Chapter 5: The Aftermath
The silence she left behind had a new quality. It wasn't the old, empty silence of the apartment before he knew her. This was a charged silence, a room humming with the ghost of a conversation. He could still see the indentation on the leather sofa, smell the faint, green scent of her hair mixed with damp wool.
He poured the untouched chamomile tea down the sink. The liquid was already lukewarm. He watched it spiral away, a metaphor too obvious even for his current state of mind.
He moved through the sterile space, a giant in a glass cage. He picked up the throw blanket they’d shared, folded it with a precision that felt militant, and placed it back on the couch. The action was pointless. It didn’t erase the memory of her wrapped in it, of her feet tucked under his thigh.
For an hour, he existed in a suspended state. He showered, the water scalding his skin. He dressed in grey training gear. He stared at the framed photo on his dresser—the younger version of himself in that moment of exhausted, public joy. It felt like looking at a stranger. The hollow in his chest, a familiar cavity he’d learned to ignore, now felt freshly excavated. It ached with a physical sharpness.
He was in the kitchen, mechanically making an espresso he didn’t want, when his phone buzzed on the countertop. A text notification. Probably his manager. Or a teammate. He ignored it, listening to the machine’s violent gurgle.
It buzzed again. Then a third time, insistent.
With a sigh, he picked it up.
The screen showed a series of images from an unknown number that his phone had already saved as ‘Hadley - Florist’.
The first was a close-up of vibrant, rain-drenched purple dahlia blooms, beads of water clinging to the petals like diamonds. The second was a wider shot of the shop’s basement storage, a little chaotic, with puddles glittering on the concrete floor but the plants on their tables looking unharmed. The third was her.
She’d taken a selfie. Her hair was damp again, clinging to her temples in dark waves. A smudge of soil marked her cheek. She was smiling, not at the camera but at something just to the side, a laugh caught in her eyes and the crinkle of their corners. She looked effortlessly, infuriatingly alive.
The caption read: They survived. Did you?
He stared at the picture. At her face. The hollow in his chest didn’t fill; it just changed shape. The ache morphed into a different, more complicated strain. He leaned against the cold steel of the refrigerator, the phone warm in his hand.
He typed. Deleted. Typed again.
Eli: The tea was terrible.
Hadley: Told you. Child’s tea.
Eli: My physio is fired.
Hadley: Dramatic. It’s 7 AM. The shop’s a mess. I’m covered in mud and I think I just found a spider the size of a clementine.
Eli: Send a picture.
Hadley: Of the spider? You’re a sick man, Bedfield.
Eli: Of the mess. I don’t believe you.
A minute passed. He didn’t move, watching the three dots appear and disappear. Then, a photo loaded. It was the basement again, from a different angle. A shelf had partially collapsed, spilling bags of potting soil onto the floor in a soft brown mountain. A mop was laid over a bucket like a fallen soldier. In the corner of the frame, he could see the worn leather of her work boot, poised on the first step of the stairs.
It was mundane. It was a disaster. It was the most real thing he’d seen all week.
Eli: That’s a category two disaster at least.
Hadley: See? Told you. My kingdom is crumbling. Gotta go rebuild.
Eli: Wait.
He hesitated, his thumb hovering. The impulse was foreign, a muscle long atrophied. He fought against the voice that screamed it was a mistake, that this was the first step into a trap.
Eli: Do you need help?
Hadley: …?
Eli: With the shelf. The soil. I’m… I’m good at lifting things.
Hadley: Your training schedule doesn’t say ‘heavy lifting for florists.’
Eli: It’s my day off. It says ‘rest.’ This seems more productive.
Hadley: You’d get dirty.
Eli: Clothes wash.
There was a long pause. He imagined her downstairs, standing in the damp basement, phone in her muddy hand, deciphering him. He was deciphering himself. The offer hung in the digital space between them, fragile as a cobweb.
Hadley: The spider is still at large. Consider yourself warned.
Eli: I’ll risk it.
Hadley: Back door. It’s stuck. Kick the bottom left corner.
He didn’t allow himself to think. Thinking would stop him. He was out of his apartment, taking the stairs two at a time down to the ground floor, before the logic could catch up. He bypassed the elegant front entrance of ‘Petals & Clay’ and found the weathered blue service door in the alley.
He kicked the bottom left corner. The door shuddered and swung inwards with a groan.
The smell hit him first—damp earth, crushed greenery, the sweet decay of flowers past their prime. It was warm and thick. The light was a single bare bulb, casting long shadows from the shelves. And there she was, in the center of it, wrestling a heavy bag of soil back onto a repaired shelf. She grunted with the effort, her back to him.
“You came,” she said, without turning around. She heaved the bag into place and dusted her hands on her overalls. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were bright with challenge, and something else—amusement, maybe, at the sight of him in his pristine, designer athletic wear, standing in her kingdom of mud and chaos. “Ready to get dirty, superstar?”