Chapter Text
Lavender [lav·en·der]: a symbol of silence, purity, and devotion.
Neil Watts has been certain of a few things in his young life. His love of video games, cheesy sci-fi series, astronomy, and now, more than ever, how much he hates his job.
On an architectural level, his dreary, windowless backroom office feels like a last-minute addition to the planogram. His desk, wedged between overflowing file cabinets and sterile white walls, barely has enough room for his computer alone—its surface cluttered with papers and disposable coffee cups. Nor was the table itself tall, or deep enough, for his legs to fit without being crammed into drywall or the metal frame. It must be, he figures, something akin to a sewer rat helplessly trapped in a tin vegetable can.
Hired as an I.T. technician, specifically a support specialist, his day-to-day job revolves around answering urgent phone calls and troubleshooting devices for nine hours every weekday. When he initially went wide-eyed into the I.T. world, he imagined himself building software or maintaining high-end security systems. Instead, most of his work has become teaching inept secretaries how to use their office computers.
“No, Barbara, it’s not the router,” he groans into the handset of his cheap work phone, coiling the cord between impatient fingers. “It’s your thirty-five tabs of YouTube cat videos slowing the internet down. Again.”
“No. I do not know your login information.” He lays his head on the desk, keeping the transmitter tucked to his chin. “You established your username and password when you started working here. Have you tried resetting the password? No? Do that.”
“Your keyboard isn’t working… is it plugged into the USB port?” He grits his teeth. “You’re saying you don’t know what a USB is?!”
It pays, at least. Just enough to keep his hole-in-the-wall apartment and afford the commute every morning. So for that, he can’t complain. He’s working, independent, eats what he wants, sleeps when he wants, and no one can tell him otherwise.
And if he has extensively become a hermit without any social life, that was perfectly fine by Neil.
He had never been the type for idle chit-chat or making friends out of strangers anyway; his favorite online forums and fictional stories kept far better company. In the past, he had given it all a fair shot: concerts, events, and bars… But loud public gatherings continually fail to excite him. He’d rather take the easier route to the liquor store and drink his stupors from the comfort and privacy of his couch.
When he gets bored, it’s easy to drink or play video games—or both. Usually both. Aside from the necessities, the rest of his weekly income falls into these habits, which was, again, fine by Neil. He doesn’t need anything else.
The only real change of scenery from home, bus, and office is the requisite pitstop he makes nearly every work morning. He drags himself out of bed, throws his clothes on, and rides the bus two blocks from the office. At eight o’clock, just before his god-awful shift at eight-thirty, he routinely strolls into Memory Lane Cafe.
He orders a cup of coffee. Black. Untampered with cream, sugar, or otherwise. Medium, or rarely large, if he felt it was going to be a bad day and he had scrounged up the spare change. Like a car without gasoline or a computer without electricity, Neil is inoperable without coffee. Caffeine, ever since his childhood, had been a deep-seated addiction. There was no faith in kicking the habit now. And if it weren’t against the behavioral policy, one of many stringent rules that come with his cushy I.T. job, he would be seen wielding one of those cheeky “talk to me after I’ve had my coffee” mugs. A sense of humor might as well be illegal, though; he’s gotten reprimanded for backtalk enough already.
Memory Lane has decent coffee. Strong coffee. The kind of coffee that, by scent alone, can buzz his brain back to function. The cafe atmosphere is acceptable to his lone-wolf standards, usually neither crowded nor vacant. Its spacious interior gives customers a wide berth, and its chalkboard signage, pale whitewash, and driftwood have a clean, almost beachy aesthetic. There’s a decent selection too. It lists just about thirty different drink menu options to entertain someone more ambitious and fickle than he, and it has a brimming pastry display with thirty different sweets he’s actually tried: cinnamon rolls, custard tarts, dessert bars, etcetera. On weekdays Neil gets his drink, sits at the same table he always sits at perched by the front windows, and plays on his phone until he’d reached his limit on rolling in late.
There is always a catch, though, and Memory Lane’s is the staff. Or, really, just one staff member in particular. The cafe’s usual barista is, in the kindest terms of description he can manage, relentlessly annoying. One of the few examples of an employee as excited to work as the photos on job fair application posters—bitter reminders of his search for employment after his degree. The ones he remembers so clearly with cheaply printed paper, piss-poor typesetting, and announcements of a starting pay only a scrap above minimum wage to be competitive. Neil always figured they’d taken those photos with incentives dangling out of frame—either a wad of cash or the threat of violence. Maybe both. This lady, however, didn’t look like she needed prompting to smile for a camera.
So, he always silently hopes for the other less-conversational barista.
However, on this particular work morning, Neil isn’t so lucky. She occupies the space at Memory Lane’s counter again and, like usual, greets him by name. Loudly. Loud enough that it would always turn less-frequent customers’ heads.
“Neil!”
He winces and carries on, trying to remain calm and nonchalant as she waves him down like an aircraft marshall. “Roxanne” is signed in a curly font on the front of her work apron, but she insists everyone calls her Roxie. She has this short blonde bob-cut hair, a wardrobe best described as cutesy if not outright immature, and a face etched with a permanent smile. He thinks it must be painful for her expression to be that way literally all the time. A bit unnerving too. He would’ve hated to have been hired as her coworker.
Or maybe he’s just jealous that someone could be such a ray of constant near-intense sunshine while he slogs around in a pool of his own misery. “The usual, medium,” he flatly orders as she beams over at him.
Aside from placing orders, Neil barely talks to Roxie. Keyword: barely. Either way, as one of Memory Lane’s regulars, she acts like they’re best friends. He usually can’t muster the energy to tell her off either, not that it would deter her any. He knows from experience, specifically the five-thousand sour faces he gives her every time she speaks; the lady can’t take a hint.
It is a relatively nondescript Tuesday. The majority of the work week is still ahead of him, and he has nothing on his mind. Roxie, practically dancing around the service counter, hands him his cup of coffee with an exaggerated smile, and he seizes it while privately rolling his eyes. Only three other people are visible in the shop, taking drinks and munching pastries. He slides past and, like always, reassumes his self-assigned window seat.
His wandering eyes catch sight of a van across the street.
Telling himself there’s nothing better to do, he sits up and people-watches, spying on the scene. A small team of people gathers on the curbside, marching in and out of a darkened storefront. He’d never paid much mind to the neighboring businesses, so he hadn’t realized this particular shop was vacant before. On the front window is a glaring “for lease” sign that he watches them definitively peel off.
Having abandoned her empty counter, Roxie wanders over to spectate, standing unwelcomely at his table. “We don’t know what’s going on over there yet,” she says, “But I’m trying to convince Taima and Willis to make a big welcome basket!”
Taima and Willis are Mr. and Mrs. McMillan, Roxie’s bosses, despite her very casual nature regarding them. Neil has never once asked who they were; he’s just had thirty-five other one-sided conversations to garner the context clues.
“They’ve been working on it the past few days, and I’m curious to see what’s coming. New neighbors are so exciting!”
He sips his coffee and grunts. He hadn’t asked for her commentary, and Neil couldn’t be bothered. There are five hundred other small businesses in this town. What’s another to add to the mix?
He witnesses a man in the group pull a ladder from the back of their van. Precariously he starts nailing a sign above the entryway. Neil squints to read it.
Moon Vine Market.
Its title makes it sound like one of those hippy places full of cheap gemstones, salt rocks, and intense incense. Not Neil’s cup of tea. He doesn’t even like tea.
And so, his day continues, not sparing Moon Vine a second thought.
༻❁༺
It’s a solid week, and a few hanging baskets under the awning later, before Neil even realizes the place is actually a florist shop. He just bypasses it on his morning walk, gets to his seat in Memory Lane , and discovers with a glance that it has opened for business.
Despite initial surprise, Neil isn't terribly invested as his eyes drift back to his phone, letting that information sink in. He finds the “grand opening” sign on the front windows a bit tacky, and the storefront looks empty otherwise. There must be dozens of identical shops across town; how big could the flower market be anyway?
Nonetheless, Roxie appears hyped, rocketing herself into his personal space bubble again. “Look!” She physically points out as if Neil's vision has somehow become more impaired today, “They’re finally open!”
“Mmhm,” he mumbles, fixing his gaze on his cell phone and tapping away.
“I wonder how it looks inside. Those petunias by the window are so pretty. I should convince Taima to get some flowers to freshen up the shop. And oh—!” She gapes, “The welcome basket, I nearly forgot!”
Neil is determinedly not listening to her. She raves and rambles as he prays for customers to boot her back to the counter.
“I wonder how many people are on staff and what kind of pastries they’d like—and if there are any food allergies. I should make sure there aren’t any nuts in the basket, just in case. Maybe some gluten-free options too. Hey, Is that Plants VS. Zombies?”
He snaps his head up to find that Roxie is leaning over him and studying his phone. “Yes,” he pulls away defensively, his grasp tightening around the device.
“You still play that?”
His brain screams that it’s none of her business, but his mouth says, “It’s an app game classic.”
“I was always more of a Candy Crush or Temple Run girl,” she hums with a finger to her chin, looking nostalgic.
Neil can see this quickly becoming the start of another tangent. “Weren’t you working on some kind of pastry basket?”
“Oh, right!”
Roxie is finally running off to assemble that basket. And Neil? Neil stays precisely where he is with not a drop of sweat off his brow. Neil doesn’t care about local business endeavors or making nice with the community. And, more importantly…
Neil Watts doesn’t need flowers.
You buy flowers for someone, not for yourself, and there is no one in his life to buy flowers for. He’s a bachelor. He has no good friends, extended family, or anyone remotely bouquet-worthy. Why would he ever need to set foot in Moon Vine Market? Why would he ever need flowers?
༻❁༺
It’s not but a week later than that, Neil finds himself in need of flowers.
In a way, he’s lucky to be working. That way, he wouldn’t get drunk. That way, he wouldn’t cave in and call his father—probably because he had gotten drunk. The anniversary lingers like a shadow but still sneaks up when he least expects it. He’d just wake up the morning of and remember that it’s come to that time of the year again.
He starts his day like every other, forcing through it, but everything is foggy. He’s foggy, muddled in a dissociative daze he’s far too sluggish to overcome. He walks past Memory Lane in the morning, choosing to hazard his breakroom’s coffee pods at the last minute instead. It’s a fifty-fifty coin flip that his barista would’ve been Roxie, and he doesn’t have the mind to deal with her. The icing on his self-pity cake would’ve been metaphorically tearing her head off and getting banned from the premises, and he can’t risk that. He doesn’t want to risk any interactions, in fact, letting a good few work calls slip him by and taking his break around the back of the building, miserably close to a foul-smelling dumpster that would deter any company. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t let himself think. He just sits and waits until it’s over. Finally, after the slow multi-hour crawl, he’s somehow reached the time to pack it up and go home.
Despite the toil, he considers it… He knows he would waste the evening in a useless haze if he went directly home. Meanwhile, the public transport runs late enough that he, in decent time, could head out of town and make a proper visit. His body is tired, his stomach is empty, and he doesn’t want to. But he should.
And on the way to his bus stop, Memory Lane and the other early riser shops are closed and locked. Rows of darkening windows line the streets, making it more obvious that their new neighbor isn’t. Moon Vine Market is open. He divulges his curiosity and crosses the road, drawing closer to their entry and aromatic storefront than ever before. Their operation hours are on a window decal, clearly listed. He checks the time on his phone. It’s ten minutes until closing…
And Neil Watts doesn’t need flowers. But he should get them.
A bell on the doorframe resounds a bright, cheery chime as he crosses the threshold and steps inside.
His first thought is that the place is surprisingly clean. He’d never been one to frequent florists, but he’s seen his fair share of grocery mart flower displays. They’re always cluttered and crammed into corners, whereas the shop floor here, despite its small size, is mostly clear. A center display of two shelf tiers lined with arrangements in glass vases. On either side wall are fridges. Some have a mix of bouquets; others are tagged and organized with individual flower types. In the back is a long quartz-topped countertop with a cash register, a tray of cards, and stacks of colored tissue papers. There’s a set of three bound books set out for customers, though he can’t read the labels from where he stands.
“Can I help you?”
Neil staggers as a woman appears from a door behind that counter, catching him completely off-guard. She’s dark complexioned, with excessively long black hair sweeping behind her. Tied around her waist and over her shoulders is a fabric apron, ironed and spotless. It’s plain, dark blue and has a patch over her chest where a name tag should usually be—an icon of a crescent moon. She fixes him with a steady stare as he fumbles to respond.
His voice comes out hoarse, a consequence of how little he’s spoken today. “Just browsing.”
She nods with a level of indifference and takes her seat behind the counter. “Let me know if you have any questions.”
Part of him, then and there, wants to flee and never look back. She wasn’t unfriendly but had this air of purpose about her. Like she expected him to know what he was looking for. Did he know what he was looking for? Turning away and investigating the cabinets, he swears he can feel her eyes bore into him, but taking a peek back shows her simply reorganizing her stationery.
The racks lining her fridges are sorted by type, not color, making the whole thing pop with contrast. All the roses are together, for example, seemingly handwritten labels offering descriptions and prices. He moves along the rows, looking for purple things. Roses… Irises… Tulips… Are lavenders a flower or a herb? A flowering herb?
“Is there something specific?”
He turns on his heels. The woman hasn’t moved from the counter, her hands folded patiently in front of her. Her question was genuine. Earnest. He knows that he’s wasting her time. He steels himself and approaches.
There are suspiciously familiar-looking pastries on a ceramic dish pushed toward the customer side of the counter. For the strain of something to redirect with, Neil picks up a brownie, spilling crumbs onto the polished hardwood floor.
“You bribe your customers with food?” Smooth intro, his conscience immediately screams. Leave it to his autopilot brain to sass the woman he’s testing the patience of.
“The neighboring cafe brought them over,” she explains with a touch of exasperation. “I’m not one for sweets, though I appreciate the gesture. Please help yourself.”
“Your loss.”
He tries to eat it; Memory Lane’s pastries are delicious, but even ravenously hungry as he is, he’s too stressed to finish. After two bites, he regretfully chucks it into a trash bin, otherwise filled with crumpled paper and leaves.
“Okay, lady, I know it’s late, and I’m looking like a real jackass right now, so I’ll make this easy for the both of us.”
He crams his hands into his pockets, trying not to fidget. She stares back, not a flinch.
“I’ll take any bouquet you’ve got. Preferably something small and cheap.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he snips, “I mean it. Whatever you’ve got.”
She takes a breath. “Any preferences for colors or flowers?”
He chews his lip. “Do you have any lavender?”
“Lavender?” she repeats, and he nods. “I have lavender and can incorporate it into an arrangement, yes.”
She stands up, walks to her fridge row, and shuffles around. Plucking a few flowers from their baskets, she abruptly turns and skirts back through the backdoor. Neil stands on bated breath until she returns, half a minute later, with greenery and lavender stalks. Lying these out on her counter, she makes him a small but generous bouquet.
“Calla lilies, heath aster, and—” she gently wraps the bundle in ribbon and tissue paper, “Lavender.”
It’s pretty, genuinely, though he doesn’t voice his appreciation. Flowers are always pretty; he’s sure it would be a witless and unoriginal complement. “How much?” He huffs.
“Fifteen dollars.”
A measly fifteen dollars. He can’t tell if flowers are really that cheap or if she’s being generous. He reaches into his pocket, scouring for his wallet and…
It isn’t there.
Neil pats his other pockets. His pants, his coat, but in his hazy distraction, he’s surely misplaced it. He must’ve left it in his desk drawer in the office, somewhere he inevitably needs to hike back to if he ever wants to catch a bus out of this sorry place. Humiliation strikes him like a branding iron, and he, discarding any sense of dignity he was trying to keep, covers his face with his hands and drops his elbows to the countertop.
“Shit.”
Something taps his arm.
Neil parts his fingers a sliver to see the woman giving him a rightfully stern look, pressing a small square of paper against his sleeve.
“Pay it later,” she says. She has a stare to slice steel, and he uncovers his face to gawk dumbstruck down at her business card.
“Wha—?” He takes the cardstock between his fingers. “Seriously?” his embarrassment becomes aghast. Grateful. “Thanks,” he sputters.
And she just nods, lifting the bouquet for him to take.
He pockets the card and fumbles with the bundle, spinning back to the exit as fast as he can without running off like this is a flower heist. Her voice calls after him.
“Have a good night,” she says.
Neil can’t summon a response. Half a block down the sidewalk at a safe distance, he finally plucks out and examines her card.
Eva Rosalene, Moon Vine Market.
༻❁༺
It’s dark by the time he’s rolled in; the bus always takes longer than he thinks. He’s lucky that the routes run late, and it isn’t cloudy for once. Reminding him of the crescent moon on the florist’s apron, the real moon rising here is almost full. It makes navigating easy. Though, by habit, he could’ve traced the path blindfolded.
Something about nights in his hometown felt more familiar than days. It’s easy to imagine empty streets and fields as they were ten years before his roaming grounds and old haunts. Daylight brings a sense of distance. Awareness of change. Of new stores and homes and faces. Of a cemetery with more gravestones. More names.
More people coming to visit and rest alongside her.
As he approaches, he finds a bouquet already nestled against the base of the granite stone. His father beat him to it. It’s no surprise. He lays his flowers down so that they’re settled side-by-side.
“Hey, Mom,” he says quietly. To the air. To no one.