Page 104 of Poetry of Flowers

He brushed my tears away with his thumb and put the necklace on for me.

“I guess that means you like it.”

“I love it!” I said and looked down at the necklace again. I didn’t remember the day of the funeral. My old therapist told me that we sometimes shoved traumatic events right in the back of our minds or repressed them completely as a coping mechanism. The fact that Kayden knew I wasn’t myself and saved it for the day I could appreciate the small flower meant the world to me.

“Thank you so much.” I pulled him into my arms, but he laughed because the cat looked so confused by my jerky movement.

“Oh, I’m sorry, little one,” I apologized, but the cat hopped off my lap and ran away from us towards a group of girls.

“I mean it. My heart is yours, Tillie, and you can decide what you want to do with it,” he told me so quietly, I was sure only I had heard it.

“I’m going to give it all the love it deserves.” I smiled at him before his lips came down on mine. He tasted like the coffee he just had, bitter with a hint of caramel.

* * *

After breakfast,Kayden took me to an old bookstore a few blocks away from the café. The atmosphere was mysterious, and it felt like we were time travelers as soon as we set foot in the store. The books weren’t sorted after genre or even stacked on bookshelves. They were simply everywhere.

“I feel like Alice in Wonderland,” Kayden said on the spiral staircase.

Here it felt as though we were characters in an old love story.

Usually, my head was full of ideas for poems where I could cry my heart out with ink on paper, but Kayden was my muse for love poems.

“That means you must be the rabbit that drags me to wonderland.” Chuckling, I pulled him behind a bookcase and buried my hands in his hair.

“This would be a great place to make out, a mysterious hideaway between books with the love of our lives,” I told him my thoughts, already knowing this would be a great little story for my poem and his song.

Kayden looked like he was trapped in his thoughts for a moment while I followed his chiseled cheekbones with my fingers. Then he said against my lips,

“Kissing her in a secret moment hidden between pages,

She touched my heart with her eyes of a dreamer,

She was a poet with her feelings drawn into words,

Kissing her felt like she was already writing about me.”

“It needs a bit more work,” he chuckled.

“May I help you two?” Kayden jumped at the voice, and a few books fell on us when I bumped into the bookshelf behind me.

The old man didn’t look impressed by what he had just witnessed, but he didn’t seem angry either. Kayden and I picked up the books and he laughed nervously.

“Yes, actually, I read online that this store had numerous old fairy tales. Do you have any nice editions ofRapunzel,by any chance?”

He had taken me there to look forRapunzel?

“We only have a copy ofGrimm’s Complete Fairy Tales, but it is one of the stories in the book.” The man explained and walked past us to a little case filled with classics.

“Our first time getting caught” Kayden whispered laughing in my ear before his face became serious again, and he followed the man. “Wow, it even has gilded edges. That’s fantastic. I’ll take it.”

The employee eyed him. “Sir, if you’re planning to read that book to your sibling, I wouldn’t recommend it, the Grimm stories are much more brutal than the Disney movies.”

“It’s a present for my girlfriend. I think she’ll enjoy the real story ofRapunzel,” he answered the old man nicely and looked at the prize on the back of the book. “Where can I pay?”

He called me his girlfriend.

I felt my cheeks getting hot and smiled.

---