He’s awfully excited to see me as I walk into the shop, hesitant. His face lights up and it reminds me of the face a child makes when they’re happy. It’s contagious, his smile, but I fight the urge to reciprocate it and keep my head hanging low. Suddenly, I feel embarrassed standing in the flower shop—I feel exposed, the blood from my wounds finally seeping out of my broken shell. The rack of flower bouquets to my right don’t help in reassuring me that I’m okay either.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come,” the boy says, continuing to spray the tulips sitting on the counter he stood behind with water. “You seemed so comfortable sitting outside, underneath that tree.”

“It was staring to get cold,” I lie, stuffing my hands in my pocket and looking around the shop. It’s no different from other flower shops. It’s small, crammed with flowers in every corner, decorated with vintage paintings of flowers. There’s nothing special about it and yet, from the moment I stepped foot in it despite feeling exposed, a sense of safety starts to spread through my body.

“Would you like to sit down?” he asks, walking around the counter. Before I can decline, he grabs a stool from the storage closet just behind a rack of marigolds. He places it beside the counter, “You can sit here if you’d like,” he says, offering a warm smile.

“Thanks.” I walk from the entrance to the counter and sit, continuing to look around the small shop. I can feel him glancing at me from time to time, even as he moves about, attending to his duties.

“How long have you been sitting out there?” he asks as he replaces the withering marigolds with new ones, freshly bloomed. He doesn’t look away from his flowers to look at me, but I don’t mind. I wouldn’t expect him to look away from something as beautiful as marigolds just to look at me for a second anyway.

“Ten months,” I reply, pulling on the sleeves of my jacket to cover my hands. It was warm inside the shop—the direct opposite from the weather outside—but I still felt cold.

“That’s a long time,” he smiles. He then looks up at me, “Doesn’t it get tiring though?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. Then, I let out a quiet sigh, staring at the tulips on the counter. Nothing ever gets tiring when there’s nothing to wait for.

But I know he wouldn’t understand that. Hardly anyone is able to understand that.