He wasn't even looking at her which was a win in her book.
Sam was standing in the kitchen, looking around.
That's when she realized that he was still holding the flowers he'd brought. "Oh, sorry."
She walked passed him and opened the cabinet under the sink. She had a vase stored there. A vase that she'd picked up at the second hand store when she'd picked up a few decorations for the house she was renting. She'd intended to grow some flowers in the yard and use them to fill the vase when they'd grown, but this?
This was better.
Standing, she lifted up the vase and smiled. "This will work, I think."
When she looked at Sam she found him looking back with a smile on his face, too.
"Looks good."
She turned on the water in the sink and washed out the vase before putting water in it. When she shut off the water she turned to look at him and found that he was standing beside her. He had a little plastic packet in between his fingers.
"They said this will help keep the flowers fresh."
Seaton nodded and took it from him. "Thank you." She started to rip the packet open, but paused to look up at him again. "Thank you for the flowers, too. I was hoping you'd like the cookies, but I had no idea you'd like them this much."
She laughed, but instead of coming out as a full throated laugh, it was more of a nervous titter. To cover her awkward feelings, she quickly tore the corner off of the packet and poured it into the water, swirling the vase around to dissolve the powder.
"Actually..."
She turned to take the flowers from him and stopped short.
He was smiling at her, his eyes bright in the mid-morning sunlight.
She was fairly sure she'd been hit upside her head with something.
Anticipation.
That's the only word that she could think of to fit the situation.
She had already determined that she would stay away from dating forever, but thinking back to her time with her ex-husband, she'd never felt any kind of a thrill from just talking to him. She'd always been tense around Daryl, her emotions tight as a bowstring.
This... feeling was so very different that she wasn't sure if she was imagining it.
Sam looked a little chagrined. "I haven't even tried the cookies yet."
"What?" She pressed her lips together to keep herself from saying more.
He looked down at the flowers, untying the ribbon that was wrapped around the bouquet. "I got out of my truck and... I came here first."
They fell into silence as they teamed up to take the flowers out of the wrapping and put them in water.
"That's why you left the container behind?"
"Yeah," he handed her his pocket knife and she cut the rubber band that she'd been wrestling with, "I picked these up on the way here and I guess, I just thought I'd come here first."
"I'm not complaining." She wanted to say that. To let him know.
"I think it's because I've been thinking about our talk." He let out a laugh that sounded almost like a cough. "If you can call it that."
She set the flowers in the vase and then took her hand away to see how they settled without her support.
"Well, we did talk. I just didn't see you while we were doing it."
