#florau

It’s a Wednesday—a very normal Wednesday, not even a date night, nothing special. But he’s here, and he’s hers, and the door is shut, and she loves him. Fuck, she loves him. He’s all around her, his arms and his smell and the sound of his breathlessness. He looks like he does when he wants to kiss her, she thinks, and he could. But somehow the sight of his lips parted, his open face, his eyes open to hers, all of him open to her, is sweeter than a kiss. It’s sweeter than the way he’s pressing her down into his bed or how tight she feels around him or the way the corner of his mouth twitches up nearly into a smile when she digs her fingers, just a little, into the warm skin where she’s clinging to his lower back. She feels full of him, in every possible way.

She whispers his name, and he brushes his nose against hers, his eyelashes fluttering shut, she loves his eyelashes, and presses his lips to her cheek, and starts to move. 

That’s when Arthur walks in.

“Matt have you seen myaaaaAAAHHHHH—” 

“FUCK—” 

“NO! NO.” 

“FUCKING KNOCK ON THE FUCKING—” 

“—no, no, no, no—” 

The door slams shut again. Karen buries her face in her hands, and she’s aware, beneath Matt’s swearing and the sound of blood rushing in her ears as her whole body tries to blush in mortification at once, of the thud of retreating footsteps running very fast. 

After a tense thirty seconds or so of silence, Matt, who has scrambled off of her in a vain attempt to throw a sheet over the pair of them, scratches the back of his neck self-consciously and clears his throat. “Do you...should we try again, or...” 

Karen peers at him through her fingers. The heat between her thighs has faded to more of a dull ache. 

“...are you feeling it?” she asks finally. 

He lifts up the sheet and glances down at himself. “...hmm.” 

Five minutes later they’re sat at the edge of the bed eating leftover pizza in their dressing gowns. 

“You can move into my place tomorrow,” sighs Karen. 

you realize that for your big apology gesture you gave me a very long book about scottish people dying.

He gets the text on his way over to the shop and nearly walks into a pensioner and her dog while he’s reading it. “Sorry,” he manages as he tries not to trip over one of them.

The old woman scowls at him. He would scowl back, only he can’t stop grinning—at his phone, first, and then at the pavement, and then just at everything.

A week ago he was standing at Karen’s front door, palms sweating, trying to work up the courage to knock and praying that she would even give him two minutes to talk to her. Now everything is different. They’re okay—they’re on their way to being okay, they’re talking. Karen is texting him again. And today he’s expected at her shop for the fourth day in a row. Arthur’s thrown his back out and Beth and Piers are in the Maldives on holiday, and it’s delivery week. “And Karen is basically four pencils stuck to a ginger mop,” Arthur explains. “She can’t lift anything.”

He probably shouldn’t have repeated this word for word to Karen when he turned up the next morning to help out, because she pursed her lips at him and then told him to start unloading bags of potting soil from the truck in the back—but frankly, he thinks, he’ll take a little heavy labor in exchange for the chance to make friends again with Karen Gillan.

Today the shop is packed with customers when he shows up around noon—he has to practically fight his way through the crowd to get to the back room, where he finds Karen stuffing long stem roses into a basket like her life depends on it.

“Need a hand?”

She glances up at him. There’s dirt on her face and her ponytail is coming undone. “No. Yes. Does Arthur need any help up front—?”

“I think he’s okay,” Matt replies, trying not to laugh. “Here, let—”

He starts working on the empty basket that she’s laid out next to more roses. “Give—get—stupid—” she mutters under her breath, reaching across the workspace to fumble for a pair of gardening gloves that she shoves into his hands. “You’ll—the thorns.”

Matt pulls the gloves on and shakes his head. “You can always tell you’re busy when you start speaking in fragments like that.”

“Fuck off.”

The shop has been doing a lot more business, since the wedding, Matt knows. Karen and Arthur have been talking about taking on more staff to help with the extra work. He’s proud of them, he keeps thinking as he works alongside Karen for the rest of the afternoon. They’re too busy to talk much, besides Karen giving him directions, but by the time the rush of customers has slowed, Karen is smiling, and she gives Matt a rough pat on the shoulder as he’s washing the dirt off his hands in the storeroom sink.

“You did good,” she says.

“Good!” He feels a surge of pleasure at her words. “I’m a natural, right?”

Karen scoffs. “Go sit down before you kill any flowers.”

Matt throws himself down onto the beanbag chair in the corner, watching Karen take her turn at the sink. “You’re reading Macbeth then?”

“Yeah I started it last night.”

“You like it?”

She turns around to face him, drying her hands off on a towel. “It’s all right, yeah.”

He sits up straight. “ALL RIGHT?!”

“Yeah it’s sort of...bland.”

“You—how can you—you were all going to be an actress once, you can’t—what is wrong with—”

Karen’s hiding a smile, he realizes. He flops back into the beanbag. “You.”

“It’s great,” she laughs. “I love it so far.”

“Such wasted talent,” Matt sighs.

She giggles. See, we’re laughing together again, he wants to say. We can do this. He keeps his mouth shut, but the way her gaze flickers back and forth from his face makes heat prickle on the back of his neck. Maybe she’s thinking the same thing, he wonders, as she moves over to one of the coolers and starts rearranging the blooms inside.

Matt watches: her long, deft fingers, the way she holds each bundle of leaves and stems like she’s known them since they were seeds, the slope of her shoulders, her arms, easy and relaxed, like this is the most natural, soothing work she’s ever done. All the tension from earlier that afternoon is gone. She’s made for this, he thinks.

“I never asked why you went into floristry,” he says after a while. “Like, why—that’s it, right? Floristry? Florology?”

“Floriolology,” she says with a straight face.

“Yeah that.” He slouches back into the beanbag chair, stretching his arms. “Did you like inherit the family business or something?”

“No!” she laughs. “I don’t know! I like flowers.”

“Lots of people like flowers,” he presses, “doesn’t mean they get this obsessed with them.”

“Watch it,” she warns, holding up a pair of gardening shears out of nowhere.

“I mean obsessed, Karen.” He crosses his legs lazily. “Was this like your childhood dream or something...?”

She lowers the shears and shrugs. “I don’t know. Not, like...”

A strand of hair falls across her face and she tucks it behind her ear, like she does when she’s self conscious. Shy, even. He’s seen her do it a hundred times. The moment pierces him and he loses his breath for a moment, until her voice brings him back.

“I mean, we had like, a little garden at my house where I grew up. In Inverness.” She fiddles absently with a lily petal. “My parents let me have like a little corner of it for myself to muck around in.”

Matt smiles. “I can totally see you running around with a tiny watering can.”

“I did! I had this wee little red one with daisies on it! And I used to grow these like shit little scrawny daffodils, right, and make little bouquets for like my mum or the neighbors or whoever.” She blushes faintly. “I don’t know. It’s nice, you know? Cheering people up, or just celebrating shit, or whatever. Like just making people happy.”

“You’re good at it.”

Karen tucks her hair behind her ear again and clears her throat. “Thanks.”

He’s staring at her again, he realizes. Before she can catch him at it he jumps up, heading at random for a workstation a few feet away. It’s covered in planter trays, a few of them sprouting green seedlings. “And all this business you guys are getting now, you’ve done pretty well for yourself, yeah?” There’s a spray bottle full of water—he grabs it and starts spritzing potting soil aimlessly. “I mean, even since I first started coming here, there’s been a difference.”

“Yeah, no, seriously—”

She catches sight of what he’s doing. “No, what? No stop.”

“What?!” he protests as she hurries over and pries the spray bottle out of his grasp.

“This is plant food.”

“I’m feeding them!”

“They’ve already been fed,” she says, setting the spritzer down. “You’re overfeeding them.”

“Oh, well. God forbid we end up with obese...” Matt bends over to read the label on the planter tray. “...hydrangeas.” He frowns. “What the fuck is a hydrangea.”

“You’re so bad at this,” Karen giggles.

“Oi!” He straightens up. “I’m learning!”

“Badly.” She folds her arms and gives him an appraising look, one eyebrow cocked. He feels very clumsy all of a sudden. “Slowly. With great effort.”

“You need me,” he retorts, pointing the spray bottle at her face. “I’m brilliant. You should hire me.”

“Mm. You did drop my best vase yesterday.”

“Well.” Okay. “Okay. But I fixed it. I’m very good at fixing things.” He spritzes plant food into her face and she sputters. “Gluing. I’m good at gluing. There is nothing I can’t glue.”

Karen stares at him, a drop of water clinging to the bottom of her chin, and he feels his grin fade. You’re good at making people happy. He swallows. You’d make me happy.

He sets down the spritzer. “You ever need anything glued, I’m your...glue man,” he finishes lamely.

“I should get back out front,” Karen mumbles.

“Yeah probably.” GLUE MAN.

She pushes through the door and disappears, and Matt stares at jug of liquid fertilizer on the floor and wonders how much it would take to kill him.

***

“You’re still into her.”

“Into her. Yeah. I mean.”

“Don’t give up, then.”

“I’m not—that isn’t what I’m trying to do here. I just want to be her friend again.”

“You’re a better guy than she realizes, mate.”

“Not good enough to fix this though.”

The conversation that she wasn’t supposed to hear, three days ago, replays itself in her head as she takes her place behind the register. It’s nearly five and there aren’t any more customers, but she busies herself by counting the money in the cash drawer.

It isn’t distracting enough. She braces her hands on the counter and closes her eyes. Everything’s fine, she breathes in and out to herself. Everything’s good. She and Matt just had their first conversation—their first real conversation, with their old stupid jokes and antagonizing and normalcy—in weeks. They’re getting back on track. They are back on track.

Then the words echo in her memory again—she’d been in the supply cupboard, they hadn’t realized, she hadn’t even spoken to Matt yet, not since he left her in her flat with that book—and once again she hears the resignation in Matt’s voice, the heaviness. Not good enough to fix this.

Shit, she thinks, blinking back tears.

Arthur emerges from the back room. “I’ve left Matt to restock the rest of the baskety things,” he says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder behind him. “I’m taking off.” He glances at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fine. See you.”

He pats her on the back as he goes past, humming under his breath.

“Do you think we should ask Matt if he wants like—” Karen bites back her words.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” She shakes her head. “See you tomorrow.”

The bell rings as Arthur heads out the door. It’s started to rain outside—warm, July rain, Karen thinks, the best kind. Maybe she’ll go for a walk without an umbrella. Just really let herself get properly rained on, properly summered on.

“Hey, I’m leaving.”

She opens her eyes and looks up. Matt is shrugging into his jacket, his hair falling into his eyes. You need to get that cut, she thinks, wanting to brush it back for him.

Instead she takes a deep breath and says, “Do you want to actually work here at all?”

He freezes, jacket halfway onto his shoulders, and stares at her.

She swallows.

“What, like...” Matt seems to recover and pulls his jacket on all the way. “Officially?”

“Yeah. Like I know you have a job with Steven but like—” Oh now the words are just all coming out. “Just part time maybe or like when we’re super busy, like this week, like we could actually pay you for helping out, maybe make it worth your time—”

“It is worth my time,” he interrupts.

“No, but, really.” She clasps her hands together and waits for him to say something.

He’s fiddling with the zip on his jacket for a minute. Then he glances up at her. “I break shit, remember?” he says with a little chuckle, like he’s hoping his words will dissolve something in the air between them.

“Yeah but you fix shit too,” Karen says without thinking. “With your, like. Gluing.”

“My masterful gluing,” he grins. “I told you I’m good at fixing things.”

Oh, says something deep inside her.

Matt is zipping up his jacket. “I mean, like—”

“No, shut up.” Karen stares at him. Her heart is pounding. Oh. Fuck.

“I just—”

“Seriously shut up,” she manages.

He’s looking at her curiously, and she can’t breathe, because something has just unlocked itself, and it’s so simple, it’s so fucking simple, and she wonders why Arthur didn’t tell her, or Matt, Matt should have told her, it’s right there, right in front of her, it has been since the day he walked into her shop and tried to save her azaleas. He fixes things.

He always has.

Matt clears his throat. “I’d really like to be here more often,” he says finally, breaking the silence, “that’d be great, Kaz, but—”

“Then be here.”

“I don’t know if—”

She grabs his jacket collar with both hands and kisses him. Hard.

He goes perfectly still.

She thinks that she might just stand there, her mouth tight on his, holding onto him, her nose pressed into his cheek. She doesn’t have to let go. Not for a few seconds anyway, not until she needs to breathe again. Matt seems to wake up suddenly and he pushes closer, she feels his hands on her waist, and when she finally breaks the seal of their lips she hears him gasp. His grip on her waist tightens, his fingers digging into her shirt.

Karen pulls away just enough to look him in the eyes. He’s staring at her mouth like he’s never seen it before.

“Shut up,” she murmurs.

He meets her gaze then. “Kaz.”

“I want to—” He’s touching her forehead with his, his eyes closed, and she keeps her hold on his collar and holds him back before he can kiss her again. “No. Listen. I need to say—”

“What?” he half whispers.

Karen forces herself to look in his eyes and nowhere else. She feels dizzy. She feels light. “You are good enough for me.”

He pulls on her shirt, closes the distance between them. “I won’t fuck up again,” he says earnestly, breathlessly. “I won’t. I—”

“You will,” she cuts him off, “but you’ll fix it.”

She can see, and feel, that he’s not quite keeping up, and she fights the urge to burst out laughing. “Shut up.”

“What?!”

“You fix things.” Everything is perfect. He’s breathing hard, and she can feel her blood singing. “You’re—he never apologized, he blamed me for everything, but when you fuck up, you fix it. You’re different.”

Matt stares at her for a moment, and then comprehension dawns on his face. He starts to smile. “Are you telling me...”

“Yes.”

“...that this is because I dropped a fucking vase.”

She blinks. “No. What?”

“I dropped a vase, and I superglued it, and you’ve turned that into a metaphor—”

“No—”

“Are you serious?”

“No!”

“You’re snogging me because of a glue metaphor?!”

“Shut the fuck up!” she shouts, and oh, his eyes are dancing, and this time when she kisses him he wraps his arms around her and lifts her off the floor, and doesn’t put her down until the bell jingles at the door.

Arthur is staring at them.

“Left my keys,” he says slowly.

  Epilogue: Six Months Later

“Morning,” says Karen as Matt walks into the shop, hands her a coffee, and kisses her cheek. “I’m breaking up with you.”

“Right,” he sighs, “what is it this time?”

He kicks snow off of his boots behind the front counter and helps himself to a piece of chocolate from the bowl by the register. (“For paying customers only,” Karen had told him when she started setting it out. “Aww, you’re so cute,” he’d smiled.)

She’s glaring at him right now, though, so he decides to play safe and drops it back into the bowl.

“You told me that Sue’s baby shower was in one week.”

“It is. What? It is.” Matt frowns. “The eighteenth, right?”

Karen is holding up her phone. Matt leans forward, undoing his scarf, and reads the text on her screen.

“...oh.”

“Tomorrow.” Karen takes a deep breath. “It’s tomorrow. The eleventh.”

“Shit.”

“Mm. Yeah.”

Matt scratches the back of his head. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Karen sighs, taking a sip of her coffee. “You can come by and pick up your stuff from my flat sometime next week.”

“Can’t Jenna help out or something?” he asks. “I mean she’s been here since Christmas, she’s pretty good at arrangements by now, right?”

Karen makes a face.

“She’s good!”

“She works hard,” Karen concedes. “She’s not as good as me.”

“No one’s as good as you,” Matt says, leaning in for a kiss.

“Mmmf. No.” She pushes him away. “I have to open up. Anyway we’re over, I told you. You’re dead to me.”

“You can’t break up with me, though,” he points out.

Karen raises her eyebrows. “Why’s that?”

“Because it’s almost six months.”

“So?”

He moves closer. “You said that after six months, you’ll let me move in with you. Promised, actually.”

She scoffs and turns back to the register. “That was before I knew about your ulterior motive, Matt.”

“I have no ulterior motive!”

“Oh right, you’re just so in love with me.”

“I am so in love with you!” He hugs her from behind. “Getting out of the flat where Arthur and Alex won’t stop having really loud sex is just like an added bonus!”

“I feel so cherished,” Karen mumbles.

“I cherish you deeply,” he grins, kissing the tip of her ear.

She leans back against him for a minute, and he rests his chin on her shoulder, closing his eyes. They’re alone in the shop, and snow is falling outside.

“I like you,” he murmurs into her neck.

Karen wraps her arms around his. “Will you help tomorrow?”

“Can we get back together?”

She smiles against his cheek. “Maybe if you buy me a fuckload of flowers.”

“Maybe I’ll buy you something even nicer.”

She turns around and kisses him properly, and it’s all he’s ever wanted. He’ll never want anything else. Just her.

She doesn’t see him again for weeks.

She can’t really blame him, she thinks heavily. The things she said to him...had to say to him, because she knows it was the right thing to do, she knows she shouldn’t be with someone she can’t trust, again—but she saw on his face how much it hurt to hear those things. Whatever his faults, he was telling the truth when he said he loved her.

It almost makes her run after him and apologize, but she bites her lip and stands her ground. Running after him won’t help.

Instead, she finishes closing up, locks the door, and goes home.

And doesn’t see him again for weeks.

It will get better, she tells herself as she restocks the shelves or clips rose stems, but everything is a reminder of him. That’s the window display that he knocked over when he was making fun of her walk—these are the register keys that he used to poke while she was in the middle of phone calls just to drive her mad. If she goes into the back room, it’s worse. They threw chocolate at each other in that corner. Over there is the wall where he stuck up a drawing of an angry face above the beanbag chair that he’d named Arthur’s Grumpy Dad Seat.

Karen ends up ripping it down one morning.

Even Arthur isn’t any help, he just makes things more awkward. With Sue and Steven moving into their own flat, it was decided ages ago that Arthur would move in with Matt after the wedding. Get away from his mad landlady, learn to live with another human for once—it was going to be fun, but now Karen wonders whether this isn’t the worst part of it all, having this person that she has to share with Matt, a link between them that she can’t get rid of. Every time Arthur shows up for work she pictures where he’s just come from. The little table in the kitchen and the overflowing bookshelves are as fresh in her mind as they were the first and only time she saw them. Months ago.

(Daisy knows that flat better than I ever will. That’s always her next thought. She’s kissed him there and spent the night. She’s cooked for him there. They gave her a slice of the wedding cake, some sort of amazing buttercream rose masterpiece, but just looking at it made her feel sick. She binned it as soon as Sue left.)

They don’t talk about Matt. Arthur is almost excruciatingly casual. He doesn’t acknowledge what’s happened, and Karen wonders at first whether he even knows—she certainly hasn’t told him about that day—but he lives with him now, there’s no way he hasn’t picked up on it, even if Matt hasn’t said anything.

Is he okay? Karen wants to ask. Is he—How’s he doing? What has he been like?

She doesn’t dare, though. So Arthur keeps pretending everything is fine.

He’s doing it for her own good, Karen knows, but every now and then she finds herself wishing he would snap and just yell at her, berate her for it, convince her what a terrible mistake she made and force her to apologize. Take him back, you moron, she wants him to shout. What the fuck is wrong with you?!

In these moments, she forces up an old image: Patrick kneeling in front of her, a dozen of her own roses in his hands. (No ring—no, that would have been premeditated.) The irony almost makes her laugh. Matt probably thought he was being romantic—if she’d asked, he would have said something about wanting to turn a bad memory on its head or some other bullshit writer’s line. Or maybe just trying to be cute.

Maybe he hadn’t been thinking at all, she wonders. Maybe he’s fine.

***

It’s been three weeks since the wedding when there’s a knock on the door of her flat.

“Hey,” he says softly when she opens it.

Neither one of them moves. Karen doesn’t have anything to say. She just stares at him, and swallows. Twice.

Matt runs a hand through his hair. “I, uh.”

“Hi.”

“Here to apologize.” He clears his throat. “I brought...”

Karen glances down—he’s holding out a book to her. She takes it numbly.

It’s Macbeth. A lump rises in her throat.

“Peace offering,” Matt says. “Can I come in?”

She backs away from the door without replying, and he takes that as a yes. He heads into the living room, hands shoved into his pockets.

Karen doesn’t know what to do for a moment, but she sets the book down on a table and wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans. Then she turns to face him. He’s standing aimlessly in front of her sofa.

“You can sit down,” she offers awkwardly.

Matt seems to recognize the sofa for the first time, and sits.

Karen joins him.

“...so,” she says after a long minute of staring at the carpet. “Did...did you have a speech planned, or...”

Matt is silent. She can’t even hear him breathing.

“Look,” he says finally. He’s leaning forward, hands folded in front of him, not looking at her. His voice isn’t much above a whisper. “You were right. Everything you said. I was unfair, to both of you. I hurt you.”

Fuck, don’t cry. Don’t even...Karen takes a deep breath. Then another. Then another. Don’t fucking tear up on him. Not now.

Matt clears his throat again. “None of it—I didn’t do it out of...” He swallows. “It wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t think. But I’m sorry. I just wanted to say that.”

She studies his face. His gaze is fixed somewhere on the coffee table in front of them, and there’s a brightness in his eyes—she wonders if he’s trying not to tear up as well. She can see the tenseness in his expression, his jaw clenched.

“Why did you do it?” she asks, finding her voice, and she isn’t even sure what it means.

Matt lets out his breath shakily. “Because I don’t...”

He pauses, and then turns his head and looks at her, though not straight in the eye.

“I don’t know what I want,” he murmurs. “I never have. I never know. With anything, not just...That’s who I am.” He turns away again, back to the fucking coffee table. Karen thinks she’ll buy a new one.

“I wanted you the first time I met you,” he continues after a moment, his voice rough, “but I didn’t...know it. Or I didn’t know how to decide.”

Karen bites back a laugh even though her eyes are stinging. “Yeah, we’re a close match, me and Daisy.”

“You’re not,” he says immediately. “You’re better for me.”

Karen has no reply.

“I broke up with her.” When he meets her eyes, she feels a pressure in her chest. “After I talked to you. First thing. And I apologized to her.” Suddenly his hand is on hers. “And I’m apologizing to you, now, for fucking up.”

Something breaks inside her. Karen swallows. “Matt, I—”

“No—I’m not—” He glances down, and then pulls his hand away. “I’m not asking you for anything. Just—if we could be friends.”

She stares at her hands. “I don’t...” She has to close her eyes. “I don’t even trust you, Matt.”

There’s a pause. “Yeah,” she hears him say quietly.

“Like...” She struggles for words, twisting her fingers together. “Like how do I—I haven’t even gotten close to someone in a year because of him, and now it’s like it’s just...I was done with this, you know?”

“I don’t want to be him, Kaz,” he says softly.

Karen doesn’t say anything.

“Can I not be him?” His voice is thick with emotion. “Please?” He swallows again. “I’m sorry, let me—could you let me not be him, Kaz, I want to fix this.”

“You’re not...” Fuck. “I didn’t—you’re not, okay. I know you’re not.”

Matt is quiet for a minute, and when he speaks next, his voice is low. “If you want to not see me again, I’ll stop coming round. If that’s what you want.”

“That’s not what I want,” she says in a small voice.

He shifts beside her. “Then tell me, okay, and we’ll, like...”

“I want boundaries.” She swallows. “I think—boundaries. Okay. We need to like—like don’t, like—” Words. Use them. Say a sentence. “You coming over and staying for like the whole day and like getting drunk with me it’s just not—”

“Yeah.” He sits up straighter. “Yeah, no, definitely. I mean that’s—yeah.”

“And maybe like...if we’re hanging out, it shouldn’t just—like Arthur should be there, it shouldn’t just like be us—”

“Poor Arthur.”

Karen laughs suddenly, unexpectedly. “Yeah. God. Is he, like—”

“I think he’s losing his mind, yeah.”

Suddenly she’s smiling, and Matt’s smiling too—his whole frame has relaxed, like he’s just let out a breath that he’s been holding for hours. Karen brushes at her eyes with her sleeve, feeling ridiculous. “I feel sort of bad.”

“So I can come over, then.” Matt is looking at her for real now. “And hang out. Sometimes.”

“Yeah. Just—”

“—boundaries, yeah.”

“I don’t want to just like not ever see you again,” she mumbles.

“Thank you,” Matt murmurs.

Karen feels warm. After a minute or so of silence, Matt gets up and heads toward the door.

“I’ll see you around then,” he says as Karen follows him. She feels like she can breathe again. When she reaches him and puts her arms around his neck, he hugs her back, tight and wordless. She can feel his bare skin against her cheek as he presses his face into the crook of her neck and she doesn’t let go, just holds him, memorizing his smell and his strength and the warmth of his body. She doesn’t let go, until he does.

“Are we okay?”

He gives her shoulders a squeeze. “We’re okay.”

It isn’t until he’s walked out the door—it’s some time after that, really, she doesn’t know how many minutes she spends standing there, picking at her nails and taking deep breaths—that she starts crying, the tears coming easily and gently. Something deep inside her has just been released. Her hands are shaking, and she needs to sit down, but she feels...it’s good. She feels good. He held her so close. They’re okay.

God, she didn’t know how much she missed him until now.

She sits down at the kitchen table and picks up Macbeth. On the first page, just inside the cover, is Matt’s handwriting. Sorry for being an ass. Love you Gillan. – Matt x

She runs her fingertips over the words, and stays there for a long time.

Karen is dancing with him. His arms are round her waist, and her hands are linked at the back of his neck, and she’s looking at him like he’s new and exciting, like he’s saying the truest thing she’s ever heard even though his lips aren’t moving at all.

“I hoped you would,” she whispers, and when he leans in to kiss her, she threads her fingers into his hair and doesn’t let him go.

Matt wakes up in his own bed. He’s not sure how he got there, after the amount of drinking he did last night after Karen disappeared, but he has a feeling he’s been here for a while.

Karen. He drags himself out of bed and into the bathroom to freshen up. Fuck, when did he fall in love with her. Ages ago, obviously, but—he still sees her walking away from him when he closes his eyes, and he sees Daisy doing the same thing, just ten minutes earlier, and he knows, heavy in his heart, which moment took hold of his insides and twisted, and which moment made him breathe a sigh of relief.

He should go to Daisy first—he should, but he doesn’t remember how late Karen’s shop is open on Sundays, and it’s already late afternoon, and neither of those things matter anyway because he just needs to hear himself saying the words out loud, soon, before he loses his nerve. He needs to fix this.

On his way out he grabs a tenner from the change bowl next to the fridge. He may as well try.

***

Karen is about to step out from behind the register to flip the window sign to “CLOSED” when she hears the bell ring. She looks up, and he’s there.

“Hi,” he says before she can react. He seems nervous. “Sorry about last...” His voice trails off. “...yeah.”

“We’re closing,” Karen says stiffly.

“I know. I know,” he repeats, walking quickly up to the counter. “I’m just—” He’s fiddling with his hands. “I was—look, could I just get—”

“We’re out of daisies.” They’re not. But she’s not giving him any today.

Matt reaches across the counter as she’s turning her back to him and puts a hand on her arm, stopping her. “Kaz.”

She meets his eyes reluctantly.

“I don’t want daisies today,” he says, looking at her with that intense, studied stare that she’s come to hate. “I want, what are they called. The purple ones. The little—”

“Azaleas.” He can’t remember, surely not. Karen forces herself not to hold her breath. “I don’t have any potted right now.”

“Then give me a bouquet.”

Azaleas don’t come in bouquets, but Karen doesn’t have the energy to argue with him today. She leaves him at the counter to go into the back room, and for once he doesn’t follow her.

When she comes back, with a bouquet wrapper stuffed haphazardly with purple blossoms, Matt’s laid a ten quid note on the counter. She hands him the flowers and rings him up in silence.

“There you go. That all?”

Matt takes an audible deep breath, and for a second Karen thinks he actually looks afraid. Before she can say anything, he steps around the counter so that it’s no longer between them, looks her dead in the eyes, and gets down on one knee.

“Go out with me?” he asks.

***

The seconds stretch on into a minute. Karen is staring at him, motionless, and he wonders if she can hear his heart beating, it must be that loud. He holds the bouquet of azaleas out in front of him like a shield. Just take them he thinks at her desperately. Just reach out and take them and say yes. It’s really, really easy.

She doesn’t take them. He’s not even sure if she’s breathing.

After the silence has become too excruciating, he clears his throat. If he wobbles slightly on the one knee, well, he hasn’t had a lot of practice doing this, has he. “Go out with me,” he repeats, hoping his voice won’t break. “Please.”

Karen says nothing.

“Come on, Kaz, let’s just...” Did he have a speech planned out? He can’t remember. “This is ridiculous, let’s just end this. I’m sick of this, this whole...let’s just stop dancing around it, yeah?”

“Dancing around what,” says Karen in a very small voice.

“Around us!” He gestures at...them. “I know we both—I know you feel the same way, you know how I feel, there’s no reason why—”

“You have a girlfriend.”

He swallows. “I’ll break up with her.”

Karen closes her eyes briefly, and then she sighs, and steps away from him to lean over on the counter and put her face in her hands. “Get up, Matt,” she says wearily.

Matt stands up. He feels suddenly sick.

“Do you not...” Shit. “I’m not wrong, I know I’m not—you do, don’t you?” Shit, shit, shit.

Karen stands there with her hands over her face for a long moment, and then she turns to him. Her face looks worn. She looks exhausted.

“You’re telling me,” she says quietly, “that this whole time, you knew how I felt about you, and you knew that I knew how you felt.”

“I—yeah—”

“And you had a girlfriend, and you still came in here every week, and flirted with me, and came on to me, and—” There’s a red flush in Karen’s cheeks now, one that scares him. “You went after me while you were with another girl.”

Matt swallows. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t going to do anything, Kaz, it’s not like I was—”

“Cheating.” She takes a shaky breath. “Not like you were cheating.”

“Not...”

“Not what?”

“...physically,” he finishes, and as soon as he says it he wants to turn around and walk out the door, because he’s not sure he’s ever heard himself say something so pathetic.

Karen looks like she feels the same way. “No, you weren’t. Just leading me on, that’s all.”

Matt drops the azaleas on the countertop and steps closer to her, wishing his stomach would stop turning so that he could focus on finding words. “I didn’t—last night, Kaz, that was when I knew, I didn’t want her—I don’t want her, she isn’t—”

He reaches out to take her hands, but she snatches them away.

“I’ve been with someone before,” she says, “who did that, someone who led women on and wasn’t fucking faithful to me, who led me on for six fucking years, and left me for the girl he was shagging behind my back, so don’t even—”

“I’m not doing anything behind anyone’s back, I’m going to break up with her—”

“You haven’t even done it yet!” There are tears in her eyes, fuck—“You keeping her around as backup in case I say no doesn’t exactly make you the good guy here, Matt!”

“I’m not like him!” he blurts out. “What he did to you, I would never—”

“You’ve been with Daisy for a year. More than a year. And you dragged her along while you let yourself—you dragged both of us along.” Karen’s properly crying now, but her voice is steady. “And you want me to trust that in another year, you won’t just...randomly decide to fall in love with the—the girl working the till at Tesco’s, and leave me for her.”

“I wouldn’t,” Matt says helplessly.

Karen doesn’t reply, and so they stand there, until finally she sniffs and wipes her face off with the sleeve of her jumper. “Was there anything else you wanted,” she says flatly.

He can feel tears of his own threatening. “You’re saying no.”

She leans on the counter and doesn’t look at him. “Yeah. I’m saying no.”

“I just—” He brushes blindly at his eyes and tries to clear his throat. “This is us, Kaz, we’re—I love—”

“We’re not anything,” she snaps, glancing up at him. “You’re a customer. You come in, you pay, and you leave. So just...leave.”

He stares at her.

“You’ve got your fucking flowers, go on.” She nods toward the door.

“I love you,” he repeats, his vision blurring.

Karen ignores him.

After a few seconds he brushes the tears off of his cheeks, shoves his hands in his pockets and walks out of the shop as fast as he can. He hears Karen toss the azaleas into the bin before the door closes behind him.