The oleander is a beautiful flower that represents love, destiny, and understanding. However, when consumed, this flower is incredibly toxic; even deadly.
Dahlia Davies is a college drop-out, struggling to run her father's flower shop. The bills ar...
They lay in bed drinking coffee. James is reading the paper while Dahlia scrolls through her Instagram feed. It's mostly Wanda, Scott, Kate, some people she still follows from USC, and a bunch of tattoo shops - artists whose work she likes but are booked up for the next century. Dahlia always checks to see if there's an opening so that she can get a new tattoo instead of investing it in therapy or something "productive", as her aunt tells her. Her aunt doesn't like her tattoos. She never did.
"Why do you have so many of them, Dahlia? It's so unladylike."
Dahlia just thinks her aunt needs to chill out and embrace the 21st century.
She keeps scrolling and sees a post that was just made about two minutes ago from one of her favorite artists who works out of San Francisco. He did the memorial tattoo for her dad that's on the back of her shoulder, rosemary and pansies. The same flowers Ophelia gives to Laertes in Hamlet.
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts."
Hamlet was her dad's favorite play. He took her to see it twice, and when she was in high school, she played Ophelia after his death. It was a way for her to process what happened. Dahlia doesn't know if it helped, but she knows her dad would have been so proud sitting in the front row, reciting the lines along with her.
"What do you think about getting tattoos today?" She asks as she opens the messaging app, already DMing the artist, an old friend, and someone she doesn't get to see often.
James looks up.
"Tattoos?"
"Yeah. What do you think?"
He laughs.
"What are you doing, peach?"
"Messaging an artist. He did the tattoo on my shoulder. The one for my dad."
James glances at it, a warm glint in his eyes. He loves her tattoos. Sometimes when they sit together watching TV, he'll trace them mindlessly along her arm. She does the same with the ones on his hands.
"What kind of tattoos would we get?"
She smiles softly and raises a brow as she sends a message:
You got time to do couple tattoos? Ring fingers?
She looks up at James.
"What about King and Queen tattoos? Like card suits. On our left ring fingers."
He stops reading immediately, closes the paper and leaps on her. Dahlia's phone tumbles from her hand and she squeals as he begins to cover her face and neck with kisses.
