The shop opens at eight.
I’m already here—scissors in hand, trimming stems in the quiet hum before the first footstep on the sidewalk. The blades whisper through green. Lavender and coffee share the same air, warm and steady. Light slides through the window, gold over jars, catching in the water until everything glows.

The world wakes slow around me: engines, birds, someone unlocking the bakery two doors down. A delivery truck coughs at the corner, then stills. I breathe it in—the mix of earth and sugar, metal and bloom—and think, this is the sound of staying.

I built the counter with my brother’s hands. Harlow measured; I sanded until the wood went smooth as skin. Ren and Kieran painted the walls that same week, laughing, arguing about which white looked more like sunlight. Upstairs, the apartment smells like linen and cinnamon. Home sits just above my head.

I finish the bouquet—eucalyptus, white rose, sprigs of baby’s breath—and lower it into its vase. Water rises to meet the stems with a small sound, almost gratitude. My fingers stay wet; I don’t mind.

A knock at the glass—Mrs. Vernon from next door—startles me only enough to make the scissors slip. She waves. I wave back. Routine is its own language.

The register hums awake when I touch it. The chalkboard sign outside still reads Leclair’s Floral Creations—Repairs & Roots. I’ll rewrite it later, maybe add the special: lavender bunches two for ten. Numbers keep me calm; I finished that business degree for a reason. Accounting made sense when nothing else did.

“I wanted a place where things could keep growing,” I murmur to no one, straightening the display, “even when I didn’t know how.”

The bell rings again—first customer. A young man buying sunflowers for his sister’s recital. I wrap them in paper that crackles like soft thunder, tie it with twine, listen to the thank-you land between us like pollen. When he leaves, the shop exhales. The light moves, slow as a heartbeat.

On the sill, a single marigold leans toward morning. Its petals catch the sun and turn to flame.

Caleb’s voice flickers through the quiet: The brave ones. They bloom like they have something to prove.

I press my thumb to the stem, steady. “Then we’ll keep proving it,” I tell the flower.

The scissors gleam. The day keeps opening.

Rain hums steady against the roof — soft percussion, full of patience I can’t seem to find. Steam curls from the coffee pot, slow and deliberate, catching the pale morning light before it fades. The whole apartment smells like clean soil and roasted beans, warmth rising through cool air.

The apartment sits right above the shop — two rooms and a hallway stitched together by scent. Shelves of plants line the window: ivy, rosemary, a few stubborn marigolds. The couch is corduroy, thrifted, the color of old linen. There’s a record player I almost never use, a half-finished puzzle on the table, the kind of clutter that feels lived in. Sandy Springs hums faintly beyond the glass — the bakery sign across the street flickers, and somewhere, a dog shakes rain from its fur.

My phone lights the counter. Ellis:
Sorry, can’t make it home this weekend.

The message sits there, small and neat and final. I stare at it long enough for the screen to dim, then light again with the same words. The coffee maker clicks off; the silence after feels heavier.

I type back, It’s okay. Be safe.
The dots appear — vanish — reappear. Then nothing.

The pause after sending it says everything.

Ellis lives in Macon now. The new job started in March, and for the first few weeks we counted miles like something measurable, like love could be a map if you traced it gently enough. But lately, the calls come late, voices tired, conversations looping the same reassurances. We’re fine. It’s just distance. It’ll get easier. I say them too, sometimes. They still sound like lies when they leave my mouth.

The rain deepens, shifting from hum to heartbeat. I pour coffee into a chipped mug, the one Ellis bought at the thrift fair last fall — faded glaze, a crooked handle, still the right fit for my hand.

Six months together, and I can name every good thing: how he always remembers sugar in my tea, the way he laughs before answering the phone, the quiet hey, love whispered like a habit. I love him for trying. I love him for staying, even when neither of us knows what staying means anymore.

I take my mug to the window. The street below glimmers, slick and blurred. The marigold on the sill leans toward the light, stubborn as always. Atlanta waits somewhere past the horizon — thirty minutes by car, a lifetime by memory.

I trace the rim of the mug with my thumb and think about promises. The ones that keep you anchored, and the ones that keep you still.

The rain keeps falling. The day doesn’t rush.

And for now, that feels like enough.

The phone sits on the counter, speaker on, Harlow’s laugh spilling through it bright as sunlight on water. I keep one hand in the flowers, trimming stems while he tells me about Harmony pulling Gracie’s hair hard enough to earn a squeal. “She’s got my attitude,” he says, voice still full of pride. “And Gracie’s patience—thank God one of us does.”

“So you’re saying she’s a handful,” I tease, sliding the next stem into the vase. The scent of soil and lemon soap rises warm around me, grounding the morning.

“Exactly. But she’s our handful.” He pauses, and I can hear the clatter of something—probably a toy hitting the floor—followed by Gracie’s soft voice in the background. He must have turned his head because his next words come muffled: “She’s gonna be a heartbreaker, this one.”

“She already is,” I say, smiling. The scissors click quietly in rhythm with his laughter. I build the arrangement in layers—fern, then rose, then the tall stems of delphinium that catch the light from the front window. The water smells faintly metallic, clean and cold.

“Business still good?” Harlow asks, shifting back into focus. “Every time I tell someone my sibling owns a flower shop, they want to know if you do weddings.”

“Too many,” I answer. “People keep falling in love. It’s good for business.”

He chuckles. “You sound tired of love already.”

“Just the planning part.”

The bell above the door rings softly downstairs. A regular, maybe. I let it go—there’s time. The shop hums like it knows its own rhythm now. I can hear it faintly through the floorboards: jars clinking, wind nudging the sign outside.

Harlow clears his throat, and the sound changes—lighter, then slower. “You ever gonna bring Ellis to dinner?”

I press my thumb against the counter’s edge, let the smooth wood steady me. “Maybe,” I say, too quickly.

“Maybe’s not a yes.”

“No,” I say quietly, “but it’s not a no either.”

He exhales, the sound soft, not disappointed—just knowing. “You deserve someone who shows up, Ast. You always have.”

The words hang there, true and kind. The line hums with static, rain still tapping against the window. I want to tell him Ellis tries, that distance isn’t a lack of care, but the words don’t come. I only listen—to my brother breathing, to the slow shift of silence between us, to the life pulsing just beneath it all.

“Tell Gracie I said hi,” I finally say.

“She already knows,” he answers, smiling in his voice.

We hang up. The phone screen goes dark, but his warmth lingers. I look at the bouquet on the counter—bright, open, reaching—and tie it off with twine. The shop hums below. The world keeps growing.

The shop is closed.
Only the string lights glow — low amber halos tracing the edges of vases and stems. The air smells of peonies and eucalyptus, the sweetness heavy after a long day. I sit on the counter barefoot, the wood cool beneath my skin. A glass of wine waits beside me, catching the light.

Outside, Sandy Springs hums in its slow evening rhythm: rain easing to mist, tires hissing through puddles, the faint music from the bar down the street. The sound folds around the stillness until it feels like breathing.

I hum too — an old tune, something I used to carry down the high-school hallways when I didn’t know who kept leaving poems in my locker. Little squares of notebook paper, the corners softened from being handled, words that never said a name. I kept them anyway.

Caleb left his locker to me the day he graduated. Inside waited one last poem, folded clean, written in the same looping hand.

I didn’t need a signature. I knew.

I reach for the copy of Pride and Prejudice on the back shelf, the one that’s held that poem ever since. The paper is yellowed now, edges curled. I unfold it carefully, run my thumb along his handwriting, the way the ink bled where he pressed too hard.

“I didn’t mean to keep them,” I murmur into the quiet. “I just didn’t know how to let them go.”

The ache that comes isn’t sharp anymore. It’s something gentler — a tide that knows how to retreat.

He wanted me to live a full life.
I think I have.

The fridge hums. A car door slams outside. Somewhere, the rain starts again, soft as breath. I look around the shop — the scattered petals, the rows of jars gleaming in half-light — and wonder if he’d still know me now.

I fold the note, slide it back into the book. The cover closes with a sound like a sigh.

“I think I’m still learning how,” I whisper.

The lights hum, the air holds.
And I sit there, between what was and what keeps growing, listening to the quiet fill the room.

The clock over the counter ticks past seven. The shop breathes in its last quiet of the day—just the hum of the cooler and the faint rustle of petals settling in water. I sweep what’s left of the trimmings into my hand: fern, a few wilted tulips, a curl of ribbon. The floor smells like green things and lemon soap.

I lock the door and flip the sign to Closed. Outside, the street glows faintly gold, slick from an afternoon shower. The bakery lights across the road blink out one by one. It’s the hour where everything exhales at once—the still moment between work and rest, the hush after being useful.

I glance at my reflection in the glass. The shape is familiar, though softened at the edges. My hair’s longer now, streaked lighter from sun and time. There’s a steadiness in my shoulders I didn’t have before. Five years, and I’ve learned how to stay. How to build things that don’t disappear.

I reach out and rest my fingers on the cool glass. My reflection meets me—older, calmer, someone I almost recognize.

“Five years,” I murmur. “And I’ve learned how to stay.”

My voice sounds different in the quiet, low and certain.

Sometimes I still dream of someone calling me Little. The name catches like sunlight through leaves—sharp, warm, gone before it hurts. I wake up smiling, not because I miss him, but because once, I was loved like that. There’s something steadying in remembering it—proof that I’ve known tenderness, that it didn’t vanish even when he did.

I turn back toward the counter, dim the last lamp, and watch the light fall across the marigolds near the window. Their petals catch the glow, deep gold bleeding into amber, a small fire against the dark. They lean toward the glass like they’re listening, brave and bright—the color of something that refuses to die.

I stand there until the hum of the cooler fills the room again, until the silence settles soft and full. Then I breathe out, long and even, and let the quiet take the rest of the day with it.

Outside, the streetlight flickers once and steadies.
Inside, the marigolds hold the last of the light.