The Florist | ✓ (#Wattys2016)

tulips

tulips

5 months, 10 days before

"Would it help at all to hear some kind of inspirational quote?" Clara offers.

Rain streaks mar the second floor window of café, a short walk from the flat Dev had moved into. The iron balcony just outside the cold window holds a tiny garden. Leaves and tubers bloom out, spilling over the balcony's sides and framing the yellow tulips just within Dev's eye line.

"Hit me," he replies tiredly.

She rolls back her eyes, trying to think of the best one. "Um...Sunshine all the time makes a desert?" she tries.

It's strange to be sitting with her like this, talking like they used to. Well, almost like they used to. Now there's a strange, viscous awkwardness smeared over everything, and Dev isn't sure if it will go away. That afternoon he agreed, over text, to come and meet her here expecting some kind of explanation for the last four years, but all he's getting is small-talk and advice about his breakup.

He hasn't been doing fine. It's been far too weird to live with Rebecca, so he's found the best place he could with such little time and money. Sometimes when he gets home from work, he thinks he can hear her in the shower like their old routine, but it's usually just a gas leak. He's had three of them this last month, and it's a miracle he's not dead yet. It's still preferable to living with Rebecca.

"People keep telling me these weird proverbs," he sighs. "They're all like 'Dev, flowers need sunshine and rain to grow'," he mimics. "But I hate it when people say stuff like that. Sure, you've got to take the bad with the good – that's life – but I mean, flowers don't need their girlfriend to hook up with girls behind their backs. That's not a thing."

"You're right," Clara agrees, looking down at her cup of hot tea. "You don't need to suffer to grow. That's not something that needed to happen to you. That's just a shitty thing that shouldn't have happened at all."

"But it did," Dev says. "And now it's raining."

He's not growing though. If anything, he feels like he's shrinking. He glances out at the tulips on the balcony, trembling in the storm, and he can't really see how it's helping them.

What's worse is the people telling him to 'get back out there'. That's not healthy. That's not even remotely good advice. As much as he wishes otherwise he still does love Rebecca, and that's a horrible thing to burden onto somebody new. No woman deserves to be a distraction, at least in his opinion.

He wants to wait this one out on his own. If he's miserable on his own, he'll be miserable in a relationship. It seems more sensible to just suffer it out. Kinder, even.

There's no hysterical strength here, exactly. Dev feels as though every truck in the world got together in some sort of international truck conference and ran over him in quick succession, just to spite him. He doesn't feel as if he can lift a truck. He feels as though he should try.

"Clara," he says. "Why did you just disappear?"

Her eyebrows jolt, and she leans backwards in her seat. Their table is tiny, so they're close.

"Before I left," she says very slowly, "I said something, and I shouldn't have said it. But I meant it." She looks up at him, matching his gaze nervously for some sign of understanding. "You didn't reply. I thought you hated me for it."

Dev shakes his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She rephrases it. "I said something – well, I didn't say it, I – I mean, you never brought it up in our messages, and I thought you wished I never mentioned it or something."