Novelette {Oneshots}

Daisies On Wednesday ✧ 𝚂𝚊𝚙𝚗𝚊𝚙

𝙺𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚗𝚊𝚙

⚠️ 𝚃𝚆𝚜: mentions of death (car crash)
Generally troubled thoughts in this one - doesn't result in anything worse, but please be careful anyway!!

𝙳𝚎𝚜𝚌: Day 5 of the writing event. Mood board above, quote was "Are you okay?" , "I was never okay."

I don't know why the writing is mildly poetic and/or dark in places, but I love the title lol.
My personal favourite of the 7 :)
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Wednesday afternoons are always consistently unusual, and I can't decide if it's a good thing or not.

Not that I ever get enough time to debate such a thing and plan ahead for what's about to come. My thoughts always fall back into line when there's someone knocking at my door as soon as the clock strikes twelve, so uniformly on time it's definitely become uncanny.

Never late nor early, which does create the sense of normalcy that I've come to appreciate, yet also puts me so on edge that I'm scared to sleep in. I can't decide if it's for fear of missing it or fear it never happens, but neither seem a good option.

"Good afternoon!" the usual florist chimes when I find the strength to answer the door, letting my eyes trail over him for a few long, probably uncomfortable seconds. Allowing my brain to make the necessary assessment of this person like it does any other, except the conclusion is never the same with him.

Incomplete, setting off every alarm I've installed within me and filling my head with nothing by the constant blare of danger. Yet his sickly sweet "how are you?" drowns it all out, pushes away the darkness in favour of a brighter day, a calmer storm than the one usually plaguing my mind.

I don't know how such a ray of sunshine could've found the courage to wander upon my doorstep one Wednesday afternoon, then proceed to do so every Wednesday afternoon since, but it's become a routine.

Something he claims to put in his calendar, even though the faint buzz from his pocket a few minutes into the one-sided conversation makes it apparent to me that he always remembers on his own anyway.

It's like he wants to be here, a highly unlikely idea which has continued to puzzle me week after week.

There's something so frustrating about him. How I want to slam the door in his face but never can, how I hate the way he smiles, yet find myself unable to do anything that could shatter the precious gesture into pieces. He's a mask of innocence adorning a smile of rainbows, with eyes so warm they could melt minds and most likely hearts too.

He's a face with a name I never bothered to learn but know off by heart as Karl Jacobs, and that it's Karl with a K, not a C like his seventh-grade teacher used to spell it. That he prefers chocolate to vanilla ice-cream 'like every sane person does', and finds comfort in rainy days because there could be a rainbow and he could see that pretty shade of purple that's his favourite colour, despite the fact he's slightly colour-blind and probably can't see the real colour anyway.

I'll never understand why I took in these little details about him, bothered to absorb the strangest things he'll tell me about himself while he's delivering me daisies. Yet they're always ingrained in my head, stored in some distant compartment so that when he's complaining about 'that dumb co-worker', I'll know it's the girl who put the peony tulips in with the peonies because they both have peony in their names.

I've had half a mind to specifically ask the florist to send anyone except Karl to deliver my daisies, but always find a part of me wanting to see him anyway. The logical part of me did manage to acknowledge that doing so would disrupt my routine, but the fluttering sensation in my chest that makes my heart work overtime when I see him is telling me otherwise.