The Florist | ✓ (#Wattys2016)

forget-me-nots

forget-me-nots
3 years, 2 months before

The rain that beats down on Dev's windows blurs the city's darkened silhouette. The sky is grey, and his tiny room is lit by the synthetic sunlight of his little desk lamp.

In front of him, his illegibly scrawled homework on the efficacy of complementary therapies lies discarded in favor of his laptop. This is a common ritual. He tells himself he'll finish it in the morning.

The light of his laptop casts two flickering reflections in each lens of his new glasses. He's only been wearing them for three months now, and they spend most of their time stuffed in a little case. Dev hates the way they fog up above his tea and leave little imprints on his nose. He'd honestly rather have a seeing eye dog than wear these giant abominations, but Rebecca likes them so he's been wearing them more frequently these days.

His chat window flashes.

hey dickhead

It's Alice. Rolling his eyes, Dev idly types back, hey alice, how's freedom?

Her new profile picture was taken last week on the day of her graduation. She's grinning ear to ear, her arms flung around some new friends that he doesn't know. It feels weird that she's got this whole other life of her own, filled with new people and new music and new private jokes.

CRAP, she replies. what are jobs?? how do I get one? employ me please

That's something he hasn't been considering much. He's got a whole other year of his course, and it's a vocational degree anyway.

I'll pay you to finish my pharmacy work, he tells her eventually.

Her reply mostly consists of tiny emoticons spewing violently. Then she puts, how's rebecca dude are you married yet

More than wishing that Alice would learn to use punctuation, he wishes she'd stop making fun of Rebecca. It's not that Alice doesn't like Rebecca – they've met a couple times when Alice came up to Leeds to visit – but Dev gets the feeling that their mutual civility towards one another is built more upon politeness than affability.

Alice has always been an advocate of taking a bunch of test-drives before settling on one model too early, and she's been giving Dev constant crap about his two-year relationship. It's nothing he hasn't already heard from his flatmates, mostly backed up by similar car analogies.

shut up alice, she's doing fine.

He waits a few seconds, but Alice has disconnected.

Dev sighs and scrolls idly down his feed. His eyes glaze over as he takes in information he quasi-cares about. His sister has been to a party...John Chang has bought a pig...Whoever Denise Warburton is has changed her profile picture...

Then he stops.

There is a picture of Clara.

ok dev how's the mortgage going?? did you save up for the pressure cooker you've always dreamed of with rebecca

He ignores Alice's message to click on Clara's picture with the precision of a surgeon, avoiding hitting 'like'. She's the most dormant person on social media he's ever known, and this isn't even her post. It's a photo of her, tagged by some boy named Marcus Walker.

Clara's wearing a purple dress, and she's sitting down on a picnic rug surrounded by forget-me-nots. She's laughing, and her eyes are on the photographer instead of the camera. The photo's location is marked as 'Edgecastle, UK'.