#blessedirwin

Michael never really cared for flowers. Sure they smelled nice sometimes and they made good homes for bees but they also made a mess when they started to die. He especially didn’t like tattooing flowers. They were always the same. The same roses in the same, difficult places with different quotes all expressing a similar message of blossoming and nostalgia. 

It was a slow day at the shop for Michael so when the bell above the door rang he sprinted to the desk. He greeted you with a smile, something he did when he could see someone was visibly nervous. After all, not everyone found getting repeatedly poked by a needle as fun. 

“I want to get a floral tattoo,” you said. 

Michael wanted to groan. You were a blank canvas and he couldn’t stop his brain from thinking of all the endless unique art pieces he could tattoo on your virgin skin. And yet, you wanted flowers. 

“Let me guess,” he said, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “Roses?” 

You shook your head, placing an envelope full of old, pressed flowers sticking out of the sides on the counter of the reception desk. “May I?” you asked, waiting for his nod of approval before opening the envelope. 

Michael watched as you transformed the gritty receptionist desk into a floral shop. Each flower you pulled from the envelope was different, each of them a vibrant color despite their dead nature. You had flowers Michael didn’t even knew existed in the world and you just kept pulling them out. 

“I collect flowers from all the countries I visit. You placed the last of the flowers on the counter for Michael to see. “This one,” you said, pointing to what was once a vibrant yellow flower, “Is a Ratchaphruek, the national flower of Thailand.” You pointed to another yellow flower, this one more droopy in nature. “That one is a Kowhai flower from New Zealand.” You pointed out a few more flowers to a wide-eyed Michael before explaining what you wanted. 

“We’ll have to do it in a few sessions,” Michael explained, before walking her back to his chair. “Why don’t you pick out three to start with and we’ll go from there.” 

You and Michael spend every other Wednesday together for the next month and half. Each session last about three hours adding another triplet of flowers to your ever growing sleeve. You may have started with a blank canvas but by week three half of your arm was decorated with vibrant and intricate flowers that you had picked. 

Usually, when Michael does big pieces he grows bored of the clients but that had yet to happen. In fact, he looked forward to his Wednesday sessions with you. He was always eager to here your stories about the places you’ve traveled and how you talked about each flower like they were your children. 

And you enjoy the sessions as much as you can given the fact you’re being stabbed with a needle full of ink. You love listening to Michael joke with the other artists in the shop and how silent he becomes when he’s really focusing on getting the colors on your arm right. Nothing beats the look on his face, though, when you show him another flower he never even knew existed. 

“So I brought you something,” you said. It was the last session of your sleeve which you were excited about. The whole thing was bittersweet though, you were going to miss being around Michael for hours every other week. 

“What is it?” 

“Flowers!” you smiled, presenting a bouquet of flowers out from behind your back. Michael takes them in his hands, his cheeks turning pink matching the barely, blooming tulip. “It’s just a little something to remind you of all the different types of flowers there are outside the walls of the shop.” 

“I love it,” he said, pulling you in for a hug. “Now let’s get this badass tattoo finished, petal.” 

“Petal?” you asked. “Do you give all your clients nicknames?” 

Ashton never thought he’d be sitting in the front for a dance recital. The front row for a school talent show? Sure. The front row of a battle of the bands contest? Hell yeah! But a dance show? No.

And yet, there he sat in a black button down shirt with his hands drumming mindlessly to the song playing through the speakers. He felt like he’d been waiting forever, his nerves for his little girl growing with every passing dance. He knew she was coming up soon, he just didn’t know when. Finally, he saw her dance teacher escorting a row of rambunctious four years olds in tap shoes onto the stage – Ashton’s little girl, Gracie, front and center like the star he knew her to be.

Ashton watched in awe as his Gracie, who barely talked to Luke when he first arrived at the house, command the stage. Her smile making the dimples on her cheeks prominent, just like her daddy’s. She knew all the moves without having to watch her teacher and when one of the girls taps shoes flew off she was the only one not to laugh.

She was a born star, just not in the style Ashton had planned for.

“You did so good out there munchkin,” Ashton said, scooping her into his arms after the recital. “So good that daddy got you a surprise.”

“I like surprises,” Gracie smiled, wiggling out of his grip. She took Ashton’s hand as they walked across the parking lot. Once they reached the car Ashton told her to close her eyes, opening the trunk of the car to reveal ten beautiful bouquets, each containing a different flower combination in vibrant colors. “Flowers!” she squealed.

“Only the best flowers for my favorite dancer.”

Ashton hoisted her into the trunk of the car before handing her the two smaller bouquets. He helped her situated the reaming bouquets around her before snapping a few pictures. Gracie smiled for the first few before she grew bored of the impromptu photo shoot. And when she saw one of her dance friends walking towards her, without no flowers and only her granddad in tow,  she lost all interest.

Gracie motioned for Ashton to come closer to her. “Daddy,” she whispered. “I don’t think my friends has flowers.” Ashton followed her gaze to the little girl who was dressed in the same leotard as Gracie. Sure enough, the girl was flower less.

“Do you want to give her one of your flowers, princess?”

Gracie nodded her hand as she fumbled through the flowers. She picked a bouquet of yellow roses before Ashton helped her out of the car and escorted her over to where the girl was.

“Hi Abby,” Gracie mumbled. “I wanted you to have these.”

Ashton watched in amazement as his shy, little Gracie handed the flowers to Abby. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched the face of Abby and her granddad break out into a smile — clearly thankful for the kind gesture.

“That was really nice of you,” Ashton said, later when Gracie and him had arrived home. They were in the middle of situating all the flowers into vases, scattering them around their small apartment so that no corner was left flowerless. “I’m very proud of you Gray.”

“I’m proud of you too, daddy,” Gracie said, kissing Ashton’s cheek. “Can we get ice cream tomorrow?”

Ashton laughed, nodding his head in response.

The first time Calum brought you flowers, you didn’t even remember it. You were just a few days old, your parents had just brought you home from the hospital, and your neighbors had come over to get a glimpse of you. The Hood family entered your home, two-year-old Calum toddling alongside his mother, holding a bouquet that was nearly as big as him. As his parents settling into the living room, he headed straight for you mother who was holding you in her arms. His mother had told him that the flowers were for the baby, so he thrust them toward you, not quite getting that you were too small to even hold them. Your mother laughed and shifted you to one arm so she could accept the flowers with the other hand, thanking Calum with a smile. Though he was two years older than you, this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The second time Calum brought you flowers was on your very first day of school. Calum was lined up outside with the other first graders, waiting to go inside, when he saw you standing with the other preschoolers. You looked very nervous and afraid, and despite the fact that your mother was standing just a few away you seemed very alone to him. He could remember being in the exact same place just a few years ago, feeling exactly how you were feeling, and he wanted to do something to help. He quickly plucked a few dandelions from the nearby grass, gathering them into a sloppy bouquet as he walked over to you. “These are for you.” He announced as he presented them to you. You accepted them, tucking one behind your ear where you wore it like a badge of pride for the rest of the day. You were too young to know that dandelions are actually weeks, to you they just looked like pretty yellow flowers. “You’re gonna be fine, you know. School is fun. You’ll make loads of friends. And you get to color.” Even though your mother had told you pretty much the same thing, it felt different hearing it from someone close to your age. You thanked him, giving him a smile as the bell rang. Calum headed back to his classmates, where he was teased so relentlessly about girls and cooties that it would be years before he brought you flowers again.

The third time was when you were eleven and he was thirteen, and he could tell you were having a rough go of things. You were in 6th grade, at the very bottom of the middle school pyramid, and all of the cattiness and drama that came along with it had just started. As was typical, a few students had risen to the top of the social ladder quickly, and they seemed to have it out for you and a few other students considered below them. You began to dread going to school every morning, but you never told anyone about the bullying, convinced that things would get worse if you tattled. But Calum always looked out for you, and he realized what was going on. One morning, you tugged open your locker to find three daisies sitting there on top of your books. They looked suspiciously like they’d been picked from the garden just outside the school. You searched for a note accompanying them, but came up empty. You considered who could have put them there. It had to be someone who knew your locker combination, and you’d only told one person, Calum. On the very first day of school he’d helped you to figure out the lock and you’d told him the code so he would show you how to open it. When you saw Calum later in the day, you were sure to thank him for the flowers. But he’d actually done much more than that. The past few weeks, he’d been paying close attention to the kids doing the bullying, and that morning he’d pulled them aside and intervened on your behalf. Nothing violent of course, despite the fact that Calum was quickly developing muscles from playing soccer, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Just a few words from and 8th grader at the top of the food chain had been enough to convince them to back off. The teasing stopped that day and never started again, and though you’d suspected that Calum had something to do about it, you’d never had any solid proof and you never knew all that he’d done to help you.

The fourth time he brought you flowers, it was in the form of a corsage. It was your freshman homecoming, and after you’d mentioned how disappointed you were that no one had asked you, Calum invited you. You suspected that you mother had intervened and said a few things to his mother, who had in turn spoken to Calum, but that actually wasn’t the case. Calum knew that if he took you, you would be able to dance and laugh and have a good time as opposed to if he asked someone that he barely knew. Plus, he remembered what it was like to be a freshman, new to high school and completely lost, not really knowing anyone, and he wanted to do anything he could to make it easier for you. One the night of the big dance, he walked the few yards to your house, the clear box with the corsage in it in his hand. You answered the door in a sparkly little dress that was practically the homecoming uniform, with your hair and makeup done all nice, and he knew he couldn’t see you as a just the girl next door anymore. He was so distracted that he almost forgot what he was supposed to do with the corsage until he heard your excited squeal and he remembered that tradition dictated he put it on your wrist. He carefully removed it from the box and gently slid it on your wrist, trying his best to ignore the electricity that he felt as his fingers brushed your skin that hadn’t been there before.

Luke’s five year old daughter Olivia had one goal in life and that was to become a princess. Of course, she didn’t want to be just any princess. No, she wanted to be the real life Rapunzel – her favorite princess of them all. 

The tasks of transforming Olivia into a princess were relatively simple. First,  she refused to let anyone cut her hair. “The magic will die daddy,” she had reminded Luke, sniffling as they left the hair salon without so much as a little trim to the tips of her hair. Second, she declared that she could only wear the color purple much like her hero. She also refused to wear any and all forms of pants claiming that “Punzy don’t wear pants, daddy!” Luke tried to explain to her that sometimes they do wear pants, like when they’re climbing on jungle gyms or playing on the swings but Olivia didn’t buy in. And so she wore purple dresses even on her play dates to the park with Ryder, Michael’s son. 

There were some things that Princess Rapunzel did that Luke didn’t allow his own little princess to do, though. One of those things was staying home alone while Luke ran the weekly errands. No matter how hard Olivia cried in the mornings, Luke always dragged her along with him. There was no way he was going to leave his precious five year old alone in the house, no matter how much she thought that made her a princess. 

Eventually, Luke got smart and began bribing Olivia into coming. The bribe consisted of taking Olivia to the local flower shop downtown so she could pick out flowers that Luke would later braid into her hair. It worked so well the first week that Luke and Olivia made it a Saturday afternoon tradition. 

With the errands finished and the flowers picked and prepared for her hair, Luke and Olivia settled in on the sofa. With Tangled playing for the thousandth time – truthfully Luke had lost count – Luke began braiding Olivia’s hair. He started at the side of her head, grabbing strands of her blonde hair and criss crossing them over one another. Every so often he’d stop, settling a flower within the locks of her hair before continuing. Of course, he always checked the picture of Rapunzel Olivia had begged him to print out so that the flowers were positioned in just the right way. Olivia was so concerned with looking authentic, she even organized the flowers on the table before Luke even started braiding her hair. The purple daises always residing next to the yellow daises, occasionally there was a pile of blue starlets that accompanied the daisies. With each of the flowers begin hand picked from bouquets at the flower shop earlier in the day. 

The whole thing took Luke an hour, an improvement from his original time of two hours when Olivia was four and had first asked for him to braid her hair. This left them with forty minutes of movie time left where Olivia would snuggle into her father’s side and stare at the television in amazement. It was Luke’s favorite part of the day no matter how many times he’d seen the movie. 

“I think this is your best work daddy!” Olivia said, smiling as she gently touched Luke’s handiwork. She kissed her father’s cheek before settling into his side like she always did. 

The two of them stayed quiet during the dialogue, sang during the songs – Luke providing Olivia with the perfect duet partner – and when the movie was finished Luke wiped away the tears that found a home on Olivia’s face while watching Flynn almost die. 

The heartfelt moment was short lived when Olivia leaped off the sofa, twirling in a dramatic fashion to face her father. “Daddy!” she shrieked, Luke’s face contorting at the shrill sound. “I just thought of something.” 

“What’s that princess?” 

“I need a lizard like Punzy!” she said. “I need my own Pascal!” 

The thought of Olivia carrying around her own chameleon was enough to bring Luke into a fit of hysterics. Though, he pulled himself together fast not wanting his little girl to think he was laughing at her. 

“How about we start with a fish. That was daddy’s first pet when he was your age,” he said. “You can even name it Pascal.” 

“Then I can be like Ariel!” she beamed, hugging Luke.