Petal [h.s.]

EPILOGUE III - THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

5 years later

I was covered in pink paint.

I lifted my arm to wipe the sweat off my forehead, stepping back to examine the wall before me. I just spent the last three hours painting tiny pink flowers all over the wall, enough pink flowers that you'd think I would never want to see the color again. But of course, I would be seeing the color every day for the rest of my life because it was my wife's happy color.

She had been out in the garden all morning, laying in the sun with her face buried in a book, surrounded by wildflowers in every shade and a vegetable garden large enough to feed our entire block. Having a garden that beautiful wouldn't be such a big deal to me if it weren't Arabella's garden. She built it, she took care of it, she turned it into a passion project. For someone who hated the scent of flowers, she seemed to have a surprisingly green thumb.

When she showed me her garden at the house where she lived with Buffy, I cried like a baby. I'd never known that it was possible to be loved by someone that deeply, enough for her to adapt my passions and turn them into her own. She told me that she built the garden so she always had a piece of me near her, so she could go out and sit in it and be reminded of being near Flower Boy and me.

When we moved into our new home together, it took her ages to recreate the garden she had. But she was determined to have it, to give me a lush and thriving garden built by her capable hands. I added the small vegetable garden myself, but I happily left all of the flowers to her. I dealt with them enough every day at work.

A few months after settling in with Arabella, I opened a floral shop on a small quiet corner in my new hometown. It wasn't next door to her shop but that was okay, because I came home to her every night and woke up to her every morning. We didn't need to be on top of each other anymore and my business bloomed faster than I knew it ever could on another boardwalk. Tourists just weren't interested in floral arrangements, which I understood.

"Bunny, it looks amazing!" I heard Arabella gasp behind me, making me turn around and furrow my brow.

My heart grew five sizes every time I saw her and it seemed to grow double that when she announced she was pregnant. Her belly popped recently and my eyes drifted down to it now, watching her rub it gently as she moved into the nursery.

"You can't breathe in the paint fumes, Belly!" I moved toward her, gently grabbing onto her arms to usher her back out.

The bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks were tinted red from the sun, her forehead damp with sweat. When I got close to her, I could smell the sunshine on her skin. I wanted to bury my face into the crook of her neck and inhale.

"Just let me look for a minute," She gave a whiny little plea, pouting out her bottom lip, "Please. I won't breathe, I swear it."

I raised my eyebrows to her sternly, but my lips curved up at the corners anyways. She grinned back as soon as she saw my smile, getting up onto the tips of her toes so she could kiss me. I couldn't say no to her, something I learned rather quickly. All she had to do was pout her lips and bat her eyelashes at me and I was putty in her hands.