“I need flowers.” He moved toward the counter, and I found myself straightening from the hunch I'd held all morning. Unfolding, just slightly.
His gaze traveled up my body, eyes moved slow, deliberate. Heat crept up the back of my neck.
“For delivery,” he added. “To my office.”
I waited for the rest. The name of someone—a girlfriend, his mother… maybe even a boyfriend? The explanation that always came with flower orders, the story I didn't ask for but received anyway.
“For myself.” He said it when I didn't respond. “I want to send myself flowers.”
My pen paused over the order form. “You want to send yourself flowers.”
“Is that weird?” He didn't wait for an answer. “My dad used to bring my mom flowers every Friday. Not because of anything special. Just because he wanted her to know he was thinking about her. He'd sign the cards 'Just Because.' My last boyfriend thought it was ridiculous, and said I was too sentimental.” Something flickered across his face, there and gone. “But he thought a lot of things about me were too much, so. I figured I deserve flowers even if no one else is going to buy them for me.”
Last boyfriend.
I had no idea what to say to the rest of it. In five years of running this shop, no one had ever ordered flowers for themselves with that kind of earnestness. People sent flowers to apologize, to celebrate, to mourn. They sent them because they'd forgotten something important or because they wanted to impress someone. They didn't send flowers to themselves because they deserved them.
“What kind of arrangement?” I heard myself ask.
“Something beautiful, crafted by a professional,” he said, waving a hand at me. He came closer to the counter, close enough that I caught a trace of soap and something spicy. He leaned forward on his forearms, and my gaze caught on his hands—slim fingers, a small tattoo on the inside of his wrist. Simple line work. “Not the sad grocery store kind wrapped in plastic.”
“I don't make sad arrangements.”
“Glad to hear it.” He was looking around the shop now, taking in the supplier catalogs stacked on the back table, the ribbon samples spread across the counter. He wore layers, a cream sweater under a jacket that looked too thin for January, and he'd wrapped his hands around his elbows like he was already cold. “This place is great. How long have you been here?”
“Five years. My grandmother had it before me.”
“I'm new. Just moved here about a month ago.” He said it like he expected me to welcome him to town, to ask where he was from, to engage in the kind of conversation I'd been avoiding all morning. “I'm Jamie, by the way. Jamie Redford.”
I didn't offer my name. Didn't need to. It was painted on the window in gold letters that had been there since before I was born.
“Budget?” I asked instead.
“Whatever makes something beautiful.” He pulled out his wallet, handed me a card. “Don't tell me how much. Just make something good and charge me for it.”
“And the card?”
He thought for a moment. The bolder dog, Marceline, I assumed, had grown bored with the fern and was nosing at Bubblegum, who tolerated the attention with the air of a long-suffering sibling.
“Just because,” he said. “Because you deserve it. Something positive like that.”
I wrote it down. His own handwriting would have been better, more meaningful, right? But he didn't offer to write it himself and I didn't suggest it. I took his office address—the coworking space above the old hardware store down the street—and told him I'd deliver sometime this week.
“Surprise me,” he said. “Pick a day.” He glanced down at the dogs, then back up at me, lifting his head to meet my eyes. Theangle shouldn't have done anything to me. It did anyway. “We're there most mornings. And I like surprises.”
“Most people don't.”
“I'm not most people.” His mouth curved up, and I found myself tracking the shape of it, the fullness of his lower lip, the way the smile changed his whole face. I looked away before he could catch me at it.
“Thanks, Flower Guy.”
He was gone before I could respond, the bell ringing behind him. The shop fell quiet again. Just me and the spreadsheets and the faint trace of soap that hung in the air where he'd been standing.
Back to work. Tried to, anyway. But my hands had lost their rhythm, and I kept glancing at the door like I expected it to open again.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and made myself focus on the spreadsheet. Valentine's Day was coming. I had work to do. I didn't have time to think about bright hazel eyes.
I thought about them anyway.
