The Florist | ✓ (#Wattys2016)

roses

roses

0 days before

The moment, when it arrives, comes four months later.

Clara has taken a job in a flower shop, similar to the one Dev used to work in, only much larger, and swan-free. The April rain is launching a fierce assault against the shop's window, and Clara is tying ribbons around the new roses that have come in this morning.

But right at that moment, Dev is making a discovery.

He is sitting cross-legged in the middle of his living room, and the streaks of rain down his window are cast down onto the floor as shadows, cutting across him like prison bars. And he is smiling.

Dev has been cleaning as a means to procrastinate. He should really be reading up on a new drug that the pharmacy was set to stock, so of course he decides that it is imperative that he cleans his flat. It cannot wait. He clears everything out, and spends ridiculous sums of time gazing nostalgically at them before sorting them into KEEP and BIN piles.

Currently in his hands is a book. 50 Greatest Love Letters. This is his first time reading it – really reading, not just flicking through it absently – and now he knows why Clara never stayed in contact all those years. Now he knows why she was too scared to come and see him.

Scrambling to his feet and seizing his coat, Dev hurtles through his door and down the stairs, out into the rain. With his coat pulled hastily on, he sprints through the streets clutching the book tight in his hand. His shoes slap against the wet pavement as he runs through Leeds, and he catches sight of the flower shop. Dashing inside, he shuts the glass door behind him and faces Clara.

The bell rings.

"You!" Dev declares, his face fixed into the biggest grin Clara has ever seen. He is soaking wet, and panting, and there is a little puddle of rainwater forming by his feet at the entrance of the flower shop.

Clara stares at him, and she puts down her roses. "Me?" she asks flatly.

Dev realises that he never actually finished his sentence. He's too busy wheezing. He's never really had the best cardio. Dev holds up a finger in to say give me a second, and he leans against the door until he gets his breath back.

Some customers are staring.

"Wow," says Clara slowly. "You're a real man of action, Dev Nair."

But his smile doesn't falter and he triumphantly extracts the book.

He brandishes 50 Greatest Love Letters like a bouquet of flowers, and when Clara's eyes fix onto it, they grow as wide as a cartoon's. It's as if every word they never said is being wielded in that one gesture, soggy from the April storm but just as new as ever.

Because there are 51 love letters in this book.

"Holy shit."

"Holy shit indeed!" he manages. "Clara Monroe, you were in love!"

"That's an...exaggeration," she says, fumbling with her words. "I mean, I never used the word love. I love you, but I mean, I never said I was in love with –"

Dev flips the book open at the last page. There, in Clara's messy scrawl, is the 51st love letter, titled Dear Dev.

"Oh my god." She screws her eyes shut, but she's smiling. "You only just read it now."

"I did," nods Dev, and a few drops of water fly off the edge of his nose.

"I thought you read it when you got it but you never mentioned it so I thought you –" She opens her mouth to say something, but she closes it again. "You idiot! You didn't read my letter!"