The Language of Us

Chapter Four

Getting up on Monday morning wasn't as easy as Dea thought it'd be. But honestly, when was getting up on a Monday morning ever easy? Dea wasn't dreading getting out of bed just because it was a Monday. She was dreading it because she had to go to the flower shop and maybe that didn't seem that good of an idea anymore.

Groaning, she dragged herself out of bed and did her morning ritual: use the bathroom, brush teeth, change clothes, hair and perfume, and, finally, breakfast. She didn't wear makeup; sweating constantly would prove that to be difficult. Plus, she had shit eyesight. While one eye would come out looking like something out of a makeup magazine, the other would look like a two-year tried to draw on her eyelid.

Dea munched on cereal while she looked over her list of flowers she would choose from. Ultimately she decided on getting a bouquet of irises. In flower language, irises mean "message," which was what Dea was trying to send to Jon. Part of her hoped he realized what the flowers would mean, and part of her didn't.

As she stood in front of the door to Chelsea's Flowers, Dea took in a deep breath and didn't dwell on the fact that bringing flowers to the office (aka Jon) might seem like a romantic gesture and she never told Jon how she felt and she wasn't even one hundred percent sure she wanted to do it now—but she was standing in front of Chelsea's Fucking Flowers and she had no choice but to walk in because an employee from inside the shop was staring at Dea and when an employee from inside the shop was staring at you staring at their shop, you just had to go in.

A bell rang as Dea opened the door and she was greeted by a curly blonde haired woman with a green apron on. Her nametag indicated that she was the Chelsea of this shop.

"Good morning," she said. "Any particular flowers in mind today?"

"Yeah, actually. I have it written down somewhere..."

Dea fidgeted around in her purse to find the scrap of paper that she wrote down her list of flowers on last night. She'd immediately forgotten what kind of flowers she was here for today. It didn't occur to Dea that a florist—a person who sold flowers—would know anything about flower language.

"I'd like a dozen of these, please."

Dea pointed to a batch of irises after she read their name on the list.

Chelsea looked at the list—which, from what she could she, held many names of flowers, not just irises—and back at Dea, before smirking.

"So you want irises?" Chelsea raised her eyebrows.

"Well...yeah?"

Chelsea just continued to look strangely at Dea, tilting her head. Chelsea Harper-Barnes was good at reading people—several years studying psychology would do that to a person—and she could read Dea from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet.

"Huh. Okay."

"What?" Now Dea was getting defensive. "Why the 'huh okay'?"

"Nothing. I mean, I'd say it looks like you're nervous about getting these flowers or something. They for your boyfriend?"

Dea nearly choked on her own spit—no, she did choke on her own spit—when she tried to respond to this fucking Chelsea person.

"No!"

"No?"

"No."

"So, who you trying to send a message to, then?"

"What?" Dea said incredulously.

"Don't what me. You stand in front of my shop for a solid minute, then you walk in here with a list that is most likely a list of flower names, and you tell me that you want a dozen irises—flowers that mean 'message.' Of course there's a reason you want those particular flowers, right? You probably want to send a message to someone—tell someone something. A guy maybe? Or a girl? I don't judge."