Sweet Romance17 min read
The Flower Shop by the School Bell
ButterPicks14 views
Two years later.
I run a small flower shop on the street in front of the high school. I call it "Morning Petals." My home is the narrow loft above the shop. I sleep under a slanted roof and keep a stack of seed catalogs on the windowsill. Some nights I read by the light a candle casts and think of my mother, who loved flowers like they were breathing things that needed cheer.
"Jaya, are you coming for the delivery?" Knox asked once, rushing into the shop with his backpack still on.
"No," I said, because I had been arranging a bunch of lilies and didn't want to miss the angle of a stem.
"Someone took off the ribbon again," he complained, half laughing.
"Maybe they like the ribbon better than the bouquet," I said.
Knox was fourteen, a high schooler who came by almost every month. He bought a bouquet and left it wrapped on the counter. "For my friend," he'd say, and never take it out himself.
One afternoon he asked a question that stopped me.
"Did anyone come to pick up the bouquet from last month?" I asked, trying to remember.
"No," he said. His smile fell. "She moved. I don't know where she moved."
My hands paused on the ribbon. He kept coming afterward, bought the same flowers, wrapped them the same way, and left them on the counter. He told me once, "I'm waiting. She will come someday."
I thought a lot about waiting after that. I thought about the way my mother used to come home with torn stems and mud on her shoes, and a new bloom folded into her palm, and how she would smile like the world had given her a private joke. "Flowers keep you," she used to say. I never agreed then; I had other plans. Now, with the shop smelling of soil and citrus, I understood the small truth of it. Flowers were a place to put hope.
One morning I opened the door and found him sleeping on the small bench by the entrance. He had his head tilted back, mouth slightly open, and he looked smaller than any image I'd seen of him on the cover of magazines.
"Flynn?" I said, just like that, a whisper slipping out.
He blinked as if I had woken him with sunlight. For a second he didn't move. Then he looked at me the way he had looked as a boy when he'd first come to the neighborhood—like the whole world was something he was pleased to find, and that finding made him smile.
It caught in my chest.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, and it was steadier than I felt.
He rubbed his eyes. "I bought flowers," he said. "Do you have ones good for—"
"For someone you've loved for years?" I finished for him, feeling the heat of something I didn't want to name.
He laughed a little, awkward. "Yeah. Something like that."
"Take your time," I said, opening the door wider. The bell chimed thin and bright. He stepped in, and for a moment he looked like he belonged there, sinking his fingers into leaves and learning the language of stems.
"Which one is for hope?" he asked suddenly.
I blinked. "They all are, if you pick them like you mean it."
He looked at me then in a way that made the shop vibrate. He kept asking questions about small things—how often to change water, whether to snip stems under an angle, which soil worked best for potted lavender. He moved like he had been taught and forgotten, like the gestures were sleeping and he was trying to wake them.
"You don't have to pretend," I told him at some point. "If you came looking for me because I'm everyone in your head, that's a fragile thing. People break things made of ideas."
He went quiet. Then, abrupt and soft, he reached for a pot that had a spider plant leaning over the rim. He carried it to the counter like he was balancing someone he did not want to drop.
"How did you find this place?" I asked finally.
He sat down on a little stool. "France," he said. "I was in France last night. I woke up holding my phone and—" He made a vague gesture. "I guess the last train of my sense took me here."
"You can't be serious. France to here?" I said.
He shrugged, and there was something honest and clumsy in the gesture. "I don't know. I remember streetlights and I remember thinking of you. I don't remember steps, only you, like someone turned the lights on and I followed them."
"You're not supposed to come when you only remember me as a light," I said, feeling my cheeks heat. "That's dangerous for both of us."
"Maybe dangerous is the point," he said.
He began to help me without permission. He started with watering the plants with careful hands, making notes as if he were learning a skill. "Do you want fertilizer first, or water?" he asked, listening like every answer was important.
"You choose," I said, watching him. He applied a small measure of care like someone who had practiced it in his head for eight years.
When he paused he said, "I used to watch the neighbor's window because you smiled there." His voice dropped. "You smiled like the world would be okay."
I felt old and raw and young and stupid all at once. "People graduate from that," I said. "They find other things."
"Maybe not," he answered. "I never stopped thinking about you."
He folded the stems gently as I tied them. We were close enough that my shoulder bumped his; his breath smelled faintly of something like whiskey. I had not expected that. The shop was full of the smell of citrus and soil and the soft sweetness of lilies.
"Tell me something not on the magazines," I said.
He looked at me like I had made a brave, small request. "I like the quiet mornings best," he said. "I like sitting on the rooftop with a cup of bad coffee and watching the city try to wake. It makes me feel small enough to do the things I need to do."
"That's not a bad thing," I said.
He leaned over then, impulsive, and kissed me. The first time our lips met I thought my heart would stop, then start again in a different rhythm I did not know. He kissed like someone who had rehearsed a thousand times in his head, and each time found new softness. I tried to pull away because of how much the gesture meant, because of lights and cameras and the way it could break.
"Please," he breathed against my mouth. "Give me one chance."
"Flynn," I said. My voice was small, like the sound you make when you lift a fragile thing. "We are from different worlds."
"Let me be in your world for a little," he said. "I can do small things. I can sweep, water, make tea badly but try."
"You say you loved me for years," I said. "Why now?"
He smiled a fragile, honest smile. "Because I woke up and realized I couldn't let you only be a dream inside a schedule. Because I want to know if the smile I remembered is the same as the one that will meet me without a camera."
I let him kiss me again because my defenses were tired and also because sometimes your hands and heart don't listen to the clear parts of your head.
That night, he carried me upstairs the way a kid carrying a secret. He walked like he owned no stage, simply a path between me and wherever we were going. Before he closed the loft door he asked, "Can I stay?"
"You can sleep on the couch," I said.
"I will sleep better if you stay near," he said, voice like a child asking permission. "I don't want to wake and find that you are a story again."
I did not say no.
The next morning, I woke while he still breathed. He looked exhausted and young and peaceful, like someone who had kept vigil and finally folded. I slid out of bed and he stirred. He caught my wrist as if he feared I would vanish.
"Where are you going?" he said, eyes still half-shadowed.
"To the market," I lied, though I only had plans to go downstairs to open the shutters.
"You made sure I had clothes to wear?" he asked, and his voice had the humor of someone who had just learned the useful truth that someone else could care for small things.
"I think you'll manage," I said.
He tried to pull me back. "Don't go," he whispered.
"I have to open the shop," I replied.
He made a boyish, dramatic groan. "I'll go help," he said, scrambling to his feet despite the weight he still bore in his limbs.
"You'd catch cold," I said.
"Then close the door and let me make you soup when you get back," he bargained.
I laughed, a short, surprised sound. "You can barely boil water."
"I will learn," he insisted.
I kissed his forehead on my way out. It felt like a treaty.
Days turned into a pattern with a sweetness that made me dizzy. He learned to fold leaves so the bouquets opened like a friendly face. He learned the names of cheap tea I liked and brought me a packet every afternoon. He started coming to the market with a small list and arrived with two extra oranges he insisted would brighten my tea.
"Why do you do this?" I asked him one afternoon as he sat on the stool and tidied a box of ribbons.
"Because you make me feel like an ordinary person," he said. "I can be just Flynn, not a headline. I can be the guy who burns toast in the morning and then apologizes with a cinnamon biscotti."
"You used to look different," I told him, memory slipping. "You used to be shy and you laughed a lot."
He smiled. "I still laugh. I just learned to smile for cameras too."
One evening a fan left a small note on the counter. "Please be happy," it read in a clumsy hand. Knox had written it, I later learned, and folded it into a paper crane. He watched as I read, and his face crumpled.
"You remembered me," he said softly.
"I remembered you," I corrected.
He bent his head, and his shoulders shook in a way that was almost a laugh. "You're different now."
"So are you," I told him.
The first public change came faster than I expected. Flynn's manager, Evan Buchanan, found me one afternoon with a polite smile and too-bright teeth.
"Ms. Durham?" he said.
"I'm Jaya," I answered, keeping my voice steady.
"We'd like to invite you to a small press event," Evan said. "Flynn mentioned you."
"I don't do press," I said.
"It's casual," Evan said. "It's at the studio. Just... to answer a few questions."
I remembered my mother's hands folding napkins, the smell of coffee burned on the bottom of the pan she always used. I remembered how she had told me not to shy away from the world because the world sometimes offered a good thing.
"Okay," I said at last. "I'll come."
The day of the interview the studio smelled like camera oil and fast food. Lights hummed like low bees. Ariel Boyle was the host—bright, easy, and ready with a question.
"Flynn, when was your first love?" Ariel asked, grin wide.
He looked at me and smiled the way actors do—wide, practiced, warm—and then he laughed in a softer, private way. "Eighteen," he said.
The audience made that instant, small collective noise that suggests everything is now interesting. Ariel pressed. "Any regrets?"
"I loved her for eight years," Flynn said, and the room went quieter than a whisper.
"You loved her for eight years?" Ariel echoed to the camera. "Tell us something relatable."
He looked straight at me. "She makes soup that sometimes burns," he said. "She laughs in the wrong places. She made a flower shop in a town that smells of rain. She is the best distraction in a bad week."
The internet exploded. Fans leaned into his words like they were gossip and treasure both. My phone buzzed until it hummed like a trapped bee in my palm. For the first time in a long time, something I was part of became a story on the screen.
The next days were strange. Some fans came to the shop respectfully, leaving notes and little gifts. Other days there were cameras parked with people who wanted a picture. Flynn handled it with a quiet that surprised me. At a crossing once when a cluster of fans appeared, he put his jacket over my shoulders without fanfare and said, "We'll take the back alley."
"You didn't have to," I said later.
He shrugged. "Everyone can say, 'I would've protected you'—I want to actually do it."
He started to show himself the way he did at home: small, attentive actions rather than big gestures. He learned to button the cuff of my coat when I was cold. He carried the grocery bags in silence sometimes, and other times he would narrate his mistakes—"I bought anchovies instead of olives"—with a ridiculous solemnity that made me laugh.
There were heart-fluttering moments more than three times as the rules of this life demanded. I must list them, perhaps, because I know how these things are judged.
1) He smiled at me in a way he never did for the press. He had a private smile reserved for me, the one that softened his eyes and made him forget the camera.
"Do you like coffee?" he asked one morning.
"I do," I said.
He walked out with two cups and returned with one cup with the foam shaped poorly like a heart. "This is mine," he said. "The other is yours. Yours is perfect."
2) He noticed small things. One rainy afternoon I realized I had left one pot under the window without water. He slipped there before I could and set the kettle to warm.
"Why do you know where everything goes?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Because you told me once," he said. "And because I like places that fit."
3) A time he helped me through a crowd at a spring fair. He put his arm around my waist, which was not showy but careful, and murmured, "I'll keep you from being jostled." People parted and his focus never left me.
There were many other tiny things: a hand to brush hair behind my ear while we sat under a streetlamp, his whisper in my ear making me miss a step into a puddle because I was laughing. All of those moments were small and explosive all at once.
We had arguments too. I worried about the glare of publicity and the pressure on him. He worried about my stubborn independence and the way I kept closing the loft door against everyone, even him.
"Why do you shut people out?" he asked once, late, when the sky was as black as spilled ink.
"Because it's easier," I said. "Because I learned to protect a small garden and that's what I'm good at."
He reached out and took my hand, simple as holding a mug. "I don't need you to be a story," he said. "I need you to be a person who complains about loud neighbors and sings off-key with me."
He meant it. He meant the ordinary things far more than the extraordinary.
Time has a way of making small things into proof. I saw it in the way his eyes would find me first in a crowded room. I saw it when the cameras rolled and he would step between me and a flash.
"You're his shield," a tourist said once as she snapped photos.
"I'm not a shield," I replied, and Flynn laughed and took my hand.
Then something else happened that tested the seam of our little world. Journee, my sister, called one evening with a tremor in her voice I could not place.
"Jaya," she said. "I have to tell you something. They want me to sign on for a new project. It's big. I won't be home much. I... I'm sorry I left."
"I don't blame you," I said. My chest was a quiet room where memories walked. "You have your way."
"I miss you," she said, quiet and sheepish. "I see you on the internet sometimes. I didn't know we'd... that you'd—"
"Journee," I said, laughing soft. "You're a star now. I'm proud of you."
"I wish you were proud of me for other things too," she said, then hung up quickly as if embarrassed.
Later that week she came by with a bouquet of peonies and an awkward smile. They were overripe with bloom and shame. She looked different, like the world had polished her.
"It's strange," she said, sitting on the stool. "Being famous and small all at once."
Flynn watched her and then me, his face a mixture of protectiveness and something else I could not name.
The pattern of us continued: small joys, the odd anger, a few crowded doors, tiny battles. I learned how to keep us private when we needed privacy and public when we needed to show up for him and his fans. He learned the taste of my mother's soup the way a child learns candy is sweet. We both learned to pick flowers like we were choosing pieces of ourselves.
We argued once on a rainy night about boundaries. I had the sense that if I opened my heart fully something would break. He wanted fireworks—public, loud, the kind of love that filled headlines.
"No," I said. "I don't like to be the thing others talk about."
"Then we'll be the love people whisper about," he said. "We'll be the one that seems impossible and stays anyway."
It wasn't a speech. It was a promise spoken in the kitchen while he stirred a pot of something that smelled like garlic and slightly like burnt toast. He had learned to cook in a way that always made me smile: he burned less than before.
There were small scenes of us being brave. Once a reporter tried to ask me questions about my past in a way that felt like a fishing line. Flynn didn't shout. He simply stood up, put his hand on my shoulder, and answered with kindness that cooled the room.
"Jaya is a person I love," he said. "That's all I need to say."
He shielded me not by aggression but by showing how steady he could be. The camera caught it and some people called him brave. Some people called him selfish. I called him mine.
We had nights where he would confess his fears in a whisper, "What if I mess up? What if my fans turn?"
"I will keep you honest," I said. "I will remind you of the small things—how to be human."
"Will you remind me of them with a slap?" he joked.
"With soup," I said, and he laughed until he cried, and I made extra soup that week.
There was a day when I almost left. An old debt collector called the loft, talking about papers long buried and a ledger I had never noticed. The shop had a rent due and a leak in the roof. I had been saving to replace the windows, not to pay back some old account. I felt like the world was crowding me again.
Flynn came down to the shop and found my face closed into the kind of map that shows where you're lost. He didn't ask for an explanation. He paid a bill with a credit card that smelled of new leather and a little too much airport.
"You don't have to carry it alone," he said.
"I asked you to—"
"To do nothing?" he cut in. "No."
"I didn't ask," I said. "I thought it would make me less..."
"Less what?" he demanded softly.
"Less myself," I finished. "Less private."
"Then let me be your outside," he answered, "the place where you don't have to be alone."
We had our ordinary fights after that, the ones around ego and jealousy and press. But each one ended because both of us would come back and ask, "How are you? Are you cold? Did the lilies need water?"
One midnight there was a knock at the shop. A group of fans had come with candles and a piano player, singing one of Flynn's songs. They wanted to show appreciation in the most earnest way—music in the street. He took the microphone in the doorway and began to sing, his voice breaking into a hush that made even the leaves listen.
When he finished, someone shouted, "We love you, Flynn!"
He waved, then looked over to me. "Do you want to come out and tell them anything?" he asked, playful.
I stepped out, with my hair pinned messy and a scarf I never wore on TV. I said, "Thank you. Please don't take the flowers without asking."
They laughed and cheered. I felt like a ridiculous, ordinary hero.
Months passed in a way that never felt like a summary—less like a ledger and more like a recipe. We added more ingredients: little trips to the countryside where he learned to plant seeds, a quiet afternoon where he fell asleep on the bench and I covered him with my coat. He learned the names of my best customers and started to remember the birthdays of the school's teachers. He began to write small notes and hide them—behind seed packets, inside a vase, taped under the counter.
"Find them," he would say, grinning.
I found one note that said, "You are the only person who thinks lilies are brave." I kept it in the jar where I kept spare twine.
Sometimes I worried. Fame is a weather that changes a town. Some people were kind, some people curious, some people cruel. We weathered a few storms. There was a rumor once that tried to put an end to what we had. It didn't stick because Flynn told the truth in a way that was simple and direct. He spoke about me like he would speak about the shop's small things—honest and careful.
I began to imagine a future with fewer headlines and more breakfasts. We talked about living upstairs for a long time, about turning the small loft into a place with a plant on every windowsill. He promised to learn one new recipe every month, and I promised to teach him how to tie the perfect bow.
"Promise?" he said at one point, voice low.
"I promise to show you which stems bend and which resist," I teased.
"That's oddly poetic," he said, mock offended.
"Thank you," I replied, and meant it.
One evening, on the edge of winter, a low, bright light came through the window. Flynn had arranged an impromptu dinner for the shop's regulars: Knox, Journee, Ariel, and a few neighbors. He set the table with mismatched plates. "We will have simple things," he said, and the way he said it was like an oath.
When the candles were lit he stood up and held my hand.
"I want the world to know," he said, voice steady. "Not because I need attention—but because I want you to be proud of the life you built."
I saw everyone watching. Ariel, always the host, had a soft smile. Knox looked like he had swallowed a star. Journee had her hand in her lap, fingers tapping.
"Jaya," Flynn said, and it sounded like a prayer. "Will you be mine in front of everyone?"
The moment stretched. I thought of my mother and her soil-stained palms. I thought of the windowsill and how seeds had turned into small green things. I thought of all the small days that had stitched us together.
"Yes," I said.
He laughed and kissed me, right there in front of our people. The room broke into applause and a few laughs, and Knox whooped like he had just won the best prize.
After dinner, the neighbors left in a line like soft confetti. Flynn and I stayed to wash dishes, talking of dull things: the brand of soap, the stubborn stains. I loved him enough to nag him about using too much detergent.
"You're lecturing me," he said, mock wounded.
"I'm keeping the house clean," I replied.
He leaned over and kissed my temple. "You keep my heart clean," he said.
I wanted to say something lasting, something that would be a sentence to remind me of this warmth when the headlines grew cold. Instead, I smiled and said, "Then keep it."
We were not perfect. We had nights where we almost cracked. Fame brought people who wanted things from Flynn: his time, his attention, his loyalty. I had nights of fear where I worried I'd be taken for granted. He found ways to show appreciation. He left sticky notes on the mirror, simple words like, "Don't forget lunch," and "You're brave today."
Our story didn't end like a headline. It bent into ordinary shapes and began to look like a life. One afternoon in spring a little boy from the school walked in and announced, "My sister likes the lilies."
"Which lilies?" I asked, and Flynn answered for me.
"The ones you always keep near the bell," he said.
The bell. It had become a symbol for me—a small metal arc that sang when the shop door opened. It sounded like the beginning of sentences.
One evening much later, after the sun had tilted low and painted the alley gold, Flynn and I sat on the rooftop with two cups of coffee gone cold. He took my hand and the air between us was steady and warm.
"Do you ever imagine leaving?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I admitted. "But I always come back. This place is stubbornly simple."
"Good," he said. "Because I think I'd always come back, even if the rest of the world wanted me elsewhere."
He pulled something small from his pocket—a tiny glass vial filled with dried petals. "For luck," he said. "For the shop."
I laughed, and then I kissed him, not because I needed to but because I wanted to, because our mouths still spoke in the same language without scripts.
When I look back, the thing I keep is not a single grand gesture. It's the sound of the bell and the way his hand fits in mine. It's the small notes, the burnt toast, the late-night calls when he couldn't sleep and found me awake for company. It's Knox's shy smile and Journee's awkward apologies. It's the neighbors who brought casseroles when we were too tired to cook.
"Do you remember when you came from France?" I asked him once, teasing.
He pretended to be offended. "I remember being brave."
"Brave drunk," I corrected.
"Brave and in love," he said.
I could have said anything then. I chose a small truth. "You saved me from a life that didn't have you in it."
He put his face close. "Save me sometimes," he whispered, like a command and a plea both.
I promised without thinking. "I will," I said.
We kept the shop open for another year and then another. Sometimes the wind found a way to blow in the door and scatter leaves like confetti. Once someone asked me if our life was perfect.
"No," I said. "But it's ours. It's stitched from small things and stubbornness."
"Is that enough?" they asked.
"It has to be," I answered, because it was.
On nights when I am alone in the loft now, the bell still sounds like a beginning. I wind the small pocket watch that Flynn bought me once, and the tiny second hand ticks like a little heart. When I close my eyes I can almost hear the rustle of lilies and the faint echo of his laugh.
"Promise me something," he said to me in a moment that didn't need an audience.
"What?"
"That you'll keep a little pot on the windowsill," he said. "That you'll always let a new flower in."
"I promise," I said.
We do not make a big show of anniversaries. We keep small ones: the day he first came, the day he first kissed me in the shop, the day I said yes in front of neighbors. We mark them with a cup of coffee and a single flower in the vase by the bell.
The bell rings sometimes and customers come rushing in with the same messy human business.
"Good morning," I say.
"Good morning," he answers, his voice low and steady.
Outside, children in uniforms run by, their bright laughter like a chorus. Knox sometimes drops by with notebooks and a shy grin. Journee sends postcards from sets. Ariel calls to check in and laugh about old interviews.
The shop is small and the world is loud, and we make space inside it for quiet.
At night, when the light falls through the slatted blinds, I wind the pocket watch, and the tiny hand keeps time. The bell has a scratch on its rim from a hundred openings. The petals in the tiny vial have lost their color but not their scent. They sit on the shelf like a little history.
Sometimes I remember my mother's laugh, how she would press a bloom into the folds of a letter. I take a breath and find I have kept a gardener's patience. I have kept a lover's bravery. I have kept a life that is small in the world's story but enormous in my own.
"Do you think we'll be okay?" he asks sometimes, when the night feels thin.
"We always are," I answer.
He smiles the private smile and presses a kiss to my cheek, soft and certain. The bell tinkles when the door opens, and the shop smells of lilies and coffee and the clean smell of a life chosen slowly, like a bouquet tied with care.
The End
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