The Florist | ✓ (#Wattys2016)

daffodils

daffodils

5 months, 25 days before

Every evening when Dev gets back from his night shift, he loosens his tie, drops his bag, leaves his shoes neatly by the door, and makes his way to the kitchen. Rebecca gets home a few hours earlier, so there's always a fresh pot of coffee waiting on the countertop. He prefers tea, of course, but by this point it's become too awkward to say anything.

Then he makes his way to the living room, around the same time as Rebecca gets out of the shower with her hair in a towel. Dev kisses her hello, careful not to spill his coffee, then he settles down beside her on the sofa. This leaves them an hour of before they go to bed. Rebecca spends it reading whichever manuscript her boss has her slaving over this month, and Dev chooses to spend it with his headphones jammed into his ears, passing the hour with Bowie or Jagger or Dylan.

But this time it's different. Because this time, Jagger's beaten him home.

Dev is an hour early since the trainee offered to take his shift. He snatches the moment to spring a romantic gesture on Rebecca, and he races to the supermarket and picks up some daffodils. They're not the most romantic flowers, but she likes yellow, and he feels good clutching them in his hand as he jogs up the steps to their flat.

The first thing he notices when he cracks open the flat's door is Let's Spend the Night Together, blaring on a tinny phone speaker. He freezes. Rebecca can't stand any records released before the late nineties, and he isn't expecting guests tonight.

Dev frowns, pressing his ear to the door tentatively. His hand curls around his bag's handle. He realises that a bag filled with a phone charger and a few papers isn't likely to make a good weapon, but it beats embarrassingly improvised martial arts so he doesn't let go of it.

He glances about awkwardly, looking for somewhere to leave the flowers. He didn't want to make his heroic battle with the intruder look like a confusing romantic gesture, but there's nowhere to leave them. He settles for keeping them reluctantly. If the intruder asks, he'll just roll off a one-liner like, "I wasn't expecting company!"

Dev does not know what to do in the event of a burglary (and possible kidnap?). He doesn't know how to fight, so that rules out combat. His tall, lanky frame makes him look less intimidating and more goofy, so a good old-fashioned confrontation is out of the question. He decides that surprise is the best (and only) weapon in his arsenal.

He bursts through the door and screams, "FREEZE, INTRUDER!"

A girl screams, and a bowl of summer berry granola shatters over the hardwood floor.

"Shit," states Clara.

Dev drops the daffodils.

Clara, standing in the middle of Dev's living room, looks different. Her hair is longer, she's lost her tan, and she's wearing Dev's shirt like a jacket over some shorts and a very green bra.

And he doesn't know where to begin. It's been four years. It's been four years of silence and absence and nonexistence and now she's in his flat, in his shirt, eating his granola. It's almost to weird to comprehend.

"Is this...is this like some kind of weird dream?" he asks, batting the door shut distractedly. He doesn't take his eyes off her. "Because I mean, it's weird that I'd dream about ten solid hours working at a pharmacy, but I'm also not willing to accept that this is real life."

Her mouth is hanging open slightly. "Dev?" she manages. "You...I mean..." She stops. "You know Rachel?"

"I...what?" It seems like a weird thing to focus on in this situation. "You mean Rebecca? Yeah. I know her." Then he says, "Clara, it's been four years."