Page 44 of Drop Dead Gorgeous
“No.”
I blink.
She shakes her head gently.
“I don't want to know.”
“You're sure?”
A small smile returns to her face, sad but unmistakably genuine.
“I still have flowers to plant.”
Something inside me gives way.
She squeezes my hand.
“Does it ever get easier?”
I don't need to ask what she means.
“No.”
Just one word.
One honest word carrying centuries of loneliness.
She watches me for a long moment before speaking again.
“That sounds terribly lonely.”
No one has ever pitied me for what I carry.
Not kings.
Not saints.
Not poets.
Only the florist.
“I didn't want to be,” I whisper, and I mean everything at once.
The Reaper.
The lonely man sitting in her flower shop.
The fool who almost walked away from the only happiness he'd ever been offered.
“Then don't.”
For one impossible, beautiful moment...
I believe she might actually mean it.
The coffee has gone cold between us.
Neither of us notices.
