I STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CONVERSATION with Charlotte at the tapping sound on the glass of the front door. It was 7.45am. I ignored it and continued discussing today’s job list at Flowers for Fleur. The tapping sounded again, louder. I glanced over at the door at the dark-haired man with a sweeping curl over his forehead. It was Xander. He held up a piece of paper against the pane of glass.

Little pig, little pig,

Let me in!

I wrote on a piece of paper and held it up.

Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!

Open at 8.30am

He raised an eyebrow at me, then looked down to write again. He held it against the glass.

You have a beard?

I giggled and walked to the front door and unlocked it.

Xander stepped inside. He was the colour of baby blue today, reminding me of the awe and beauty of the blue tone of a winter frost that I loved. I inhaled his citrus scent with a hint of liquorice, vanilla and lavender, and felt an inner glow.

‘How do I leave a note for you if Gram’s bicycle isn’t outside?’ he asked.

My eyes widened, and my inner glow vanished. Gram’s bicycle. She was fanatical about it. The day wasn’t right unless her bicycle was on display out the front and there were flowers in the bicycle basket!

“This is our florist signature, Andi. It’s not Flowers for Fleur without flowers in the bicycle basket!”

She had said those words one hundred and one times. I had been so busy I had forgotten all about it. Slipping back into the role of the store manager was harder than I thought. There was so much to organise and do before the doors even opened.

I held up my finger to Xander. ‘Wait one moment.’ I rushed to the office and wheeled her bicycle through the store, out the front doors, and leaned it against the antique white storefront where it had been for the last fifty years.

I stepped back into the store and held my finger up once again. ‘One more moment.’ I hurried to the cold room and grabbed peonies in a rainbow of colours and took them to the work bench. I needed to prepare them for the bicycle basket.

Xander stood opposite me at the workbench. ‘Do you need help?’

I stopped and looked up at him. His words were so unexpected.

‘Okay ... can you go to the room by the back door and pour a bottle of water, please.’

‘Too easy,’ he said, and left for a moment, but his citrusy scent with a hint of liquorice, vanilla, lavender and ... sandalwood perhaps, remained.

I was binding the stems together with twine when he returned with the water.

‘Thanks.’ I poured the water into the custom-made glass vase and placed the flowers stems into it, then grabbed some brown paper to wrap around the flowers to present them with the flair of Flowers for Fleur.

‘Gram is unwell again,’ I said and lowered my head. I pulled my eyebrows together. ‘It is, so, not fair.’

‘I’m sorry to hear,’ Xander said. ‘If there is anything I can do—’

‘It’s incurable. There’s nothing the doctors can do, except try to manage the symptoms, which is hit and miss. It’s matter of elimination, trying to find what works. So far, no medication is effective.’ I pressed my lips into a hard line, then picked up the blooms and walked briskly through the store to place them into the bicycle basket.

Xander followed. ‘What’s her diagnosis?’ he asked.

‘Meniere’s disease.’ My breath shuddered, and I shook my head, my eyes burning.

Xander frowned. ‘That’s a vestibular disease, isn’t it?’

I looked up at him, surprised by his use of the word vestibular. ‘Yes. Have you heard of it?’

‘No. I’m just thinking of Dr Prosper Meniere, who studied diseases of the ear.’

‘Why would you know that, and I don’t’?’

‘Well ... you know ... I come from a family of doctors ... dinner table discussions and all.’ He shrugged.

I caressed the petal of a pink peony. It felt like a soft marshmallow. ‘Well, here are the flowers in the basket of the bicycle. You can put your note in there now.’ I looked up into his deep blue eyes and felt their pull on me. I held my breath as a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttered inside me, then breathed out the addictive feeling.

He kept his eyes connected to mine while he placed his note into the flowers. ‘Done.’

I moved my hand to the note without breaking our eye contact. ‘Delivered.’

‘But not read,’ he added, his eyes caressing mine.

‘Work before pleasure,’ I said.

‘My notes are a pleasure?’ He cocked an eyebrow at me.

‘Well ... not at first, but then, after a while, I looked forward to reading what you had written.’

He smiled at me. ‘I had no idea you were the one reading my letters at first. I thought Andi was a guy.’

‘Good.’

‘Good?’

‘Yes. If you had known I was female, your words would have been crafted differently, and your handwriting neater ...’

He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘True. And I would have entered the store to speak to you in person earlier.’

‘What? Because I’m a girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you could charm me?’

‘I tried that. It didn’t work. You laughed at me, remember?’

I grinned. I couldn’t help it. ‘Perfectly!’ I looked at my watch. ‘Gotta go. The flowers are calling.’

He pushed his fingers through his hair. ‘Talk to you later.’ And then he was gone, leaving a trail of his citrusy scent with a hint of liquorice, vanilla, lavender and sandalwood.

I opened his note while I walked back in to the store.

Dear Yolande,

Thank you for being my dance partner.

It means more to me than you know.

I’ll be here at 5pm to organise our dance schedule.

* Alexander

Tarrin, the town of “more”. I smiled and tucked the letter into my pocket and returned to Charlotte to go over her job list. We had a busy day ahead: me at the workbench of flower imagination, and Charlotte at the sales desk.

At 4.45pm Charlotte left, fifteen minutes before closing. I flitted around the store tidying while I could. I bee-lined to the sales desk when a well-dressed man entered the store. Hipster? Yes, definitely. And he was the colour of dark orange—deceit.

‘Flowers?’ I asked.

‘Two sets,’ he said, grinned and stroked his dark manicured beard.

‘Lovely. Who are they for, so I can tailor the flower bouquets accordingly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well ... it’s highly unlikely that you would want to give flowers of love and passion to your mother.’

‘Aye.’ He looked around the store, then leaned in closer and spoke with a quiet voice. ‘I have two girlfriends ... I’m trying to work out which one to ditch.’

I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘You know it will never work. If you stay with one, you’ll forever wonder if you should’ve chosen the other.’ 

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘And when they find out you’re dating another girl at the same time, you’ll lose both ...’

He hung his head.

‘So ... two bouquets to end your tangled web?’ I watched his face carefully.

He took a step back from the sales desk and pulled his eyebrows together while he put his hand over his heart. He looked at me like I had fired an arrow into his chest. He let his hand fall and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I think I have some serious thinking to do,’ he said.

‘You already knew that. I just had to verbalise it for you ... come back and see me for one bouquet of flowers when you know where your heart belongs,’ I said.

He pressed his lips into a hard line and nodded. ‘Sure.’ His eyebrows knitted together, and he looked up to the ceiling, then turned and left.

Sorry, not sorry. Better now than later when he is in deeper. Jealousy is an ugly emotion.

Xander almost bumped shoulders with the two-timing guy as they passed. He stopped before me. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘Nothing. He did it to himself ... you’re early.’

‘I know.’

‘I have work to do. We don’t close until five.’

‘Can I help?’

‘Then I’ll have to pay you.’

‘No need...’

‘No deal, Xander. You’ll slow me down.’

He put his hands up, palms outwards towards me. ‘I’ll wait then.’ He looked over at the café. ‘Join me at a table once you’re done.’

I looked over at the tables, most of them empty at this time of day, and tried to guess which table he would choose—one by the window, surely? ‘Okay. See you in ten.’

I got back to work, bringing flowers in from outside, Gram’s bicycle, serving the last of customers.

I looked over at Xander. He was sitting at the table in the centre of the café. The table where you could see everything and everyone in the store. He sipped on a hot drink while his eyes found mine every now and again, sending that curious heat flowing through me.

At 5pm I closed the store, checked that my scar was covered, then went and sat opposite him.

‘I could have done some of those jobs, you know.’

‘I didn’t want you to.’

‘Why?’

I didn’t want to tell him that I would feel like I owed him something. And I didn’t want to be in debt to anyone, physically or emotionally. ‘You don’t work here.’ That was a logical reply; one he couldn’t oppose.

Xander looked into my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I like stubborn.’

‘Stubborn is hard to like, especially when you’re trying to persuade.’

‘Apparently, flowers are persuasion ...’ he gave me a coy smile and my heart skipped a beat.

‘Touché!’

Xander lifted an eyebrow at me and opened his diary. ‘Friday and Saturday morning is my only time to practise our ballroom dancing this week.’

‘Friday morning? Don’t you work? After work suits me better after dealing with the rebellious blooms.’

‘I can’t do nights right now, and I have lectures and study to do in amongst other important things.’

‘Study? What are you learning about?’

‘Anatomy—the human body, and how to fix it when it goes wrong.’

Gram ... ‘Will Josh be jealous of me spending time with you?’

Xander straightened his back and frowned. ‘No.’

‘Is he why your dad thinks you’re gay?’

Xander ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. ‘Yes. That and something else that he despises.’

‘Being?’

‘I dance ... classical ... according to him, all male dancers are gay!’

‘But that’s not true! Little does your father know that most male dancers are more sure of their masculinity than other men.’

‘Yes. Thanks for sticking up for me.’

There was silence then. A static sticky silence.

‘Are you using me?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘To convince your father that you’re not gay, like you did at your mother’s birthday party?’

‘No!’ He looked up at the ceiling then back at me. ‘The truth is ... I need you as a dance partner. I want to enter the ballroom competition to prove that I’m not just a classical dancer. And, I want to dance with someone who’s not in my dancing fraternity.’

‘So are you—’

‘What?’

‘Prince Siegfried from Swan Lake?’ I held my breath.

He stilled, lowered his head and looked up at me through his eyelashes. ‘Yes.’ He lifted his chin higher and kept eye contact with me.

I smiled, and it grew wider as I replayed his grace on the stage. ‘Ballet perfection. I couldn’t fault you on any technicalities when you danced. Plus, the emotion you put into your character to make him real. You were magnificent!’

He flipped the pen from end to end in his fingers. ‘Thanks.’

‘When did you start dance classes?’

‘When I was six. My father hated it.’

‘And yet you continued.’

‘My mother was my biggest supporter, and still is. My father likes to pretend his son is not a dancer.’

Now it made sense why his sisters seemed to protect him and fuss over him at his mother’s birthday celebration.

‘Sorry, not sorry.’

‘Huh?’

‘I’m sorry about your father, but I’m not sorry about your dancing.’

Xander took a deep breath. ‘Let’s get back to our dance schedule. Now you know why I have limited time, with all the dance preparation and rehearsals. Can you do Friday and Saturday morning?’

‘No and yes.’

He looked at me and shook his head. ‘You need to try harder than that ...’

‘For how long?’

‘Three hours.’

‘I’ll see if I can get Charlotte to cover Friday morning for me.’

‘Good.’ Xander looked down and wrote in his diary.

‘You’re welcome, Prince Siegfried.’

He looked up at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t go all gooey on me because I play a prince.’ He shook his head.

‘I’m not. I’m just surprised.’

‘Good. I don’t like it when girls go all la-la on me.’

‘La-la?’

‘Yeah - you know - dreamy eyes and I love you and all that, like I have a magic love potion I sprinkle over them.’

‘Don’t worry. I don’t do gooey la-la over guys.’

‘Good,’ he said, but his eyes told me a different story.

‘I’ll let you know if I can make it on Friday morning.’

‘Give me your phone,’ he said and held out his hand.

I gave it to him and he added his number to my contacts then handed it back to me. ‘Oh, and aaahhh ... no work boots.’

I smiled at him and raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ll see.’

He put his shoe over my work boot under the table. ‘See you 7am, Friday morning at the community hall up the road. I’ll be waiting for you.’ He stood and turned to walk out.

‘Not if I’m there first!’

He stopped and turned to face me. ‘Is that a challenge, Yolande?’

‘Maybe, Alexander ...’

He smiled crookedly at me, turned and left.

I watched him take confident strides, his feet slightly turned out, but not in the classical walk that would be ingrained from years of dancing. He was probably trying to walk like a normal person, which he would never be. He was almost too perfect.

What was his weakness? His flaw? What secrets did he have? If there was one thing I knew about perfection, it’s usually the result of hiding something you didn’t want others to see. I should know. I lived it every day of my life, since I let go of Mia’s hand ...