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Let it be known that Nicole Haught knows how to woo. Yes, it was true she had waltzed into a closed saloon on a weekday and asked an angelic barmaid known as Waverly Earp for a cappuccino, but it was also true that said angelic barmaid would soon come to be known as Waverly Earp-Haught in only a week. Her womanly wiles, though clumsy and uncouth, charmed as only someone with such unwavering confidence in their prowess could ever hope.
Yet here she stands in Fred’s Flower Boutique, struggling to choose a simple bouquet of flowers to gift her fiancée for no other reason than she was thinking of her.
“Do you think it’s too forward?” she asks Fred, bent to study a medley of colorful chrysanthemums in a vase.
Fred, who has been watching her from behind the cash register with his furry chin resting in his furry hands, blinks slowly. “You’re engaged to be married.”
“Right, so it’s like, settle down with these elaborate exhibitions of affection.” Nicole stands straight and turns to regard an array of cacti on display. Suddenly she remembers the cactus she abandoned at the station and wonders whether it survived those eighteen tumultuous months alone too. “You already got the girl, Haught. Stop trying so hard.”
“Or … you could stop thinking so much,” Fred says, and when Nicole turns to him with a tired scowl, he smiles, his white teeth gleaming beneath the blinding boutique lights. “Seriously, Nicole. Whatever you choose, Waverly will love because it came from you.”
“And therein lies the problem.” Nicole sighs and buries her face in her hands, resigning herself to her fate then and there, her only witness a werewolf with a penchant for crossbreeding impossible, and frankly horrifying, combinations of geraniums. “I want her to be truly touched by the gesture, not because it came from me but because it, in and of itself, meant something to her.”
Fred seems to soften at that, smiling softly at Nicole, who moved her hands from her face to the stray strands of hair that escaped her braid after a long day of protecting Purgatory. He looks like he wants to say something, opening his mouth and then promptly closing it, brow furrowed in contemplation. It only serves to frustrate Nicole further and not because she does not appreciate Fred and his flowers—and his advice, which he willingly gives whenever he senses Nicole has had a bad day the way all canines, supernatural or otherwise, seem to sense trouble. Rather she is frustrated because it seems there is nothing she can do to woo Waverly the way she deserves to be wooed.
Nicole sighs. “We’re having a rehearsal dinner of sorts tonight at some fancy restaurant in the city, so I suppose I should go with something classic, right?”
“You know,” Fred starts just as Nicole grabs a bouquet of red carnations, hopping off his stool and disappearing through a door that leads, she assumes, to a garden or greenhouse or flower factory, “I may have something.”
It takes about a minute for him to return with a single flower wrapped in a delicate paper. The flower itself is nothing spectacular, practically only a stem with a couple of pink petals to show, but Fred holds it like a prospect with a nugget of gold.
Nicole quirks a brow in question, still clutching her chosen bouquet close to her chest. “Look, Fred, I trust your judgement, I do. I mean, you’re the florist for my wedding, but … what is that?”
“I haven’t named her yet,” he says, tilting his head to the side as he regards the suspect plant, tenderly stroking one of its three petals.
“Why … her?” Nicole gestures at the sorry excuse for a flower with a frown.
Fred pulls a sheet of plastic from beneath the register and blankets the flower before taking a spool of red ribbon to tie a bow around the covered stem. “Give this to Waverly and I guarantee you will be the only thing she is hungry for at dinner tonight.”
Before she can protest Fred comes around and replaces the red carnations with the flower, smiling in satisfaction that Nicole thinks is rather unwarranted.
“Is this … ” Nicole clears her throat, lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and leans toward Fred. “Is this a sex thing?”
Fred blinks slowly again. “That’ll be $12.50.”
xx
They all agreed to meet at the restaurant with Nicole working late, stacks of paperwork as thick as she is tall having been the bane of her existence since returning to the station. It gives her time to collect her thoughts, to reminisce on the moments that led her to this —sharing her life with a woman, an angel , that has taught her love in all its transcendental incarnations.
It would, at least, if the damn flower Fred made her buy was not laying in the passenger, mocking her.
“I know that Waverly would love you even if you were a weed, which you are, but that is besides the point,” she says, turning to regard the flower with a scrupulous squint as she stops at a red light. “The point is Waverly deserves a whole garden—wait, no, that is a poor choice of words … oh, whatever , I’m talking to a flower —and I want her to know that I will do anything and everything to give her that.”
Nicole chances a sideways glance at the flower as she starts driving again. “Metaphorically, of course. I want to give her a metaphorical garden. You get what I mean.”
When Nicole arrives, fifteen minutes before their scheduled reservation time, she finds Waverly and Wynonna standing behind the Jeep in the parking lot, an open bottle of whiskey and two filled shot glasses resting between them on the tailgate. They are both in dresses, Waverly’s a light lavender and Wynonna’s a deep, dark purple, a contrast Nicole cannot help but laugh at in the safe, silent confines of her cruiser. Wynonna makes the first move, taking a glass in her hand and raising it with a dimpled smirk, one Waverly mimics when she does the same a second later. They toast and then tip their glasses back, Wynonna smacking her lips afterward and Waverly shaking her head in disgust, letting her tongue loll out of her mouth at the taste.
When they embrace a moment later, Nicole has to take a breath and look elsewhere, overcome with emotion that she had not anticipated—not yet, at least.
“Shut up,” she says to the flower as she wipes at her eyes, plucking it from the seat before walking toward her future.
Wynonna whistles as Nicole walks toward them, the flower hidden behind her back, where she tries not to snap it in half. “Looking sharp, Haught Cross Buns. Speaking of buns, give us a little turn. Those slacks look tight .”
“Wynonna!” Waverly smacks her arm, and even in the dim twilight Nicole can see the color in her cheeks. It makes her heart leap, a sensation she once thought would lessen as their lives continued to intertwine but that has only intensified the longer she has had the privilege of loving Waverly. “Hi, baby. You look stunning.”
Nicole laughs, suddenly shy. “As do you.”
“I’m sure your butt does too.” Waverly winks, and Wynonna pretends to retch, pushing herself off the truck and walking toward the restaurant. “You have ten minutes and then you have to be on your best behavior, you hear?”
Neither responds, too enthralled with the other, until Wynonna shouts, “My gun can send you to hell, Haught!”
“I’ll be sure to save a seat for you!” she shouts back, stepping closer to Waverly, who giggles, turning so her cheek rests on her shoulder. “Oh, excuse me, miss. I don’t suppose you’ve seen an angel around, but … well, you see, I’m supposed to be marryin’ her soon.”
Waverly bites her lip, always pleasantly surprised when Nicole lets her drawl come through, and when she speaks, only a single word, it is breathy and soft in a way Nicole was not anticipating. “Congratulations.”
“I’m a little worried she’ll come to her senses, realize she’s makin’ a mistake marryin’ someone like me,” Nicole says, each word escaping in a lower tone as Waverly continues to watch her through hooded lids, her tongue touching the tip of her teeth in such a tantalizing and troubling way.
“Someone like you?” As if emboldened by their spontaneous roleplay, Waverly steps toward Nicole and smooths her hands down the lapels of her blazer, trailing a line of fire that sits low in the pit of her stomach. “Whoever this angel is, I think she’d be a fool to think marrying someone like you is a mistake.”
It is said with such carnality, such fervor, that Nicole can only stutter a timid, “Is that so?”
Waverly nods, then tugs Nicole closer, their lips just a hair away from touching. “Yeah. I think I saw her go into the restroom. Want me to take you there?”
“God, yes , please.”
xx
So, despite being forewarned, Waverly and Nicole have decidedly not been on their best behavior.
“Nicole,” Waverly tries, but it escapes as a whimper, losing all gravitas when Nicole so gently bites the space below her ear that she knows makes her knees buckle.
“Waverly,” Nicole mocks, breathing her name against her neck.
“It’s called seven minutes in heaven, not seven centuries,” Waverly says, though the shiver that courses through her at the little laugh Nicole huffs into her shoulder betrays her.
“Seven centuries with you would be heaven.”
“God, I love you,” Waverly gasps before kissing Nicole fully, cupping her face with her hands. Nicole tries to say something back, to say that she loves Waverly too, but all she manages is a soft moan as those hands descend from her face to her chest to her belt, where nimble fingers now make heady work of the buckle. “Seven centuries wouldn’t be nearly enough time for me to show you all the ways I love you.”
Waverly can only giggle when Nicole growls and lifts her onto the sink, capturing the sounds with her lips and teeth and tongue.
“Doesn’t mean we can’t try,” Nicole says after they part, rather reluctantly, to breathe. Her hands roam, slowly, and Waverly tips her head back, lets it rest on the mirror and smiles her agreement.
“Do your worst.”
“Only my best for you.”
Before Nicole can do either, three solid knocks on the door threaten to shake it from its hinges and they both recoil in shock.
“There is only one restroom in this godforsaken restaurant and I would like to use it before you defile it, thank you!”
They stay silent for as long as they can manage before bursting into laughter, which only serves to annoy Wynonna more, her knocking now surely aggressive enough to at least create a splinter in the door.
“The honeymoon is happening as far away from the homestead as Haught can handle without bursting into flames!”
“Oh, we’ve done it now,” Waverly whispers before giving Nicole a tender peck, chaste but lingering with promise. “Are you sure you want to marry into this family?”
“Like I have a choice.” Nicole starts to lean in for another kiss, Wynonna be damned, but then stops, the fog of lust that enveloped her earlier now lifted and allowing her a moment of clarity—and memory. “Wait. I have something for you.”
Somehow, in the midst of finagling their way into the restaurant and then the restroom, Nicole had placed the flower into the back pocket of her slacks, not so concerned with whether it wilted, snapped, spawned a set of twig legs and ran, sparing Nicole the embarrassment of having to present Waverly with a seed as a token of her love. Much to her dismay, when she reaches for the flower, it is there, velvety tendrils caressing her fingers as she extracts it from her pants and prepares to witness her fiancée fall to pieces at the sight of such a tragedy as her flower.
“It isn’t much,” she begins, forcing herself to look at Waverly as she speaks. It’s a task, their foreheads still touching, everything still touching, and she feels her eyes crossing of their own accord, but she stays transfixed, committed to ensuring Waverly knows, feels , how devoted she is to loving her in whatever way she will allow. “But it … well, Fred said— ”
Waverly’s eyes widen, her lips, which Nicole can faintly feel against her own, forming into a small smile. “Freddy the florist?”
“He prefers Fred, apparently.”
“Oh, Fred is cute .”
“Anyway, it’s … small now, but the best things start out small. Unassuming. Little seedlings who, with some nurturing, will become trees in a vast forest, roots connecting them to something bigger and better. Given enough love and care we can all grow into something magical,” Nicole shrugs—or tries to, Waverly’s arms draped over her shoulders—and offers an unsure grin. “We did.”
“Nicole … ”
It makes no sense according to physics or any other natural laws of the universe. Then again nothing makes sense in Purgatory, something Nicole should be accustomed to by now. After all, her fiancée is an angel; her best friend and soon-to-be sister-in-law is a gunslinging Earp heir; her florist is a werewolf. Still, every now and again Nicole is surprised by the magnitude of absurdity the Ghost River Triangle emits, not caring that it could threaten the thin hold such frail, fragile humans as Nicole have on reality.
When Nicole pulls the flower from her pocket, it is not just a flower—no, it is an abundance of flowers, an array of colorful petals sprouting from a single stem that suddenly weighs about as much as a loaded revolver in her hand. Each new iteration is more intricate than the last, what she holds now a blend of every flower she has ever laid eyes upon and more. It stretches from her hand to the ceiling, petals falling around them like snow as it collides with the surface, and somehow, Nicole has the mind to look at Waverly again.
With petals stuck to her hair, to her dress, to every part of her Nicole can see, she stares at the flower with wonder, a single tear following a silent path down her cheek before falling apart against one of those petals. It takes Waverly a moment, and Nicole would not mind waiting forever, but she turns from the flower to stare at Nicole before letting loose a laugh laden with tears, pulling her into a hug that Nicole suspects could heal those eighteen months of loneliness she still carries in her heart.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, and it’s all Nicole can do not to say it back.
xx
They place the flower in a wooden barrel and set it by their bed, unsure how to manage its exponential growth but unwilling to abandon it.
Wynonna, who eventually forced her way into the restroom and then pulled Peacemaker on the onslaught of vegetation, had suggested a hearty dose of Round-Up.
“This flower is a representation of our love,” Waverly had explained, though no one was sure what the flower was. Frantic texts to Fred went unanswered, and though gargantuan, the flower was not much of a threat. It sat in the bed of the Jeep with Doc, who hugged the base like an anchor as they drove to the homestead. “You wouldn’t want to kill our love, would you?”
“I have considered it often.”
The following morning Nicole wakes not to light snoring but a persistent tickle in her nose. She swats the air, eyes still shut, thinking the sensation is a strand of hair, but when the back of her hand comes in contact with something firm, she bolts upright, already contemplating how to fight a demon in the nude.
It is not a demon she has to fight, however; it is the flower, though anyone would be forgiven for thinking it was a jungle.
“Holy calamity.”
“Mm, that good, huh?”
Waverly turns and settles into Nicole with a kiss to whatever skin she can claim, too tired and unwilling to use her eyes to seek her lips.
Just as Nicole is about to jostle Waverly fully awake to witness the forest that is now their bedroom, she hears the unmistakable sound of a pistol firing and a startled, southern holler.
“Hot spit and monkey vomit! The homestead is a-sprouting!”
All Waverly does is groan into their pillow. “Maybe we should’ve abstained for one night.”
xx
Later that day, as Nicole searches for another cactus, the other somehow still alive and well and in need of companionship, she turns to Fred, who sits pruning flowers at the register.
“You should name her Waverly.”
Fred does not stop working, fixated on his flowers, but he does smile when he says, “I already did.”