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There was a flower stuck to the outside of her locker.
Flynn narrowed her eyes, suspiciously.
Objectively, it was a nice flower. It was an orange rose, with a bright color and clearly fresh. The long stem was stuck to her locker door with matching orange duct tape, which was going to suck to have to clean up, but it didn’t appear to be attached to anything.
She couldn’t think of any reason that there would be a flower taped to her locker, unless this was some sort of prank. And she was not going to fall for it and be made a fool of in front of the whole school.
Flynn leaned closer. She didn’t hear any ticking. So probably not a well-disguised bomb then.
“Hey Flynn!” Reggie’s cheerful voice said loudly in her ear as he popped into existence right next to her, startling her so bad that she jumped about ten feet in the air.
“Jesus, Reggie, warn a girl,” she said, pressing a hand over her racing heart.
He ducked his head, sheepishly. “Oops, sorry.”
She eyed Reggie, noting with a smirk that he still had a smudge of lipstick in Julie’s favorite shade on the corner of his mouth. She would bet real money that Luke had a matching smudge. Clearly her bestie had had a good start to her Valentine’s Day.
“Sooooooo…” Reggie dragged out the vowel, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocking back and forth on his heels in a display of fake casualness. “How’s your Valentine’s going? Have you gotten anything cool, maybe, like a flower?”
Flynn rolled her eyes so hard they almost fell out of her head. He was about as subtle as a brick to the face. Sometimes she questioned Julie’s taste in men.
Well, sometimes she questioned that Julie had a taste for men at all. Whatever.
“Reggie,” she said lowly, crossing her arms. “Did you put this flower on my locker?”
“Nope!” he chirped. But his eyes were lit up and he was biting at his lip like he was trying to hide a grin, so he clearly knew something about what was going on.
“Do you know who did put this flower on my locker?”
“Maaaaaybeeeeee.”
“Reginald.” Her nostrils flared with irritation. “This better not be a prank or I swear I will find a way to kill your whole ghost band again.”
He held up his hands in supplication. “Whoa, it’s nothing bad! I promise! You just gotta wait and see and then I think you’ll like what happens.”
Flynn was still highly suspicious of this whole situation, but Reggie was a sweetheart who couldn’t lie to save his life. If it was a prank, it was one being played on him as well.
“Alright,” she said, still somewhat doubtful, but willing to ease up on the cynicism only because it was Reggie and he’d never led her astray before, “I guess I can deal with a flower for Valentine’s Day. But if this blows up in my face, I’m blaming you.”
“Awesome!” he cheered.
The hallways were starting to fill up with students so Reggie needed to get going before people started to think that Flynn was losing her mind, talking to thin air.
“The Valentine’s Showcase starts at 7 tonight, so that means you guys need to be there by 6:30! Do not be late, ok?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. See you later, Flynn, have a good day!” Reggie bounced and grinned like he knew a secret about what was coming for the rest of Flynn’s day, but before she could interrogate him any further, he poofed away and then Flynn was left alone with just the mysterious flower for company.
Ghosts and magic and secret admirers. When did her life get so weird?
Flynn started to carefully peel the orange duct tape off her locker so that she could pry loose the flower. She softly ran her finger over the edge of the petals. Maybe she even ducked her nose down to breathe in the lovely scent.
It really was a pretty flower and orange was one of her favorite colors.
Quickly, she stuck it in the rings of her binder and headed off to class, determined to stop overthinking it and just let herself have this one nice thing.
—
And then — roses kept appearing all day.
There was a blue one sitting at her desk in homeroom, a yellow one stuck in the bell of her trumpet, a pink one placed on her lunch tray, and Julie walked up to her in the hallway and handed her a purple one with a teasing grin.
There was even a green rose tucked into her backpack when she set it down for just one second to go to the bathroom!
By the end of the day, Flynn was carrying, with some difficulty, a whole bouquet of different colored roses, but was no closer to figuring out who had been leaving them for her or why.
It was — well, honestly extremely flattering that this person had gone to so much trouble, even enlisting Julie’s help to deliver these to her all day. She’d been the envy of half the school, carrying around her brightly colored rose bouquet.
Flynn just wished she knew who it was.
(She knew who she was hoping for, but she’d had her hopes dashed before. So she was trying not to get ahead of herself.)
When the last bell rang and she finally made her way to her car, hands full of her mystery flowers, she noticed there was a vase sitting on the roof of her car. The vase was holding a single pink rose with a glittery pink ribbon tied into a large bow around it.
Well thank goodness her mysterious admirer finally realized that she was going to need something to hold all these flowers. Walking around like this all day had been getting awkward.
Unfortunately, with her hands being full of said flowers, when Flynn tried to reach up for the vase, the zipper of her backpack somehow managed to come undone and dump all her books all over the parking lot. Perfect. Really just what she needed today.
But then Carrie Wilson was suddenly at her side, crouching down and picking up her books for her.
Flynn blinked hard to make sure her vision wasn’t playing tricks on her. Maybe the flowers were laced with hallucinogenics?
“You should be more careful with your stuff, butterfingers, I won’t always be around to save the day,” Carrie said, standing up holding a carefully balanced stack of Flynn’s books.
Ah, that was more like it. Even when doing a good deed Carrie couldn’t help but be a sarcastic jerk about it. Though this was a lot tamer than normal. Maybe even Carrie Wilson was a big softie on Valentine’s Day.
They were a lot closer to friends these days, after Carrie had apologized to Julie and Flynn and then the whole thing with Julie’s-ghost-band-used-to-be-Carrie’s-dad’s-band-in-the-nineties thing kind of blew up in their faces. But it had forced all three girls to spend more time together and work on mending their relationship.
So, yeah. Friends. Friends who still sometimes insulted each other.
And maybe, maybe, Flynn had had a daydream or twelve about Carrie performing some private dance moves just for her, but could you blame her? The girl was flexible.
But no one else knew about those. So.
“Nice flowers,” Carrie commented lightly, nodding at the bouquet in Flynn’s hands.
“Apparently I have a secret admirer who’s been leaving them around the place for me to find all day,” Flynn said.
“Must be nice,” Carrie stated, before setting the stack of books on the hood of Flynn’s car. “Looks like all you’re missing are red roses, you have every other color.”
Flynn had noticed that as well, but she also knew that red roses were expensive and probably difficult to obtain on Valentine’s Day, so she hadn’t thought much of it. But if Carrie was mentioning it specifically, then maybe…
“Well, I hope you find out who they’re from,” Carrie said, pulling her purse up her shoulder and starting to walk towards her own car. “You’re coming to the showcase tonight, right? Tell Alex that he can ditch Julie’s lame ghost band and join Dirty Candy if he wants, we’re putting on a special performance tonight. I hope you like it!”
Carrie tossed a perky wave over her shoulder as she walked away and Flynn felt her face flush with embarrassment.
Of course her secret admirer was never going to be Carrie Wilson, how could Flynn have been so stupid as to let herself think that for even a second. Carrie barely tolerated her, she wouldn’t send her flowers.
Flynn shoved the stupid flowers in the vase and then tossed everything into the backseat.
Whatever. Valentine’s Day was a stupid holiday anyway.
—
The boys were, predictably, late for their call time, but at least they popped up backstage before they were due to go on. This meant that Flynn had no time to interrogate Reggie about how much he knew about her flowery shenanigans. She probably could’ve asked Luke too, because anything Reggie knew, Luke knew, but Luke was too busy staring like a besotted idiot at Julie for anything Flynn to say to penetrate his thick skull. And Alex just laughed at her when she tried to ask him.
Ugh boys.
Julie and The Phantoms put on an amazing performance, as per usual, even if Luke’s besotted staring only got worse on stage. Since it was a Valentine’s Day showcase, Flynn supposed it was appropriate for the theme. But the next time he tried to claim that he didn’t write love songs, she was going to pull out a video of this show to prove him wrong. Every song was a love song when he looked like that.
Flynn vaguely wondered if her secret admirer looked like that when they thought about her and then immediately shoved that thought down.
If her mysterious flower sender couldn’t be bothered to be upfront with her, maybe she didn’t want them anyway. She deserved honesty and truth along with flattery and that was that.
Julie joined her at the bar after their set, giddy and flushed from a successful performance and Flynn grabbed her in a bouncy hug to celebrate. A familiar whooshing noise let her know that the guys had poofed in around them.
When she pulled back from her friend, Flynn noticed that Alex was standing there holding a gorgeous bouquet of red roses that he definitely hadn’t had before.
“Wow, Alex, those are really nice. Did Willie get those for you? I didn’t know they were here,” Flynn asked, looking around for the other ghost.
“Oh these?” Alex said, like he hadn’t even noticed the flowers he was holding. “No, they’re not mine. I’m holding them for a friend.”
“Besides, Willie took him on a date to spray paint graffiti on cop cars and then stole him a vintage Green Day record for Valentine’s Day,” Reggie laughed and elbowed his friend.
“They’re so romantic,” Alex sighed dreamily.
“Okay, dude, whatever you say,” Flynn raised her eyebrows at Julie, who giggled but didn’t say anything.
“Next up, we have Dirty Candy!” the emcee announced over the speaker.
Flynn was planning on settling back against the bar to watch the performance, but Julie grabbed her arm and hauled her into the crowd until they were right in front of the stage, saying, “C’mon Flynn, we need to get closer!”
“What? Why?”
“Shhhh, they’re starting!”
Flynn stared at her friend, bewildered. Since when did Julie care about Dirty Candy’s performances?
Then the lights went down on the stage and the five band members filed on to the stage. Their clothes were lined with glowing lights in their signature colors, so Flynn could pick out Carrie by the neon pink glow of her costume. She was standing in the middle of the group with her hands braced on her hips and if it hadn’t been dark, Flynn would have sworn Carrie was looking right at her.
That was clearly just wishful thinking.
Upbeat backing music began to pour out of the speakers and then Carrie’s voice sang out, “Baby when they look up at the sky, we’ll be shooting stars just passing by,” and wow that was a new one.
Flynn didn’t know that Carrie knew how to write songs that weren’t about herself.
Although, the next line was “You’ll be coming home with me tonight” and that seemed the right amount of cocky for a Carrie Wilson song.
The dancing was excellently choreographed, taking advantage of the glowing costumes to pull off some really cool effects and Flynn was forced to admit, yet again, that Dirty Candy was extremely talented. The pink glowing figure did the splits in the middle of the stage and Flynn almost swallowed her tongue. Carrie was extremely talented, in so many ways.
Flynn let herself get lost in the beat of the song and her heart only fluttered a little when Carrie appeared to point straight at her as she sang, “You’re all I see in all these places, you’re all I see in all these faces.”
She could let herself pretend for the next four minutes that her crush wasn’t totally hopeless.
Just as the song was coming to an end, Carrie was suddenly sliding on her knees across the stage, holding her hands up to catch the bouquet of roses that Alex tossed from the side (which, hopefully it was dark enough that no one noticed flowers appearing from nowhere) and coming to a stop at the front end of the stage.
Right in front of Flynn.
“Be still my heart ’cause it’s freaking out,” Carrie sang the last line directly at her, holding the most intense eye contact of Flynn’s life and Carrie’s heart wasn’t the only one freaking out right about then.
Carrie was breathing hard as she held the bouquet out to Flynn and asked, directly into her microphone for the whole venue to hear, “Will you be my Valentine, Flynn Ryder?”
Flynn felt like she’d been hit over the head by a particularly dense textbook, but she was still able to nod mutely and take the proffered flowers. The crowd, which had gone silent at the end of the song, burst into cheers and Flynn was shocked by the sudden explosion of noise.
Carrie grabbed Flynn’s hand that wasn’t holding on to the flowers and dragged her on stage (with a little help from a grinning Julie shoving at her back) and then kept pulling until they were backstage, the curtains helping to muffle the hollering of the crowd. Flynn could hear Kayla thanking the crowd and plugging their social media and honestly when had that ever happened before? Carrie was ultra possessive of Dirty Candy, so Flynn was mildly concerned that she’d lost her mind.
Or maybe she was really serious about this whole Valentine thing.
“Hold up a minute,” Flynn said, suddenly finding her voice again. “Was that you? With the secret admirer flowers all day? How did you — I mean, what’s going on? Is this a prank?”
“What?” Carrie yelped. “No! How could you think that?”
“You don’t even like me!”
“Don't be an idiot, Flynn!”
“See what I mean, you literally just called me an idiot!”
“I wouldn’t call you an idiot if you didn’t act like one.”
“Right, I see,” Flynn hissed. “If that’s how you feel, I’m leaving and I’m keeping the flowers.”
She tried to spin on her heel to walk out, but Carrie tightened her grip on Flynn’s hand.
“Wait, I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted this to go,” Carrie said quickly.
Flynn squinted at her warily. “How did you want this to go?”
Carrie blushed — a real, honest-to-god blush spread across her cheeks and Flynn didn’t even know she was capable of that any more. It was actually pretty cute.
“Well,” she cleared her throat, “I was hoping that you liked the roses and the song and everything. And that you might agree to go on a real date with me and I might have the chance to bring you more flowers and possibly hold your hand and tell you how pretty you are. And, if I was really lucky, I was hoping you might be interested in a kiss. Because I am. Interested in kissing you, that is.”
“Oh,” Flynn said quietly, but her heart was pounding like crazy in her chest.
Carrie was looking down at their joined hands, not making eye contact with her. Flynn couldn’t remember a time when Carrie had looked so uncertain and vulnerable in front of another human being.
Maybe it was Flynn’s turn to be brave. After all, Carrie had just announced her feelings for Flynn in front of an entire audience of strangers. And she’d probably had to beg Julie and the boys to help with her rose delivery plan.
The more she thought about it, the more it was clear that this wasn’t an elaborate prank. It was just Carrie being her extra, over-the-top self trying to ask Flynn out.
Good thing that Flynn was also a little extra and over-the-top.
“I’m free on Friday or Saturday next week,” she said, squeezing Carrie’s hand.
Carrie’s head snapped up. “What? Really?”
“Yeah,” Flynn smirked and then bounced up on her toes to drop a kiss on the corner of Carrie’s mouth. Her lip gloss tasted like bubblegum. She couldn’t wait to taste it again.
Carrie was still standing shocked, mouth hanging open, when Flynn pulled back. It was pretty cute to see her so caught off-guard, she thought. Flynn wondered how often she could make her look like that on their date.
“Call me!” Flynn winked over her shoulder as she practically bounced away, back towards the front of the venue, where Julie and the boys were waiting to eagerly hear about everything.
She did take a moment to bring the beautiful red roses up to her face and take a deep breath, trying to memorize the way they smelled.
Maybe Valentine’s Day wasn’t so terrible after all.