Wallflower Blush
My fingers are almost numb as I settle the last flower into the display in the window of Green Arrangements.
The shop is small, consisting as it does of a single open space crammed end to end with bouquets and other small decorative plants. Most of them aren’t the kind of thing you’d actually plant. They’re the sort of thing you’d buy after accidentally making your partner angry for one reason or another, or maybe because you need something for a graduation gift, or another special occasion.
Honestly, I would prefer to work in a garden section of a grocery store or something like that, but none of the places around here have that kind of permanent staff. Everyone is expected to do everything, and the kind of interaction I’d have to have to everyone at all times just…
I’m not there yet.
I say ‘yet’ as if I’ll ever be there.
Sunset thinks I will, but I’m not so sure. Everything comes so easy to her, or at least it feels that way.
Maybe I’m being unfair.
“Wallflower?”
I look up from the arrangement over to the register where Hope Lily is smiling awkwardly over at me.
“Mhm?” I mumble, trying to resist the urge to duck my head and cover my face with my hair like I always do.
My therapist, Bright Eyes, says it’s an ‘avoidant habit’. A way of trying to evade conflict and shut out the world. According to him, that’s bad, so I’ve been trying not to do it as much.
“The till is counted down and the floor is clean,” Lily says with a quiet smile. “You can take off once you’re done with the windows and I’ll lock up.”
I like Lily. I only work here one day a week, and it’s always the Friday closing shift with Lily, but we get along okay for whatever that means for someone like me. She doesn’t try to talk to me too much and seems to understand how anxious I get. She takes care of most of the customer service, while I handle all the arranging and backroom tasks.
We make an okay team, I think.
“Thanks,” I say, bobbing my head a little dully as I glance back at the windows.
I’ve been done for almost half an hour, but I wasn’t really sure how to say it without sounding like I was trying to hurry her up.
“I’ll just go then,” I say after a moment. I try not to wince at how painfully awkward my words sound. “Uhm, have a good night, Lily.”
“You too, Wallflower,” she says.
I head to the back to grab my pack and jacket, change out of my smock, and clock out before going to the rear door and letting myself out into the squidgy alley that runs adjacent to the shop, and that always smells vaguely of rotten fertilizer.
Green Arrangements is crammed between a laundromat near the East End, and an old arcade that shut down almost ten years ago. I get a little sad every time I look at it. My anxiety would never have let me go in there with as many people probably clumped together in that place during its heyday, but it would’ve been nice to see all the lights and the people having fun.
It’s a half-hour to walk to my apartment. I’ve been living in it for better than a year and a half now since I settled there with Sunset’s help. I don’t know if I exactly like living there, but it’s better than living on the streets or hopping from shelter to shelter.
If I didn’t have that place, I would probably be dead now.
I shake my head to clear that thought out of my mind. I’m supposed to be trying not to think about that so much, but it’s hard sometimes. It’s not even because there’s something bad happening in my life. Objectively speaking, today was pretty okay, but the thoughts still come in sometimes.
Intrusive thoughts, Bright Eyes calls them. They intrude and stick around, like a bad houseguest.
I shiver and wrinkle my nose as I reach my apartment building and brace myself for the long, winding walk up the stairs to the fourth floor. The elevator is under construction and has been since I started living here. It’ll probably still be under construction when the sun goes out.
At the end of time, when the world is just a dark, frozen chunk of coal spinning through the void of space, I like to think that the last vestige of humanity will be that stupid elevator with its permanent bandage-wrap of caution tape and cheap red-and-white ‘under construction’ sign.
The walk here was longer than the walk up the stairs, but somehow it makes my legs hurt more, and by the time I finally get to my apartment and fit the key to the rusty lock it’s half-past nine and all I want to do is go to sleep.
It’s cold in here. The heater works, but not very well, and it goes out intermittently. It’s out right now, but I have a few extra blankets. Sunset got them for me about six months ago. She was afraid I’d be cold in the winter.
That thought makes me smile as I close the door, and I lift my hand to my heart as the smile warms me a little.
I love her so much that it hurts sometimes, and unlike all the other little hurts my heart gives me, this one isn’t so bad.
It hurts, but it’s a good pain.
My apartment has a tiny kitchenette, and I move some leftover mac and cheese from my fridge into the microwave to reheat while I head into the bathroom to wash up a little. I don’t change yet, though. My work clothes are warmer than my pajamas, so I keep them on for now.
Ding goes the microwave. It’s a weak, tinny noise, but it means my food is done for whatever that's worth. Food all kind of tastes the same on nights like this.
I come out and fetch my ‘dinner’, and take it over to the small table. It’s not a bad table. It’s a sturdy piece that Applejack’s brother made me a year after I moved in as a gift, and the chair is a beat-up old recliner that’s surprisingly comfortable.
I got it for free off someone who was moving out of here months ago and when I brought it back to my apartment I’d thought it was a mottled brown-grey. Turns out it’s actually red, and I just had to clean off a lot of cat hair before I could use it.
At least it’s comfortable, though.
I’m tired and feeling worn, and I’m about three quarters through my mac when the noise starts and my soul slowly exits my body out of frustration.
My neighbor likes to party.
I… I do not like to party.
The walls in this place are thin and bad, and the insulation is worse, but it’s bearable. At least it’s bearable when my neighbor isn’t blasting his subwoofer at almost-ten-at-night when I just want to sleep.
The fork I’ve been using clatters to rest in the bowl. My appetite is gone, but I take a deep breath, swallow, then shovel the rest of it into my craw anyway before swallowing again and taking the bowl to the sink.
As I run water over the dirtied bowl, the sound of bass and thumping music, and the slowly increasing volume of voices, batters against my skull like tidal waves against cracking shoreline rocks.
I’m not going to sleep anytime soon.
I crank the water off, turn, and grab my jacket. Socks go back on, then shoes, then one hoodie, then another, and I pull both over my head as I grab my keys and phone, hit the lights, and beat a hasty retreat from my own apartment and the noise chewing on the air around me.
The stairs are more bearable going down, but my legs still hurt, and it’s getting colder. I don’t care, I just have to get out of here. I can’t listen to the noise, and I definitely can’t listen to the people. There are already too many people there and I know from bitter experience that more will be showing up soon, and I don’t think I can do that.
I think if I’m still here when they all get here I might do something stupid.
So I run.
Like always.
The city of Canterlot isn’t what I’d call welcoming. It’s a cold, sleepy city that stirs just enough to swat at you with its icy winds and bitter smells before going back to ignoring you while you die of starvation or exposure. At least, that’s the part I’m familiar with. The ritzy parts are probably nicer, although I wouldn’t know first-hand.
Tugging my hoodies more snugly around myself, and pulling the hoods tighter, I lower my head as I start walking.
I’m not walking anywhere in particular, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up right back here in a few hours, but this is just the kind of night I’m having.
Sunset would probably hate that I’m out here. She worries about me a lot, and she knows that I sometimes ramble around Canterlot at night when I’m having a hard time. She always says, ‘call me’, but every time I even think about it I just… don’t.
It’s stupid. My problem is objectively stupid.
It’s just a bunch of people having a party on a Friday night. If I were a normal twenty-something and just got off of work I would probably be doing the same thing! I can’t just get mad at people for doing normal stuff just because I’m too broken to do it too!
It’s stupid.
I’m not going to bother Sunset with something that stupid.
I love her too much for that so, instead, I shiver and keep walking.
For two straight hours, I walk, watching the passing glimmers of the lights of Canterlot, which never really go out, even in the poorly kept Commons and poorer kept East End. I’m not out there anymore, thankfully, but at least there’s light and plenty of cars going to and fro.
I’m not alone.
Not yet, anyway.
I slip my hand into my pocket, pull out my phone, and tap the screen to wake it up. My lock screen is Sunset and I. In it, I look happy, I think. Sunset definitely looks happy. Her smile is infectious, and it’s a lot easier to feel happy around her.
It’s a new one, kind of.
We went out to the Canterlot Botanical Gardens again. We go there a lot. It’s kind of like ‘our place’ ever since we had our disaster of a first date there during the Canterlot High School Senior Prom. That night could have gone better, but considering I ended the night as Sunset’s girlfriend I think it’s safe to say it could have gone significantly worse.
I smile a little as I run a thumb over her face. She’s grinning ear to ear and hugging me tight against her, and for a moment I imagine I can feel her warmth.
At that same moment, I want to call her.
I know she’d answer. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ended up calling her after a night of walking around in the cold, and it probably won’t be the last. I always feel bad because I always wake her up, because it’s always in the middle of stupid’o’clock at night-stroke-morning, and yet she always, always picks up the phone.
Every single time.
Because it’s me.
Because she loves me.
Even now, after being with her for so long and waiting for her to get tired of me, or lose patience with me, or just fall for another girl who’s actually worth her time, she still loves me. I don’t think I deserve it, and I know that I don’t deserve her, but she says she loves me so…
So I do my best.
I lower my phone and keep walking.
A cold drop of water strikes my nose without warning, and I squint at the droplet before feeling a shiver go down my spine as the smell of rainwater hits me hard.
“Oh n—”
The words don’t even finish before the sky rumbles and a torrent of rain like God upending his washbasin drops over the whole stupid city. I start running and dodging between awnings, trying and failing to stay out of the torrential downpour.
Seeking shelter wherever I can is second nature to me now, and it’s an old habit from when I still lived on the streets. The weather in Canterlot is a brutal thing, so you had to be ready.
I spend the next miserable hour and a half scampering between dry spaces, for an extremely generous definition of the term ‘dry’, before I finally collapse in the inner vestibule of a building, shivering like a drenched kitten. The rain won’t stop, and I kind of just want to cry about it, but all that would do is make me even more damp and miserable.
Slowly, I put my hand back in my pocket and pull out my wallet this time. With as much care as I can, I dry off my hands, reach inside, and pull out one of my few treasures.
It’s a picture.
In it, Sunset is holding me, and she’s smiling that brash, beautiful smile of hers when she knows she’s winning. She’s dressed to the nines and, surprisingly, so am I, and I’m smiling too if a little more nervously.
Prom, and the night Sunset told me she loved me for the very first time.
The first day of my life.
Fine.
I sag against the wall as I tuck away the picture, put my wallet away, and grab my phone. I bring up the contacts, which are dismally few, and as I bring up Sunset’s name I look around at the building to try and orient myself so I can tell her where I am.
My breath catches in my throat as I read the building name stenciled on the glass doors and realise where that actually is.
Commonplace Apartments.
Sunset’s Apartment building.
Somehow, in my panic and instinctive rush, I’d managed to run all the way here. I’d sought out shelter from the storm and, like always, I ended up right on Sunset’s doorstep.
I can’t help it. I start to laugh. It’s a low, soft, crackling noise, and if there were anyone around to hear it they would probably be concerned.
I always end up here.
Screw it.
I dial Sunset’s number and hold the phone up to my ear. It doesn’t even finish the first ring before the call connects and as it does I turn to the keypad to the side of the door and punch in the code Sunset gave me months ago to get in, in case I needed to.
//M’llo?// Sunset’s sleep-clenched voice comes through the phone, and I wince.
I’d woken her up again.
“Sorry,” I say softly.
//No, no, Wallie, it’s fine// Her voice is getting clearer, but it’s still a mumble. //Where are you?//
“I uh, I’m downstairs,” I say, shuffling awkwardly into the lobby before bumping the door shut.
//Downstairs… of my apartment?// Sunset asks, her voice coloured with confusion.
“Yeah.”
I hear her take a deep breath, then… //You remember the entry code, right?//
“Mhm.”
//And the key?//
“Y-Yeah.”
Another deep breath sounds and I have to fight down the panic in my heart. Tonight is the night. Tonight is when she loses patience with me.
I can feel it.
//It’s okay. Come on up, alright?//
I don’t trust myself to say something that isn’t a sob, so I just mumble an agreement and turn to the elevator to call it, and while the old beast slowly rouses and grinds toward the lobby floor, I pray that I’ll still be the one Sunset loves after tonight.
As unlikely as it seems.
But I can hope… and I can trust.
Maybe tonight won’t be so bad.