So What Now

Flowers

The sound of the rush of running water reverberates throughout the small studio apartment. It's 9:45 pm, a quiet evening in Melbourne, just like all the other evenings before it and all the other evenings coming after.

Rosie hears footsteps in the hall, outside of their apartment. The blonde girl is in her signature look when she's lazing around at home - gray Burberry sweatpants and a nondescript white crop top. She's leaning over the sink, just finishing washing the pan she used to cook dinner with, wearing her favorite baby pink apron while humming and swaying her hips along to Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy" as it plays from the small speakers that her phone is connected to.

It was a newly released song that she's taken quite a liking to.

She finishes washing and drying the last dish and wipes her hands on her apron. She closes the faucet, its tinny creaking sound interrupting the soft music she has playing in the background.

With the loud sound of the faucet gone, she hears keys jangle from outside the door, followed by a clang and a quiet, "shit".

Rosie laughs. She'd know those footsteps anywhere, know the strut, know the sometimes clumsy hands that struggled to put the keys in when they were holding a lot of other things - camera equipment usually, sometimes take-out of her food from her favorite restaurants.

Rosie would know. They've lived together for seven long and happy years after all.

She decides to give the person at the other side a hand, going to the front door and opening it. She's greeted with surprised doe eyes behind spectacles with metal frames, blonde hair tucked underneath a baseball cap, and arms gone octopus trying to carry two tripods, three camera bags, and two lense bags.

Oh, and flowers. A huge bouquet of the most beautiful arrangement of pink carnations, purple peonies, japanese privets, punctuated with a few huge long-stemmed pinkish red roses.

It takes Rosie's breath away.

The flowers are new. She was never greeted with flowers before. The ordinary late night in Melbourne gets a twist.

"Aw, Lisa! Are these for me?" Rosie's eyes are wide in awe, her voice thick with an Australian accent.

Lisa snaps out of whatever stupor she was in.

"Yeah!"

The photographer answers quickly, her own voice tinged with Aussie, but the Thai is still there, still audible.

Rosie asked her to never lose the accent, never lose that part of where she came from. Lisa smiled then, because she's only been living and studying in Melbourne then for a year and she was frustrated that she still spoke "like a foreigner". Rosie, her roommate turned best friend basically told her that everyone else can screw themselves and Lisa should speak however she wants and should never feel insecure about her roots.

Lisa laughs, handing Rosie the bouquet. Rosie's little eyes turn into crescent moons as she smiles with the warmth of the sun. Lisa smiles back at her, close-lipped and dopey and adorable. Rosie giggles and puts the flowers close to her face, closing her eyes and smelling them. Lisa feels herself melt as she watches her best friend savor the scent of and enjoy the sight of fresh flowers.

They stand there for a moment, stuck in a wordless exchange of appreciation and adoration that Lisa completely forgets about everything she's carrying and everything slung over her shoulder. The ten pieces of equipment she was hugging to herself all fall in crashes and thuds on the floor around her.

Both photographer and painter jump in surprise, both putting hands over their hearts, becoming complete reflections of each other. They didn't earn the nickname "twins" for nothing. Years of living together and barely spending any waking moment apart makes any duo adapt each other's habits and mannerisms.

Rosie and Lisa look at each other then as if tickled by an invisible feather at the same time, burst out into loud laughter.

"I'm so sorry," Lisa says, shaking her head. "Ah, I'm so out of it! I've been to three different locations since 5 am."

Rosie looks at her best friend in worry and quickly bends down to help her pick up the equipment that fell on the floor - a monopod, a tripod, a bag of extra camera batteries and a charger. Lisa follows suit checking the bag of lenses and adapters to make sure that none are broken. It was a small fall but Lisa still exhaled relief when she saw that they're all still in one piece. They had everything off the floor and properly into bags in no time, standing up right.

Lisa smiles in thanks. Rosie's eyes twinkle.

"Well, good thing I cooked one of your favorites tonight, then--"

Lisa's eyes go wide immediately and she doesn't even let her bestfriend finish whatever she was going to say.

"Is it meat?!"

It's as if all the exhaustion melted away from the photographer's face at the prospect of eating her favorite dish. Rosie laughs at her best friend's predictability but shakes her head.

"No."

Lisa pouts. Rosie continues.

"But, I did cook honey garlic salmon and rice."

The smile is back on Lisa's face and it is brighter by a million megawatts.

"Oh my gaaaad, you did?"

The warmth in Rosie's chest overflows. There are few things in the world that she can say are worth all the effort and hardwork - art, music, and making her best friend happy.

"Yes, I did." Rosie nods. "Let's go in so you can get changed and we can eat, yeah?"

Lisa nods and smiles.

"Okay."

Suddenly, the early morning start, the obnoxiou client, the dumb models - every bad thing she endured today in the pursuit of her dreams - is worth it.

All thanks to her best friend.