2 years later
The business situation still had not changed at Mushnik's Flower Shop, but he somehow managed to get by on the small income he made. Seymour and Audrey still had to deal with Mushink's constant raving and insults. Both of them had long grown used to hearing those sorts of things, and dealt with it the best they could.
And that's just what Seymour was dealing with yet again early one Thursday morning. It was about 12:30 p.m. and Audrey still had not arrived to work yet. She hadn't even called the store to tell Mushnik she would be late, which really made him angry.
"Where's that employee of mine!" Mushnik yelled out to himself.
"I don't know sir; I mean she hasn't even called in." Seymour said as he sat behind the counter.
"Well thank you for pointing out the obvious, Krelbourn." Mushnik said impatiently.
Just then, the bell above the front door rang and both men looked up to see Audrey come into the store.
"There you are. About time you showed up!" Mushnik snapped at Audrey.
"Oh sorry Mr. Mushnik, I was so busy at home I lost track of time." Audrey said as she went to hang up her coat in the back room.
"You live across the street, Audrey. The least you could have done is called me." Mushnik told her.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Mushnik. I really am." Audrey said, her back still turned to Mushnik and Seymour.
"Well, I'm telling you not to-." Mushnik started to say and stopped short as Audrey turned around. Seymour as well was shocked at what he saw. Both men noticed a large bruise on Audrey's right cheek. They hadn't noticed it when Audrey first came into the store as she had quickly rushed to hang up her coat, but now that they noticed it they were truly shocked.
"Audrey, what happened to your face?" Seymour asked.
"Oh…um…I tripped into my bed?" Audrey asked, but the men could tell by her tone of voice that she wasn't telling the truth.
"Audrey, what happened to your face?" Mushnik asked with insistence.
"Oh…I…uh…walked into the door?" Audrey said, but she could already tell Mushnik and Seymour didn't believe her.
"Audrey, I can tell you're not telling us the truth. Now who did this to you?" Mushnik demanded.
Audrey wrung her hands and slowly shifted her feet around on the floor, not comfortable with telling Mushnik and Seymour the truth. "Ok. It was my boyfriend." she said.
"What!" Seymour asked, sounding completely shocked.
"My boyfriend did this, I wouldn't get into bed with him so he slapped me and locked me in my bathroom for two hours this morning." she said. "Took me a while to collect myself after he let me out and left."
"Audrey, why didn't you try to escape?" Seymour asked.
"I was scared, plus I love him. He's the only man I have." Audrey insisted.
"How in the world can you love a man who slaps you around like that?" Mushnik asked in disbelief.
"He apologized afterwards; I know he didn't mean it." Audrey said.
"You didn't deserve this, Audrey. You need to find a man who treats you like a queen." Seymour told her.
"But he does, Seymour. Really he does. He buys me lots of nice things." Audrey said.
"He shouldn't have to buy your love, Audrey. Love should be unconditional without any type of abuse." Seymour said.
"I don't really wanna talk about this anymore." Audrey said and ducked into the back room.
Seymour and Mushnik shook their heads in disbelief as they went about what they had been doing before Audrey came in. They knew Audrey really didn't want to leave her apparently abusive boyfriend and they couldn't force her to do so, it was her choice alone. So the best they could do at the moment was be there for her whenever she needed it, and hope she would leave the relationship before things got too out of hand.