Flower Girl | h.s.

57.

Harry

July 5th.

"It's been pretty warm out, huh? Summer in California can be really brutal."

My attention is brought back to the blonde in the chair with her hair in a loose bun. Halle pulls the notebook in her lap up just a bit before she gives me a soft smile at her attempt for conversation. My attention had been on the fake plant that she sat by the window.

It was an orchid; it looked real, but it hadn't grown much in the years that I had been with Halle, so I assumed that it was fake. But maybe she just kept it trimmed and managed since it sat by her desk.

We had a lot to discuss, and I figured that the weather may have been the most neutral place to start. So, I simply acknowledge with a nod.

"Yeah, it's—we went to Monterey for the weekend. Daisy and I went for a friend's wedding. The kids stayed here with her sister, which went fine. It wasn't as hot there, but it was nice. On the water." I clear my throat as I start to nod a bit to show my interest in what we're discussing.

There was a good amount that Halle didn't know about the past week.

The more significant part about the choices that I had made, and the parts of my relationship that had faltered due to those choices. I knew that I should have called her and talked with her, but the end of the week had come a bit suddenly and the timing just didn't work out.

Luckily, I was able to handle it better on my own than I had originally thought. It wasn't great—that was for certain, but it was enough that I didn't make Daisy leave. I didn't push her away fully. We were able to resolve some conflict, but that didn't mean that I was out of the dark.

The rest of the weekend had only gone... relatively fine. I think that was where it had last stood. Daisy and I were getting along, I knew that she could tell that I was sorry. I knew that she was holding back from me just a bit because of the harm that I had caused with my words and lack of trust.

It wasn't something that I could just build back overnight, and I understood that. There was a lot that was between us and a lot in both of our heads that was keeping us from trusting one another fully. We had trauma, we had experiences from our past that weren't allowing us to be fully with one another because of the hurt that we could cause.

There had been a lack of judgement on my part—I didn't trust Daisy because I didn't see a reason to trust her. There wasn't a reasonable idea in my mind on why she would want to be with me. It didn't make sense the way that Eve described, and I found that as I removed myself from the fog of the conversation, I was seeing much more clearly.

"Yeah, we had a pretty rough start to our weekend, though," I start, knowing that Halle will finish my thought for me. Her words always seem to have that kind of comfort.

I watch as her hands maneuver to open the pen, her position changing as she goes to write a few words down, "How so? Want to dive right in, then?"

And I take the time to fully explain myself in detail about the events that had occurred last weekend. I tell her about Eve and what she had mentioned about Daisy and her family, how I had gone out with coworkers, how I had anticipated that there had been possibly a flaw in the way that we were. I didn't want to sugarcoat it because I knew that wouldn't help.

Halle nodded at my words, humming at a few of them before she finally gave a reaction to the words.

"How do you feel about those conversations now that you're out of them? Does anything change?"