Page 31 of Pansies

There was a long silence. It was like, Alfie thought, a Bermuda triangle of awkwardness. “What do you think?” he asked at last.

Fen opened his mouth, but then he closed it again, some of the frustration fading from his eyes, leaving them weary instead. He looked down at the flowers he was holding and then at the displays. “Irises.” And when this drew no response, he went on, “Thetall blue-purple ones with yellow tongues. I’ll do you a dozen of each, with some salal leaves. It’ll look…striking.”

The customer finally nodded. “Yeah, alreet.”

“Okay, good. Give me a moment.”

Fen gathered up a matching handful of irises and crossed over to the counter. While he was busy, Alfie and his new friend talked softly about women, the footie (which Alfie had honestly stopped following), and the weather. Safe, comfortable topics that no longer made Alfie feel either safe or comfortable. They’d just about run out of conversation when Fen was done.

The bouquet looked more than striking. It was spectacular. Simple and bold, and far beyond anything Alfie had imagined when he’d remembered his mum liked tulips. The man paid up hurriedly, dumping the money on the counter rather than passing it to Fen, and left without a thank-you.

Alfie felt oddly betrayed. “Ungrateful git.”

“You know tulips wilt like motherfuckers?” Fen’s voice was as flat as the customer’s coins. Touched by the bitter tang of old metal.4

“Serves him right then.”

They stood for a moment or two, surrounded by the hush of flowers.

“What are you doing here this time?” Fen asked at last. “Other than dazzling the locals with your sudden interest in floristry.”

He was standing with his hands braced, palm down, on the countertop. He looked just like Alfie remembered: thin and pale and angry, with his too bright eyes and his too bright hair. Not handsome, not pretty. And deeply, deeply sexy. Like the ungettable girl all the boys wanted. But not.

The truth was cowering pathetically in a corner of Alfie’s brain. But he tried it anyway. “I came to see you?”

“Oh?” Fen’s lips got even more thin and sneery. “You were just passing through, were you? From London.”

“I took a…sort of holiday.”

“I’m not a tourist attraction.”

There was another silence, longer than the last, and even more unpleasant.

“You’ve changed your glasses,” said Alfie suddenly.

“What?”

He had. They were thin, silver rectangles that made the angles of his face even sharper and his eyes all glittery.

“You’ve changed your glasses.”

Fen put a hand to the edges of the frames and pushed them up his nose. “Is this really what we’re talking about? Yes, I’ve changed my glasses. I own several pairs because I put them on my face and I’ve never understood why the thing you wear on your goddamn face would be the thing you never change. Now answer my fucking question.”

“I told you. I wanted to see you. I’ve thought a lot about—”

“Stop. Don’t. Please.” It was the least pleadingpleaseAlfie thought he’d ever heard.

“But—”

“What part of ‘I never want to see you again’ did you miss the first time round?”

“No, I got the message. What with the plant juice and everything. But I thought maybe when you weren’t so angry and I wasn’t such a dick…”

“What? That we’d overcome our indifferences and grow as people?”

This wasn’t going well. Probably it had been silly to hope otherwise. But there didn’t appear to be any buckets nearby, at least ones that weren’t full of fresh flowers, so it was alreadygoing better than last time. Which meant it was basically now or never.

He took a deep breath. “Honestly, Fen, I dunno. I just wanted to tell you I was sorry. And you were right, I didn’t understand. But I do now. So I’m proper sorry. For everything. The shit I did when we were kids, not recognising you, and then not getting it, chasing you down like a psycho—”

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