I took my medication religiously. My life was a time bomb. If this medicine failed, or if I forgot to take it, I’d have to start all over again. That was the last thing I could handle now that I was on my own.
Tucker didn’t give up when I failed to visit GrandmaFlowers and contact him. He showed up at unexpected times.
I would often grab a sandwich at a shop down the street from Big Harry’s before I went on shift, and sometimes he would be there to buy me a cookie. Other times he’d pass me a book or a movie to watch. Small things like that. I couldn’t fault him, so I accepted his brief, gift-driven attention.
One day in February, I spotted him waiting on a bench near the diner. When I got close, he stood and held out a giant bouquet of yellow daffodils.
“Do not tell me you brought me a Valentine.”
He kept them extended, even though I didn’t take them. “Nope. Daffodils were our flower, and today is an important day.”
I cocked out a hip. “Let me guess, some anniversary. When we met?”
“Nailed it. One year since we first saw each other in the hospital,” he said. “I know you don’t remember it, but I do. So I wanted to commemorate it.”
The flowers made me feel funny inside, like someone was about to punch me. I didn’t like it.
I pushed the bouquet into his chest. “I can’t take those. Everyone I work with will laugh at me.”
“I figured you’d say that.” He shifted the flowers into the crook of one elbow and handed me a small piece of cardboard inside a clear sleeve.
It read, “For Ava from Tucker. One year.”
I flipped it over. On the other side, slid between the cardboard and the plastic sleeve, was a single yellow daffodil, pressed flat and dried.
“That one will fit in your pocket,” he said. “No one will see it.”
The uncomfortable feeling inside my chest increased. My eyes burned. But I took his sentimental offering and shoved it into my back pocket.
“Well, thanks. Thanks for remembering what I can’t.” I turned toward the diner.
“Ava,” he said. “Can I say one more thing?”
I twisted around. “What’s that?”
“You said something important to me on the last night I saw you before your mother moved you away.”
I sighed. The past. Always the past. “All right. What did I say?”
“That your heart would remember. Even if it seemed like you forgot me, your heart would know mine.”
He was probably right. It accounted for this terrible sick feeling. My heart was clenching or revolting, or maybe even imploding.
Like hell would I admit this to him, though.
Instead, the part of me most interested in escaping said, “Sounds like the old Ava was full of shit.”
After my last show of cruel Ava, Tucker didn’t come by for a while. But about a month after the daffodils, I spotted him on the bench.
He had another bouquet. Roses this time.
I paused a few feet away. “So, what silly romantic date have I forgotten this time?”
He was dressed up in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt that he had obviously ironed.
“Go on, tell me. We got married or something.”
He laughed. “No, nothing like that. Today was our first official date, one year ago. I wanted to take you out bymyself, but I was having seizures, so I couldn’t drive. My friend Bill and his girlfriend came, and you climbed out of your window.”
