The Problem With Flowers

The Problem With Flowers Part 1

Part One:

I don't process the words at first. Not for a minute, an hour, not even a day. It takes me a week for the realization to fully hit. It's officially a global pandemic. The Coronavirus has changed our world. Everyone wears masks around each other, half their face covered in cloth. And I'm not allowed to go out. It isn't too bad at first, but slowly the days bleed into weeks. I meet a girl, and we talk over the phone for months. We fall in love with each other, and I get closer than I've ever been with someone. Half a year passes and then the girl leaves me behind. She tells me she doesn't want to be with me anymore, and doesn't think she ever will. My heart is broken, and I feel sad, then angry, then sad and angry at the same time. Sometimes I don't feel anything. I walk around in a daze, wondering why this happened. Didn't I do everything right? I called her at night and told her stories to help her sleep, and called her at three in the morning before she went to work because of our time difference. We facetimed, and danced together, ate dinner, and I even wrote her stories. But it was over. It was all over.

I lay in my bed, wondering how everything could have gone so profoundly wrong, when it had all seemed so right. Perhaps I would never understand. I turned onto my side, pulling my blanket further up close to my head. I wanted to bury myself under it, and never never wake up.

*****

Three months later 

 I woke up in a daze, wondering where I was. The unfamiliar walls confused me. But then I remembered. I had just moved into an apartment with my best friend Cade, and I was going to college. She still occupies a part of my mind, stuck in the back like a headache. 

I rub sleep out of my eyes, and threw off my blankets, mentally preparing myself for another day of school. Groggily I walked to the fridge and pulled out a package of bacon. Pulling out a pan, I layed four strips on it and turned on the heat. Soon the pan was sizzling and hissing, a spatter of hot grease hit me in the head and shocked me the rest of the way awake. Cade made eggs next to me, cracking two of them into a seperate frying pan. I left the bacon to sizzle for a bit, and went to pop some toast in the toaster. After about twenty minutes, our breakfast is done, and we ate in silence, mostly because Cade never sleeps, and takes a hundred years to wake up fully. When I finished, I washed everything down with a glass of milk, and then banged my head on the table, groaning contently. There wasn't anything like a good old fashioned breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast.

"So," Cade said, grabbing my plate and putting it with his in the sink. "What are we going to the do here today?" I didn't lift my head from the table.

"I don't know, die probably." I was probably the most positive person I knew.

"Well uh, as nice as that sounds we should probably do something else." I finally looked up from the table.

"Well, the college is having that party later tonight, we could-" Cade shook his head.

"Nope. No parties." I sighed, and stood from my chair. I had been trying to get Cade to come with me to a party ever since I found out they existed. I didn't really blame his hesitance but I also didn't really want to go alone. "C'mon, just try it one time. Just once, and then I'll listen to like, whatever music you give me." Cade raised an eyebrow.

"Any?" I nodded. "No matter what or how much of it there is." Cade shrugged. "Fine, but you're probably going to regret agreeing to that." I thought about that for a second.

"Maybe, but you won't regret going to the party so it's a win/lose there." Cade sighed and started loading the dishes into the dishwasher.

"So you'll come?" I asked. He closed the door to the dishwasher and dried his hands.