*stands on the rooftop* I haven't written Tratie in FOREVEEEEEEER! Here is the remedy. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below.


Flower Shop Fiasco


She chewed gum and kept an eye on the guy who's been pacing the store and tugging on his hair for the past hour. There were businesses where people loitered or spent extensive ammounts of time trying to buy something- book stores, grocery stores, music stores, Ikea…. but a flower shop? Especially a small one with one room only.

"Sir?" she said finally.

He looked up.

"May I help you?" she asked.

He scratched the back of his head, sending a disturbance in his brown curls. His features were pointy, his eyes were blue. His mouth looked like it was smirking, though the rest of his body language translated into nerves.

"Umm… sure," he said. "I mean, what do I have to lose right?"

She had no idea.

"It's just that I got into trouble with my wife," he explained. "And, you know, I manned up and patched things up but I figured that to seal the deal, I need a peace offering. So I figured that flowers were good, you know?"

"Flowers are an excellent choice," she nodded.

"But the thing is my wife's a biological engineer and she grew up on a farm and she knows flowers," he said. "So now I don't know which flowers to even get her. I mean, do I get her roses because they're romantic and timeless and whatnot? But if so- do I get her one or a dozen? See, roses are too complicated. So the next logical step is to buy something that's in season because Katie's kind of one of those Greenpeace nuts, so if I buy her flowers that had to be driven here from some greenhouse thousands of miles away, I'd be indirectly supporting global warming and acid rains and all that jazz- and that defies the point of me trying to do something nice for her. But, like, what's in season right now? What grows here? I don't know. So I dropped that idea and then I moved on to flowers that are blue because that's her favourite colour- but none of them are dark blue like she likes, so that's not worth it either because if I show up with the wrong shade of blue, she'll think I forgot that it's her favourite colour. And I can't do that right? I mean, favourite colours are important and it's what the bridesmaids at our wedding were wearing, so I so can't screw up on that level. So my next criteria is meaning or something because this one time she told me that flowers have meanings or something and she knows them all by heart but I don't, so I've been trying to Google it to find out what cute flower I could get her to say 'I love you', but there's no signal inside your store ma'am, so there goes that idea."

He hadn't taken a breath yet.

"So then I was like 'hey, grab the flowers that were at our wedding'- but she had all kinds of flowers in her bouquet and in her hair, she looked really good ma'am, she was beautiful. So I was like 'okay, do I get her tulips, hyacinths, forget-me-nots or posies'. So finally I decided on tulips but you don't have purple tulips here and I can't show up with the wrong colour of tulips, that would be ridiculous. So then I was looking at baby's breath- because on our first real date after we moved on to New York we went stargazing in Central Park and there were these baby's breath plants nearby that kept making me sneeze and she thought it was hilarious- but baby's breath doesn't make a substantial bouqet, you know? But she loves orchids and 'Orchid' is her middle name funny enough, so I wanted to get some of those but the ones you have here are orange and right now the flowers on our kitchen table are orange birds of paradise, so that's too much orange- she likes to keep things fresh and new around the appartment. Then I moved on to pansies because when she was little she used to keep them by her window in this little glass vase that we have in our appartment right now, but the pansies that you have in stock are all wilted and I can't give her wilted flowers, that's just not right ma'am, she deserves awesome flowers especially since I've been a dick..."

He sighed.

"Sorry that I've been here forever," he said. "I just don't know what to do."

She couldn't respond right away, she was kind of resisting the temptation to 'aww'. Usually people picked up the biggest bouquet, the reddest roses, the cheapest bunch… Usually people didn't think of each other so much after investing themselves into the initial action of reminding themselves to think of others.

"Sir, may I offer you something?" She said rounding the counter.

He nodded desperately.

"These are romantic," she said picking up a bouquet from one of the pots. "They're nice, they've got a nice colour, they're fresh…"

"They're pretty," he said.

"They're called stargazer lillies," she said.

"Lillies," he said smacking his forehead. "Oh, duh. She loves lillies! Says that if we ever have a daughter, she's naming her Lily. And the stargazing part…"

"I think this is the one," she said nodding. "And I'll even throw in a 25% discount."

The stress lifted from his face and he smiled.