Chapter Text
13 orders.
No, scratch that. 13 massive flower arrangements stared back at Rio from a haphazardly scribbled piece of notebook paper on her counter. Mother’s day was the bane of her existence.
Her flower shop was always busy and overrun by, primarily, men that were scrambling at the last minute to buy a gift for their mother or their wife. Women tended to place orders well in advance, which she was always extensively grateful for. Every year it never failed though; most people didn’t allow her enough time to actually accommodate the task.
Still, without failure, Rio would churn out beautiful arrangements with care and precision. Nobody could say that her work was sloppy or that they weren’t satisfied. Rio was proud of every one of her pieces.
Like a well oiled machine, Rio would meticulously select the flowers in the arrangements with the intended recipient in mind. She would carefully write a thoughtful card and add the name of whomever placed the order, making sure the card felt warm and personal. All of this would be completed on time, ready for pickup, by the time the person came to collect it. Some days really wore her out though; days like today. It felt more soul-sucking and draining than the usual cheerfulness that she felt when she worked.
She should really start throwing on an extra service fee for single handedly saving half the relationships in Westview with all the flowers she had provided over the years. If someone had told her that most of her career as a florist would be less about gardening and more about finding ways to menially converse with people that only viewed flowers as a commodity, she might have actually used her degree in botany elsewhere.
She knew she could always fall back on if she wanted to change career paths; maybe go into some sort of bioengineering position. However, there was just something special about the joy that came from watching someone’s face light up when they received the perfect bouquet. She would never get tired of it; those moments always made up for the bad ones, and there certainly were plenty of bad ones.
With a sigh, Rio got out the dedication cards, placed them on the table, and grabbed her ink pen. Luckily most of these orders could simply be written to ‘Mom’, saving her a little bit of time. It was easy to transcribe requested messages, but most of these orders, unfortunately for Rio, requested personalized messages and left it up to the shop owner's discretion. Because of course they did.
Rio muttered under her breath as she wrote the cards, “Dear Mom, please don’t ask me about what I wrote on this card later.”
With a quick scrawl of her pen, Rio looked down at what she had written: Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I couldn’t have asked for a better mother. I love and appreciate you always. Love, Stephen.
The others were much along the same lines, simply adjusting some of the wording here and there to match the intent of the recipient to the best of her ability. With the cards done, she could now begin the task of assembling the arrangements. It was a grueling amount of work, but at least this part was fun for her.
She was only 4 orders in when she heard the bell above the shop door chime, bringing her work to a momentary halt. No, not another one!
With a sigh, she begrudgingly put on a customer service smile and turned around. 14 orders, “Hi, welcome to Green Witch Gardens. How can I help-”
Rio cut herself off when she didn’t actually see a customer in her shop. Strange, the bell had definitely chimed.
“Down here.” A small voice came from just below her counter, forcing her to look over. A small boy with brown hair stared up at her with a bright bucked-tooth smile. Rio crossed her arms and smiled back at the boy.
“Well, hello. Didn’t see you there. Can I help you with something?” The boy looked around almost shyly. It didn’t seem like he was looking at the flowers in the shop, but rather the shop front windows. Was he looking for someone?
“Can you help me find a flower for my mom?” He said.
Moments like this is what Rio lived for. Children always had the purest of intentions. This wasn’t an afterthought or a gift due to some capitalistic holiday; this was a boy that just wanted to make his mother happy.
“Sure, kid, let’s take a look. You can tell me what your mom likes.” Rio walked around the service counter and beckoned for the boy to follow her. They went down the rows of flowers, Rio explaining each one as they passed. “So, we have your typical roses, tulips, sunflowers, lilies…any of these look good?”
“Well, my mom really likes purple.”
Rio smirked. Of course she does. Statistically, 23% of women preferred the color purple, preceded only by the color blue. Still, this gave her options. Rio led the boy to a section of the store that had some of her personal favorites. Flowers that she would give just a little bit more attention because she enjoyed them, or they were incredibly difficult to care for. She loved a challenge.
This section of the store was quieter. It muffled the sounds from outside and created a serene, almost tranquil feeling. Rio took in all of her beauties. Orchids, Dahlias, Venus fly traps, Asters. Her eyes scanned the store looking for the perfect thing for the boy’s mother. When she looked back to address him, she noticed he had strayed a bit. His small hands reached over one of the tables, trying to grasp one of the potted plants in the back. She swiftly reached him and gently grabbed his wrist. “Not those.”
“But-”
“They’re not safe.” Rio’s voice, normally soft and warm when speaking with children, left no room for discussion. He had almost grabbed Foxglove, which, while safe to touch, wasn’t something she wanted him getting involved with. I really need to get a sign for those.
It wasn’t that she needed to carry these types of plants, she certainly wasn’t looking for a lawsuit if people mistook them for harmless ones, but she did service a certain clientele that paid handsomely for deadly specimens and she was qualified to grow them. There was a certain level of fascination with them she couldn’t quite shake, a morbid curiosity. The thrill of working with such volatile plants brought her an adrenaline rush that made her feel alive like nothing else quite had. Her current fixation was Deadly Nightshade.
Turning back to the task at hand, Rio steered him over to a section of the shop full of purple flowers. “Here we go! I think these are more what you’re looking for.”
Purple flowers were a dime a dozen, but all so vastly different. Rio wondered which ones the boy would be most interested in.
“So we’ve got violets, lavender, petunias, pansies, and lilacs.” She carefully pointed to each one as she named it. He looked at them, clearly a bit overwhelmed. He would go to reach for one, but then would retract his hand, as if unsure.
“How do I know which ones she would like?”
Rio had no idea what the woman would want. She knew what most women liked, but each person had different tastes. Instead, she focused on trying to pinpoint the message he wanted to convey. “Well, all flowers are beautiful, but what are you wanting to say to her?”
“What do you mean?” Rio watched as his nose scrunched up a little and his brows furrowed in confusion. His expressions were the cutest .Rio couldn’t help the smile that creeped onto her face.
It took Rio some time to figure out how to explain to a small child that flowers could be exchanged as a poetic way of demonstrating deep symbolic meaning, emotions, or forms of non-spoken self expression without sounding silly or losing him entirely. She decided the best approach was just the simplest one. “Most people think flowers are just nice gifts, but flowers used to be given as a way to say how you felt without needing to actually say it with words.”
“Really? What do these say?” Nicky pointed to the lavender.
“That’s lavender. Lavender means you’re trying to say that you think a person is calm, graceful, serene-”
“No.”
Not anticipating the disruption, Rio was a bit startled at the abrupt response. “No?”
“My mom is definitely not those things.”
Rio barely managed to stifle the laughter that threatened to escape her. She bit her bottom lip to contain it, but it didn’t stop the large smile that broke out on her face. With a light chuckle, she tried another approach. “It doesn’t have to always mean that you think a person is those things. Sometimes you can give them as a way to say you wish people had those things.”
The boy just scrunched his face up again and gave a firm shake of his head. Rio raised her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, fair enough. No lavender. Pick another.”
After looking back at the selection in front of him, the boy settled on another flower. “Those?”
Ah, now these were especially interesting. Rio loved when she got to talk about them. “Those are violets. They have a complex history with their meaning, but to keep it short, they mean modesty, faithfulness, and everlasting love.”
“What’s complex about it?
Rio let out a long sigh. Children and their idle curiosities. There wasn’t exactly a proper way to say ‘women gave or wore them as a way to identify themselves as sapphics amongst each other as a way to avoid being discovered.’ Rio slipped her hands into her apron pockets, the thumbs hooked on just the outer rim as she leaned against one of the plant tables. “Uh, it’s a long story, but in the 19th century, there was a connection drawn between violets and Sappho-”
“What’s a sap ho?”
“You know what,” Rio stood up straight and quickly waved him off, “ not the violets...also never say that again.” The last thing she needed was a parent cursing her out.
Before she could go into explaining what the others meant, the bell above her shop chimed again and the door slammed a bit more aggressively on its hinges.
“Nicky!? Are you in here?” The voice of a woman carried across the shop. The boy looked a little startled, but it was quickly replaced by a guilty expression.
“I’m over here, Mama.” His voice was softer, lacking the exuberance it had when he first came into the shop.
As the woman turned the corner, Rio was able to get a good look at her. Though her voice carried such power and authority, her features were what was really striking. Sharp, defined, sexy . This woman could demand the attention of an entire room with just one look, and bring them to their knees with another. Rio took a moment to admire her. Her mouth felt dry when swallowed and the greenhouse suddenly seemed much muggier than usual. Rio rubbed her palms against her apron.
“What did I say about leaving my sight?” The woman crossed her arms in front of Nicky. He fiddled with the hem of his shirt nervously, considering how to respond.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to get you a flower for mother’s day. Flowers make you happy.”
Despite her initial harshness, her eyes softened and the tension left her body now that she could see her child was unharmed. “That doesn’t matter. You know how I feel about you straying from my side.”
She cupped his cheek and ran her thumb across it, her eyes looking a bit distant, almost…sad. Rio couldn’t quite tell what was running through the other woman’s mind. She added, “Go wait by the door.”
Her voice carried an air of finality. Nicky knew better than to question his mother when she was like this. With a final look back at Rio, he gave a small wave and walked towards the exit to wait for her. The woman turned her gaze back on Rio. Gone was any hint of softness that had been given to Nicky, replaced instead by a look that was downright lethal.
“Now, as for you. Did it even occur to you that a child shouldn’t be unaccompanied or are you also lacking in common sense? He’s six, what’s your excuse?” The woman took two steps closer to Rio. Her voice was low and steady. Rio had to fight every urge in her body to not take a step back. She couldn’t let this woman get the best of her.
“He’s fine, isn’t he? If something was wrong, I would have contacted the authorities. I can assure you, he was in perfectly safe hands.”
The woman’s eyes slid over to the section of the shop that hosted the deadly plants before slowly shifting back to look at Rio. “Right.”
Her face flushed the slightest shade of pink, once again mentally kicking herself for having those so readily out in the open. She needed to move away from this topic. “Well, you know, Mother’s Day is one of the busiest days for florists. The least you can do is give me your name.”
“I think the least I can do is overlook your incompetence…. Rio .” The woman smirked as she read her name tag. Agatha flicked it gently with her finger to enunciate the point.
Fuck, why is she so hot?
“Her name’s Agatha!” Came Nicky’s cheerful voice from the front of the shop. Agatha sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, leaving Rio to grin as she finally had some footing in the conversation.
“Agatha, huh? It’s a little dated, but I’ve always appreciated a good vintage.”
Agatha raised an eyebrow at Rio’s attempts at flirting. “Honey, you couldn’t afford my vintage.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t have to.” Her voice was slightly lower, huskier than it was moments prior.
Agatha pursed her lips, her eyes lingering a bit longer as she looked her up and down. Rio thought she could detect the faintest hint of a smile forming at the corner of her lips, but it was gone before she could think too much on it. For a moment, Rio thought the other woman would rise to the occasion, but she quickly turned on her heel, her coat swooshing dramatically. She made a beeline for the door. “We’re going, Nicky.”
Nicky seemed a bit surprised by this development. Rio had desperately hoped Agatha would stay and chat just a bit longer. It was one of the more engaging conversations she’d had in a minute and she couldn’t help but admit she found the woman incredibly attractive. Nicky also was a delight. He actually took an interest in the flowers she kept in the shop, which is more than she could say for most of the people that came through her shop doors. Still, Agatha was persistent. Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she exited the shop.
Nicky hesitated. “Sorry about the flowers, Miss Rio. I didn’t mean to cause problems.”
Rio shook her head and held up a single finger. “Don’t go just yet, give me a second.”
Rio disappeared into the back and returned carrying a small flower pot. She knelt down to Nicky’s eye level and placed the clay pot in his hand. After making sure he had a firm hold of it, Rio covered his hands with hers. He looked at her questioningly.
“These are azaleas. I think your mom will really like these. You see, they’re-”
“Purple!”
Rio chuckled. “Yes, they are purple, but they also symbolize beauty, resilience, and renewal. Purple ones specifically represent mystery, magic, and enchantment. Now, are you paying attention? This is important.”
Nicky nodded.
“Good, these flowers are a bit…high maintenance. They need direct sunlight in the morning and plenty of shade at night. You must water them once a day so that they’ll thrive and you absolutely need to prune them to keep them healthy. Got it?”
“Uh huh!” Nicky smiled that bucked-tooth smile again and pulled the potted plant closer to him. Balancing the pot in one hand, he used his free one to reach into his pocket. A second later, he pulled out a crumpled up dollar bill and held it out to Rio.
“Is this enough?”
Rio’s heart nearly melted. With her own hand, she closed Nicky’s fist back around the money and gave it a gentle pat. “It’s on the house, kid.”
Rio stood back up and placed a hand on Nicky’s upper back as she navigated him towards the shop door. Agatha was standing just outside, looking perturbed as ever, staring down at the expensive looking wrist watch she was wearing. As they came outside, Agatha’s eyes were immediately drawn to the flowers in Nicky’s hand before shifting back up to meet Rio’s.
Rio felt that sensation once more; the one that made her stomach feel like it was in knots and her palms were suddenly sweaty. She licked her lips nervously, trying to soothe some of the chapped dryness that seemed to have manifested in the two seconds it took for her to come under the scrutiny of Agatha’s unwavering gaze. Agatha noticed, of course, as her lingering stare lasted for just a bit too long. Her lips quirked up into a smirk and Rio immediately knew she was totally screwed.
“I’m not paying for those.”
Before she could come up with a witty response, Nicky interjected, “Rio said they’re on the house!”
“Oh , did she now?” Agatha looked far too pleased with herself; the grin on her face would put the Cheshire Cat to shame.
Rio looked away from her quickly. Instead, she busied herself by nonchalantly digging a piece of dirt out from under her nail. “Cute kid discount, that’s all. Don’t read too much into it.” Rio winked at Nicky. He laughed quietly, trying to make sure his mother didn’t hear.
“Anyone ever tell you that’s not how you run a successful business?”
Rio shrugged, not to be deterred. “Not broke yet.”
“ Yet. ”
There was a slight tension as the two women looked at each other. The air crackled with an unspoken understanding.
“Well, this has been just titillating, hun, but we really must be going.” Agatha gave a gentle tug on Nicky’s hand.
“Bye, Miss Rio! Thanks for the flowers!”
Rio watched as the pair walked down the street. Nicky looked happy carrying the flowers he had obtained for his mother, while Agatha looked a bit lost in thought. Rio wondered if she’d see the pair again. Sometimes she got repeat customers, but it wasn’t often. She felt a pang of sadness at the thought.
A light breeze blew by, stirring her out of her own thoughts. A clocktower rang in the distance signaling the new hour. Rio closed her eyes and shook her head. She still had so many orders to finish before the shop closed at 6.
Returning back into the shop, Rio started on the 5th order. The shop was quiet and she couldn’t help but reminisce on the encounter that had brightened her day immensely.
She had been so focused on working that she didn’t even hear the chime that signaled a new arrival. The new customer proceeded to press the service bell on the counter an absurd amount of times to grab her attention, despite her being in line of sight.
Rio approached the counter, barely masking her annoyance in favor of the professionalism she preferred to exude. The man awaiting her didn’t seem to notice.
“Finally, some service! I need a dozen fresh cut roses for my mother as soon as possible.” The man went back to scrolling on his phone.
Rio felt her eye twitch. She walked into the back and grabbed a dozen red roses from the refrigerator. These were always quickly prepared in advance; one of the more common orders. She all but thrust them across the counter at the man. She processed his payment, drumming her fingers on the counter as he punched in his pin.
“Have a nice day.” The sarcasm was dripping. The man didn’t spare her a look, too lost in his own orbit.
The exchange that had just occurred was a stark contrast to the warm, playful banter that had taken place 15 minutes ago. She tried not to let the bitterness seep into her, instead choosing to focus on the hopeful feeling that she would see them again.
“Fingers crossed.”
With a renewed vigor, Rio prioritized finishing the last of the orders. Her thoughts kept drifting back to what she would say the next time she saw them, even if it was wishful thinking.