She first met him in the Harbour Street flower shop on a cold Christmas Eve. It was also the day she turned twenty-two. The boy looked younger, but not so young that Beth didn’t twist sideways in her chair to look twice. He was standing in the open doorway, kicking snow from his boots and digging in the right-hand pocket of his jeans for change. Beth watched him from the small office out back, the blood already pushing up her neck and spreading in her cheeks like wine.
He was perfect. He had skin like cream and long hair that was more golden than brown. He had marble-hard cheekbones and soft, kissable lips. Even the razor cut on his neck was beautiful to Beth. But it wasn’t until the boy had finished counting his coins at last and he took a slow, wide-eyed look at the exotic flowers all around him that she knew she was falling for him for sure.
He looked ready to turn and run, like he wouldn’t have come inside at all if he’d known he was going to be the only customer in such a fancy shop, and it took him a good few seconds to work up the nerve to close the door behind him and take his first wary steps inside. The trouble with the good-looking boys, Beth had found, was that they tended to know it, but this particular looker didn’t seem to be sure of very much at all, and she already loved him just a little for that.
The boy hadn’t seen her yet. He was browsing with his back to her now, looking at the vases of cut stems that lined the whole of one wall. Even if he turned around and looked right her way, though, Beth doubted he would spot her. There was no light on in the office, only the light spilling through from the shop, and the desk she was sitting at was in the shadows along the side wall. More than that, there was a heavy beaded curtain in the office doorway. Beth was sitting close enough to the curtain to have a view through the gaps between the beads, but from where the boy stood, thirty feet away in the glare of the shop, she was sure he would see nothing but darkness. She knew she’d have to move soon, of course, but she wasn’t going to ruin this thing just yet. Her face was hot from even thinking about walking out there and talking to him; if she went ahead and did it without a few minutes to steady herself first, she knew she’d turn crimson.
A lot of the flowers had already been sold, of course (this late in the day, and this close to Christmas), but the boy still took his time studying those that remained. And Beth watched his every move.
She watched him lean over to smell the carnations and the orchids and the blood-red roses, and she watched him recoil when he bent too close to the heady orange lilies. She watched him move from the yellow irises to the purple ones and back again, perhaps liking both but not knowing if they complemented each other or clashed, and she watched him run the backs of his fingers over the cocky birds of paradise, not quite touching them, like he was unsure if they were even real. Most of all, Beth watched the vivid red slash of the boy’s boxers riding out the top of his jeans whenever he bent down to read the price tags, and his angel-faced frown reflected in the mirrored wall in front of him whenever he stood up straight again. He was probably wondering if his small handful of coins would buy him any kind of bouquet in this shop, much less a halfway impressive one, but what he didn’t realise was that Beth was about to hold a cut-price sale. If he still couldn’t afford something he liked, she’d keep coming down until he could – anything to stop him leaving before she had the chance to get talking to him at the till.
“Snow’s coming down like it means it,” she would say as she took her time wrapping his flowers in gold paper and tying them with ribbon. “Got far to go?”
“Not far. Just to the car park by the lighthouse.”
Beth would nod and take another look at the worsening blizzard outside. The boy would look around, too.
“Too far in this weather, though,” he’d admit.
“I’ll probably wait here for it to blow through,” she’d say. “You’re welcome to wait with me. If you want.”
The boy wouldn’t quite be able to look at her then, but he’d be struggling not to smile.
“I’m Beth, by the way. Beth Cunningham.”
The boy would tell her his name and they’d shake hands, a little too formally. The awkwardness would make them laugh.
“There’s some wine out back if you’re any good with corkscrews,” Beth would say to him – or she might if she was feeling brave enough. But first she had to get out there.
It was way past five o’clock now. Outside, St. Stephen’s was just striking the hour, and the church clock had ran slow ever since Beth had first learned to tell the time in playschool. The boy wouldn’t keep browsing forever, and she’d been waiting too long for this moment to do nothing. And it was this, the thought of not being able to face her reflection when she brushed her teeth tonight, that made her sit up straight at last and pull in three deep breaths.
She knew her face was at least two shades of pink too deep still, but she hoped the boy would see beyond that. Besides, she told herself, a little colour suited her, and as she gripped the chair arms ready to push herself up, she was almost looking forward to catching that look in his eyes when he saw her for the very first time. She didn’t think he’d hate what he saw. Okay, so her looks weren’t nearly as striking as his, but she’d turned her share of heads in her time. More than her share. And she might have turned another one right then if the boy hadn’t killed her courage by moving first.
Beth dropped back into the chair and let out a silent scream. She tried to decide if she hated herself more for chickening out, or for feeling relieved that she had. Both, probably. But at least the boy wasn’t leaving, just heading for the other side of the shop. As he moved past the office doorway, Beth had to grip the front of the desk and slowly push herself backwards, balancing on the rear legs, to keep him in her sights. She guessed he wanted to check out the potted plants on the shelves against the far wall (a better choice, she thought, given his obviously limited funds), but he didn’t make it that far. Something else caught his attention.
She hadn’t noticed it before, but when Beth looked into the boy’s eyes and followed them up, she saw that the angel on top of the Christmas tree had slumped sideways and now looked only an inch away from falling from grace for good. It probably wouldn’t have worried her even if she had noticed. The boy couldn’t take his eyes off it, though, and Beth wasn’t surprised when he worked his legs into the lower tree branches and held up his right arm to test his reach. He had a good few inches on her, but even at six feet she thought he would struggle. The boy clearly had other ideas, though, because the next thing he did was check all around him to make double-sure he was alone. Beth almost overbalanced on the rear legs of her chair when he stared into the office for an eternal few seconds, but in the end he saw nothing. He maybe thought that whoever was in charge here had popped upstairs to the flat for a few minutes. Whatever he thought, he obviously decided it was worth the risk because he inched his legs even deeper into the branches and stood up on his tiptoes.
She had been wrong: he could reach – but only just. When he slipped his fingertips under the angel's skirt and straightened its legs, though, the angel didn’t stay straight. Nor did it after his second attempt. When he forced his way even deeper into the spruce branches, Beth held her breath. That a beautiful, vulnerable boy had walked into the flower shop tonight would have been enough; that he was also the kind of boy who went around straightening the angels on other people’s Christmas trees was more than she could take in right now, and as he reached up for the third time she bit her bottom lip and willed the angel to stay upright.
And it did stay!
For three seconds.
The boy had barely had time to step back when the angel slumped sideways again and fell altogether this time, turning cartwheels and bouncing off the baubles as it went and landing headfirst in his outstretched hands. A split-second later, the rear left leg of Beth’s chair snapped and she went down hard, leaving her stomach behind her and ending up sprawled on the office floor with her legs tangled up in the woodwork and her burning cheeks parting the beaded curtain.
“Hi,” she said.
The boy didn’t answer. Beth could do nothing but meet his stare. Neither of them breathed or even blinked for what felt like a minute or more. Then the boy remembered the upside-down angel in his hands. He opened his mouth to explain but no words came out. It was like she’d caught him trying to steal the angel – or worse, sneak a peek up its skirt – and before Beth could say a word, he placed the angel on the shop counter and hurried across the flagstones to the shelves of potted plants against the far wall, like that would be the end of the matter. Neither of them could have known this was just the beginning of their story.
