The Florist | ✓ (#Wattys2016)

poppies

poppies

4 years, 10 months before

Dev knocks sharply on Clara's door, clutching a bouquet of poppies. It's the cheapest thing they have the shop, but he thinks it's a decent gesture. All things considered.

When the door finally opens, it's Clara, and her eyes are wet and her nose is red. She's drowning in a giant jumper, and stuffed under her arm is a bag of popcorn. When she sees him, she smiles.

"Poppies?" she sniffles.

"They seemed platonic enough," Dev admits.

She smiles at him, though her chest is still shaky from crying. "Is this so we can make opium?" she asks, pushing the joke through her brittle voice.

"Sure. Let's start a post-breakup opium den."

She snorts and swings the door open, and he steps inside.

The Monroes' house smells strongly of vanilla potpourri, and Dev always feels the need to take smaller breaths when he first steps in, just to acclimatise. He slips off his shoes and leaves them at the door. Usually Clara tells him there's no need – although there is a need (he's been raised in an Indian household where shoes are not allowed indoors) but this time she doesn't.

"Hi, Dev!" calls Clara's mum, who insists on being called Susan. She's in the kitchen, trying to feed their dog. "Did you come to cheer Clara up?"

"Hey Susan," he replies. "Yeah, if that's possible."

"We're making an opium den, mum," Clara sniffs. "Dev brought poppies."

Susan laughs loudly and declares, "You're such a sweetheart, Dev!"

As Dev follows Clara upstairs to her room, he is yet again surprised by how lenient white parents seem to be.

When she opens the door, Dev's eyebrows shoot up. Clara's room is rarely tidy, but today it's as if a tornado hit a war zone. There are crumpled-up tissues strewn about on every surface (the bin is full), and clothes and blankets form a colourful ocean on her carpet.

"Shut up," she mutters, catching his face and dragging him in. She rests the poppies on her desk. "I'll get a vase for them later," she tells him, flopping onto her bed.

Dev sweeps some pizza crumbs off her chair and makes himself as comfortable as he can. There's something sticky on the armrest. He wishes he had some hand sanitizer or – upon further inspection – some bleach. The place is disgusting.

"Clara," he whines. "Why are you living in a vortex of misery?"

"Why are any of us living in a vortex of anything?" she retorts, seizing a blanket.

"Clara, stop trying to distract me with existentialism," he moans, slightly distracted by existentialism. "Please purge your room."

She groans. "I don't have to purge my room, I'm sad, I can live in a disgusting hell if I want to."

"There's snotty tissues everywhere; it's like a minefield of bacteria."

"Good," she grumbles, rummaging her hand in her bag of popcorn. "That way if Sean tries to come in he'll die."

This seems a little extreme, but Dev lets her have it. "I'm not telling you to get over your breakup, I'm just suggesting you tidy up. I'll help – but I'm not touching the tissues," he warns.

"I can't just do things. I'm supposed to mope and eat garbage and burden you with my misery," she explains sagely. "I don't have it in me to do actual productive stuff, that's not how this works. The most productive thing I've done all weekend is buying a pity plant."