nervously. ‘I wanted flowers that meant something. So I picked them.’
‘...sticky weed?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s not even a flower though.’ Dess said. ‘It’s just...a weed.’
‘It’s not about the flowers...’ Glen said.
Dess' eyes suddenly widened.
‘I remember you sticking these on my back on the way home!’ She said, beaming as she remembered. ‘It was like our game...’
‘Yeah. It was.’
The pair looked at each other as, above, the sunlight burst from a flock of clouds, like the dawning of thought.
Then Dess looked away, to her bag as if it had suddenly hooked her attention.
‘So... when’s she turning up?’ Dess asked, her voice quieter than it had been a moment ago as she looked through her bag, flicking through paper and pencils. ‘We’ve been sitting here a while now...twenty minutes or something...’
Glen smiled, awkward.
‘She turned up about twenty minutes ago.’
Dess, after a moment, stopped searching through her bag. She had already been looking for something that wasn’t there. Terrified of the look Glen would have on his face.
She looked around to see Glen kneeling in front of her, hands clasped together.
‘Oh god -’
‘What?’ Glen arched an eyebrow, before looking at himself. And dropping onto two knees instead.
‘Sorry.’ He said, a little shame faced.
Dess stared at him in a kind of wary confusion.
‘Why...why me?’ She asked, face contorted not in annoyance, but sadness. ‘I have a boyfriend...we are friends! I couldn’t-‘
‘I know.’ Glen said. ‘There are plenty of people in the line before me, we’re friends, so on, so on. It shouldn’t...but...’
Dess looked at the bunch in her hand. The weeds. The wildflowers, the tiny petals which she stroked with a small finger.
‘Oh yeah.’ Glen walked over the rusty bin, delved in. Bringing forth a tall, beaming sunflower.
‘That’s for you as well.’
Dess took it lightly. ‘Thanks.’ She said meekly.
She stroked the petals lightly, as Glen figured out what to say.
‘I...had to buy a flower.’
‘Oh yeah. From the b***h.’
Glen laughed softly. ‘Yeah. The b***h.’
‘And I thought it wasn’t about the flowers.’
‘It wasn’t...’ Glen said, weak smile on his cheeks. ‘...she made me buy them.’
‘Nice...’
‘Yeah...’
For a moment, the two exchanged the briefest of glances, only for both to find something interesting to look at in the plain green grass, both focusing on the blades of grass with some intensity.
‘I know...’ Glen started. ‘That I have no chance with you. I mean... You are the best girl I have ever met. Period.’
Dess smiled at him as he continued, fond eyes watching him over the petals of her rainbow like wildflowers.
‘There are a bunch of guys in line before me. I know that. We’re not even at the same uni. But...well I just can’t get over you.’
Above them, the clouds shifted through the sky, the wind beginning to blow. The trees swayed with the wind, their leaves whistling a momentous tune, the strong breeze rippling Dess’s hair.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Dess asked, Glen looking up at her with a slightly tinged red face, as if he was ashamed of what he was going to say next.
‘...What?’ Dess said, curiosity getting the better of her.
Glen smiled, with some cheek. Like he was about to release a chat up line, to either blow her away with the wind or leave her laughing in the grass.
‘You could kiss me.’ Glen said. ‘You wanna?’
She smiled. For just a moment Glen thought that was a good sign.
Except that it was a sad smile, a smile that softly said in his ear not to be...
‘That’s not a good idea.’ Dess said. ‘And I think you know that.’
And for that reply, Glen had no counterargument, no defence to suggest it was otherwise.
‘That’s fair.’ He said, shrugging. ‘You’ll miss out though.’
She looked into the deep of his eye and said ‘I’m sure I will.’
Together, they stood up and walked back towards the street and its shops. Ness handed the flowers back to Glen, who put the little bunch back in his jacket.
‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘Dunno...find another girl I guess.’
‘Oh yeah? Any potentials?’
‘Well...there is one.’
‘...say the wrong thing here...I dare you.’
‘Oh not you. I have bigger fish to fry!’
‘Har har... Who then?’
‘Oh...just that girl at the florist.’
‘...You don’t appreciate living do you? You and that b***h really asking for it today...’
‘Jealous...’
‘...What...ever.’
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