May 31, 1925
I got the nerve up to ask him what on earth he was doing with all the flowers he buys. I said your girl must have run out of vases. He just smiled and said he didn’t have a girl. And that I looked nice in pink.
June 10, 1925
I had thought he was finally done with his flower shopping excesses, but Nathan was back today. He bought two bouquets of daisies. Said they were his favorite flower. Told me I looked nice in yellow and left before I could argue.
Well, that didn’t help. It only made her think of Elliot proclaiming daisies as his favorite and wearing a crown of them all night.
The man refused to leave her thoughts.
She started to clean up, stacking everything back into piles and placing them in the box. She couldn’t keep her eyes open much longer and, apparently, her stupid brain wanted to keep circling back to Elliot.
And she couldn’t think about him anymore right now. The rest of her waking hours had been enough.
Anyway, before she went on with the diary, she had to know who Nathan was. Unfortunately, the pictures with the man she figured was him only had dates and no names. It seemed there was one good way to find out. Maybe Elliot had learned more about this relative of his and had discovered his name…
She should probably call him.
For their shared love of history.
And because they were still friends.
She told herself it was for research purposes, that she needed to get to the bottom of her great-aunt’s story, but she couldn’t even fool herself.
The idea of seeing Elliot again was too tempting, even though she was the one putting space between them. She didn’t know what she wanted. She was a mess.
She glanced down at her phone. Elliot had gone to bed half an hour ago. She couldn’t call him now. Okay, so she would text Elliot in the morning. Maybe he would want to meet up. She imagined how excited he would be to get his hands on some primary sources. History nerds liked that sort of thing, right?
She could keep her hands to herself, couldn’t she?
* * *
June 12, 1925
Looking back on my last few entries I feel utterly embarrassed to have wasted so much paper and ink on a man, but it looks like I’m not done. I can only hope no one ever finds this little book. Perhaps I’ll burn it when I’m done, but I find I need to get these thoughts out or I can’t sleep!
Nathan came into the shop again today while I was working alone. John had gone out with the deliveries. I decided I needed to put an end to this… this… whatever it is. I said, why do you keep coming in here? And he said to buy flowers, of course. Just like that. Like he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. So, I said he needed to stop complimenting my appearance and, do you know, he had the nerve to blush! Like I was the one being inappropriate when it had clearly been him who started the whole thing.
He apologized. Which, I will admit, surprised me. He said if it made me uncomfortable, he would stop coming in.
And here’s where I am embarrassed again, because I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to stop. I had the insane thought that I would miss him if he did. So I straightened my shoulders and tried to act very businesslike and I told him that wouldn’t be necessary.
His answering smile made my heart hurt.
Daisy knew exactly what her aunt meant about a hurting heart. Daisy’s heart ached. She missed Elliot even more than she thought possible.
But she’d chickened out again and hadn’t asked him to meet up. It had been another week of friendly texting, and Daisy was going out of her mind. She’d made up so many bad excuses not to see him that Elliot had stopped asking her out. He still checked in on her, but he hadn’t suggested grabbing coffee in days. Pretty soon, he’d probably stop texting all together. She’d successfully pushed him away. And she felt like shit about it.
Her phone buzzed.
U up?
Despite her current mood, Daisy smiled. It was 2 a.m. but she was getting a text from Iris.
Yep.
Her phone started ringing.
