When Mahir returns to Permanent Record wearing a grin, Amelia eyes him suspiciously.
Mahir rolls his eyes and says, "Relax. I just went to the next door."
"Ah, that explains it," Amelia says laughing at Mahir's almost palpable happiness.
Mahir sees Vish smirk at him from her tattoo station, where she's stencilling a design onto a client's shoulder, and he shoots the girl the middle finger with his free, non-flower-toting hand.
"That's not as effective when you're wearing a shit-eating grin, Sehgal."
"Up yours, Khanna"
Mahir leaves Vish to focus on her customer and leans against the front counter on his elbow, cradling the gardenia between his fingers and examining it. The white petals are unblemished and they look so delicate; he's almost afraid to touch them.
"So you finally talked to her, huh?" Amelia asks eyeing the flower with interest.
"Yup," Mahir says breezily. "And I learned that her name is Bela."
He dips his chin down to the gardenia in his hands and asks, "Do you know how to press flowers, by any chance?"
-
The next time Mahir returns to the florist, he has the framed and finally completed artwork under his arm. It's undergone several changes, from the sketchbook page to cold pressed paper, from pencil to watercolour. It's taken a long time, but he's quite proud of how it turned out.
He places it on the counter between him and Bela, and apprehensively awaits her reaction.
Bela traces a finger over his painted counterpart, down the waves of hair that Mahir painstakingly recreated, across the blooming flowers of the outdoor display, over the muted pastel letters of the flower shop name above the door. She hovers over the finishing touch, the rolled and dried gardenia petals, arranged in a flower crown atop her likeness's head.
"You made this?" Bela asks, eyes flickering between Mahir's own.
Mahir smiles shyly. "It's from that day when you caught me sketching from across the road. You asked me to show it to you when it's finished, so...yeah. Here it is."
"It's beautiful," Bela says honestly. "What are you going to do with it?"
"I'm giving it to you, of course," Mahir answers, brows twisted as if to say that were obvious. "I couldn't possibly give it to anyone else."
Bela shoots him a smile so blindingly bright, it's well worth the hours of work he's put into the painting, and Mahir's heart soars.
-
(When Mahir visits Bela again later that week, he sees the painting hung up on the wall at the end of the aisle with Bela's favourite flowers.)
-
Okay, so, Mahir is probably being really obvious about his feelings for Bela. But the thing is, he kind of doesn't care. Vish and Amelia teases him but it no longer fazes him, because he is fully embraced the fact that he has a huge crush on the girl next door.
So he continues to wave through the flower shop window on the way to work every morning, and goes over to the shop when his lunch break permits it.
He learns that Bela is twenty-two years old and the sole owner of Stop and Smell the Roses. She's clumsy and accident-prone and has a fully stocked First aid Kit beneath the front counter just in case, but her fingers are nimble and she is somehow able to wrap a bouquet of flowers without creasing the paper at all. She doesn't style hair in the mornings, just brushes it and accepts where it falls, and there is soil lodged beneath her short French manicured nails almost all of the time, but she never looks anything less perfect every day. She is messy and uncoordinated and her handwriting is almost illegible, but she laughs loudly and unabashed and under her dirt-streaked apron is a heart of gold.
Mahir learns a thousand things about Bela - which are really just a thousand reasons that causes him to fall deeper and deeper, but he honestly doesn't mind.
-
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