The Florist | ✓ (#Wattys2016)

roses

"I read it now." His breath is still jagged from the spontaneous exercise. "Do you still...?"

"Do you...?"

"I mean, I kind of do," he grins, feeling more light-headed from this exchange than from the run.

"I think I do too," Clara says, and she's grinning just the same, and her voice is creaking as if she's about to cry. "Shit, Dev, I really do." Then she stops. "Wait, why did you run?"

Dev hums. "I don't really know, I just kind of felt like it was the sort of thing you do, you know?"

"What?"

"You know, running. In the..." He nods outside, still panting. "Rain. Pouring rain. That's a thing, right? Running in the pouring rain because of...love. It's a thing."

"I think it is," Clara affirms, trying her best not to smile at that brand new use of 'love'. "But I mean, my shift ends in half an hour. You're going to get a cold."

"I maybe probably didn't really think this through."

"You're an adult man."

"I definitely didn't think this through."

Clara grins. Her eyes travel from her rain-soaked best friend to the sodden little second-hand book clutched tight in his grip, and she says, "I love you as a friend. Don't get me wrong, that's the first and foremost thing, and that will never, ever stop. But I mean...there were feelings."

"Feelings," Dev sympathises. Those things are the worst.

"What I mean to say is, there are feelings. Sort of..." She wrings her hands and scrunches up her face as she tries to pick a word without embarrassing herself completely. "Sort of non-platonic feelings."

"Oh yeah," Dev nods emphatically. "All sorts."

And he stumbles awkwardly to the counter, and she drags him into a kiss. He's hunched over from the awkward angles, the countertop is digging into his stomach, and his face is soaking wet and clammy from the rain, but it's finally happening and he's with Clara and that's all he can think of.

When it finally ends, she looks at him, and she pulls him into a hug. This is almost better. It's like before, when they were eighteen and they were friends. It's the same, familiar, comfortable hug, only this time nothing is secret.

Clara lets go at last, and she says quietly, "You're always the second one to let go of a hug. I like that."

All Dev can do is smile. Because it's finally happened, and they're surrounded by roses and rain, and it's the most beautiful thing he can imagine.

"Um, hey," says a man standing behind Dev with a bunch of lilies. "Can I maybe, er, pay for this?"

"Oh!" Clara says suddenly. "Yes, of course, sorry!"

"I mean, I'm happy you realised your true love or something," he says politely. "But I'm going to miss my train."

As Dev steps aside for the man to buy his flowers, he doesn't feel fireworks, and he doesn't feel like he can lift a truck. He just feels like he never needs to lift a goddamn metaphorical truck ever again, and that's better. That's so much better.

When the man leaves, Dev slides back to the counter, grinning. He nods at the roses. "I'd like to buy one of those."

"Hm," Clara says approvingly. "What's the occasion? Are you in trouble with the wife?"

"Yeah," he says, pulling a face of exaggerated worry. "She caught me sleeping with the mailman."

"The male man?"