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Hmm.
“Or a dozen cupcakes with frosting to look like flowers,” Lina suggested.
I sighed. “I don’t know. I want to give him something with significance. Not necessarily grand or expensive. Something small and meaningful.”
“A picture in a frame,” Lina said. “Of a flower that tells him how you feel. Make it a series of different flowers, but hand drawn and in matching frames.”
I thought about it, then considered it some more. “I like that idea. That could totally work.” Then I thought about it a little longer and gave Lina my best sad puppy dog eyes. “Where do I begin to look for that?”
Lina sighed. “You let me look for it, that’s what you do.”
I grabbed her hand. “I will be eternally thankful.”
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “I dunno about eternally grateful, but what you can be is fulfilling my orders this morning.”
“Deal. Maybe a list of three or four collections and I’ll veto, of course.”
Now she stared. “Why do I feel like I was coerced into this?”
“Because you were,” Robbie said flatly. He put a bunch of daffodils into a holder. “And you, Keats. Wanting something with a significant meaning but making someone else buy it. For shame.”
I gestured to myself. “Would you trust me to pick out anything? We went to IKEA and I bought a dinosaur ladle and a penguin egg cooker.”
Robbie blinked, then pursed his lips at Lina. “Google watercolour prints at the Blue Door Gallery in Paddington. They have an array of painted antique cards.” Then he side-eyed me as he slotted another bunch of daffodils into the holder. “You’re welcome.”
I took Lina’s clipboard and began her orders. I found myself looking for a chance to catch Robbie alone. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“You and Tan. You’ve been together for years, right?” He nodded. “When did you know? That he was... that you were in it for the long haul?”
He put the last of the tulips in their holders, turned to me, and smiled. “Day one. Before I even met him. It was a party, and I saw him come into the bar with his friends. Now, he will tell you a different story. He will tell you I played hard to get and that I wasn’t interested, but I can tell you right now, I knew he was the one for me before I’d even met him.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“You never told me that.”
“Because it was foolish and we never got together that night. I mean, we got together,” he said, his eyes wide. “If you know what I mean. But the next morning we went our separate ways, as we’ve all done. And we ran into each other a few days later, and the weekend after that. Some might call that fate. Well, Tan would call it fate. Others, being me, might call that asking around, finding out where he hung out and where he worked, and putting myself in his path.”
“So you stalked him?”
“No. I just heard in certain circles about places he may or may not have frequented, and I found myself locationally curious.”
I laughed. “Right.”
He rolled his eyes. “Then we played the coy game, not interested but really so very interested, and he told me if I was serious, I had to take him out on a proper date. And the rest is history. We’ve been together almost six years. That’s forever in gay years. Like dog years but for gays.”
I sighed happily. “I... I really do like Linden. I really do think it could be serious.”
“And the condom breakage?” he whispered.
I groaned. “Yeah, not ideal. But it was also a bit of a wake-up call. We were so busy being all new and shiny that we’d skipped the serious, non-shiny stuff, ya know?”
He nodded. “It’s easy to do.”
“It made us talk it all out, and we’re good. We’re going to deal with it together.”
“Keats,” Lina called out from the service counter. “They have all kinds. Which kinds of flower paintings are you after?”
