Chapter Text
The flower shop had been Katie and her dad’s dream. They’d built it from the ground up, nurturing it like a precious seed. It was small but they had installed shelves and stacked them to the brim with buds and blooms to make the most of the space. There was a small garden out back where they cultivated some of the flowers that they sold. After much discussion, they’d called the shop ‘The Green-fingered Gardner’. Occasionally, people would come in and inquire about the spelling. Either Katie or her dad would wearily inform them that it was a reference to their surname, an intentional pun.
And then her dad died. Their shop - her shop - felt a little bit more dead after that, despite the abundance of fresh, green life everywhere she looked. She had been the one to prepare the flowers for his funeral. Her mother - never really present - had sent a small bouquet of lilies. It hadn’t been enough to fill the gaping hole that was all the years they’d lost. Sunflowers adorned her dad’s coffin on the day she wanted to forget. They’d always been his favourite. He’d supplied flowers to funerals for years and always thought some more colour wouldn’t go amiss. Something bright to go with the grief. Of course, she had remembered.
A year later and the shop still felt empty. She supposed that it always would. Her days blurred into one. This shop had once seemed woven from dreams but now it began to feel suffocating, like a nightmare-ridden sleep. Her dad’s ghost lingered in every corner, in every doorway, in all the photos on the wall that she could no longer look at. But she couldn’t sell it. The shop was as much his grave as the one she had laid him to rest in. But it felt like she was living in a tomb. It was selfish, a voice inside her whispered, to feel such reluctance to keep this part of him alive. Her mother certainly thought so, the few times that they had spoken since.
One morning, Katie was absentmindedly playing with some ribbons and twine when a customer she hadn’t seen before walked in. He flashed her a smile and she cursed her reddening face. The man had lovely curly hair and eyes which glinted with amusement. Obviously, he had seen her blush and prided himself on it. She felt a twinge of annoyance and she allowed herself to revel in it. It was better than the numbness, after all.
“Can I help you?” she asked, putting on the chipper voice she used when serving clients.
“I’d like to buy some flowers.”
“Well, you’re in the right place… what kind?”
“Gerberas.”
“And what colour?”
“The same colour as the trees in fall.”
“So, red?”
“Maybe more of an orange.” he mused.
“Something like this?” she picked up an orange gerbera.
“More yellow…”
“Like this?” she picked up a yellow gerbera.
“Somewhere in the middle?”
Gritting her teeth, she found Pedantic Gerbera Guy - her new nickname for him - the perfect flower. It was a deep orange that fanned out into sunny yellow at the edge of the petals. Perhaps, she begrudgingly thought, not too dissimilar to the leaves in fall. He was delighted with them so Katie wrapped them up and he paid. She recited the well-worn goodbye she always rolled out at the end of customer interactions and put on her most winning smile. Her dad had taught her well.
When she went back to messing with the ribbon it was with a mind far too full of handsome - but pedantic - strangers.
~~~
Later, as Katie pulled down the blinds with a bit too much force, her gaze snagged on the gerberas. More specifically, it snagged on their placement. She always placed them in the same place that her dad would have, had he been there. But he was not.
Desperation took hold of her as she started reorganising and reshuffling. Each pot went down with a more resounding clamour than the last. Finally, she sat down heavily on the floor and looked around at her handiwork. She wiped frantically at the tears that she hadn’t noticed falling and fought back the urge to scream. This was for the best, she told herself. And yet she had to choke back a sob when she saw the changed shop in the cold light of day. When Miranda - her assistant - came in for her shift, she said nothing but she understood. If this shop was to be more than her dad’s memorial, Katie had to make it her own.