When Quin arrived at work Wednesday morning, she found that a box was sitting on the front step of her shop, something that never happened. All of the major delivery agencies knew that her packages required a signature, and none of them made it to Noche before ten. As it was only 8:30 in the morning, she knew that this had to be something else entirely and she had a shaking suspicion she knew exactly who the sender of the unmarked package was. She finagled the box under her arm and took it inside with her, putting away her purse in the back room before slicing open the packing tape with a pair of scissors. Inside was a deep red cylindrical vase that stood about a foot tall. There was no note and no indication of the sender. At that point, Quin was completely sure that the sender was Taylor, but had no idea why she thought so other than that it was her favorite color, a fact he had obviously retained, surprisingly.
At precisely nine o’clock when the shop opened, as she and Magda were debating the vase’s significance, a delivery man from a nearby florist came in and delivered a single daisy with a small note attached. The note said: Quin-. At 9:15, a man from a different florist arrived with a single tulip and that one’s note said: I. By the time they left for lunch Quin had a complete sentence and twelve different types of flowers in her vase, all from different florists. She had taped the words together in a line as they had arrived and she gave the sentence a lingering look before following Magda out the door:
Quin- I am going to ask you for a date five times.
By the time they had talked it into the ground over lunch, Quin was ready to throw the sentence into the garbage just to shut Magda up, but when the shop reopened at one, another delivery man from a different florist came in with a calla lily. By four, the vase held twenty four different flowers and Quin had the complete message:
Quin-
I am going to ask you for a date five times. Hopefully, by the fifth, you will be ready to say yes.
-Taylor
“Why can’t he just let it go?” Quin groaned, her eyes not leaving the taped message and her fingertips tracing his handwritten words.
“Because he wants you, Quin. He said that… out loud!” Magda exclaimed.
“He already had me,” Quin said.
“That’s obviously not what he meant when he said that,” Magda sighed.
“He doesn’t know what he wants.”
“I think he does. A guy wanting to get laid doesn’t do something like this, Quin, and you know that,” Magda stated with finality before going into the stock room. Quin didn’t want to admit that Magda was right but knew she was. She couldn’t help herself as she opened the register drawer and retrieved Taylor’s business card from beneath the cash tray. She stared at his name and at the phone number resting below it and wondered if she should call him. His little floral stunt had to have cost him a fortune, paying for all those individual deliveries. But, she couldn’t quite muster up the courage and instead let it lay there on the counter.
As she was doing her final daily straightening a few minutes before closing while a few remaining customers browsed, a man who was the spitting image of Barry White came in and sang “I’ve Got So Much To Give” to her before handing her a note which simply said: Attempt #2. Please go on a date with me.
When Quin had thanked the man for the singing telegram, said goodbye to her customers, and locked up the shop all with glaringly red tinges of embarrassment on her cheeks, she took the business card from the counter and shoved it back where it had come from along with the notes from the day. If he was going to ask her five times, the other three needed to be a lot better than that, she thought sternly.
The next day, Quin received a CD in the mail with the words “For Quin” written on the matte silver top in the same handwriting that had written the notes the day before. Magda literally yanked it from her hands and stuck it in the computer that ran the stereo system in the back room before Quin could even process that it was gone from her possession. Taylor’s voice came over the speakers a few moments later.
“Hey Quin. This is attempt number three to get you go to out on a date with me. I’m really sorry about the last one… it was my stupid younger brother’s idea. I know that I don’t really know you, but I’m still sure you hated it. It’s just that I’m really not good at this stuff… I don’t have a lot of experience with the whole dating scene. A lot of guys might not be upfront about that, but I don’t see any reason to keep it from you. Anyways, I hope you like this a little better. It’s the song I played for you. I was just making it up as I went and I obviously didn’t get to finish it since you so rudely interrupted me,” he paused for a moment to laugh lightly,“So here it is in its entirety. Please call me.”
And then the next track started, the same haunting melody that had filled her ears in his apartment filling them again.
“Turn it off,” Quin told Magda, but her best friend stood in the doorway and shook her head.
“It’s your song and you’re going to listen to every note, missy,” Magda said, standing her ground. Quin just rolled her eyes and went to help the customer who had just walked in.
Quin went home that night with the CD tucked safely in her purse and Taylor’s business card out of the cash drawer and into her wallet. He had made quite the impression in the last two days, going to great lengths to get her go out on a date with him. But Quin just couldn’t bring herself to give in because it didn’t feel right. Quin didn’t really know Taylor but she could tell that none of this was him. These grand gestures were cute, but she wished that he would just come in and demand that she go out on a date with him. He hadn’t asked her to sleep with him, he’d just made it happen. It was his directness that had been attracting her to him all along despite her mind’s best efforts to fight it off. And he was still being persistent, but now he was starting to feel like just any other guy. The same guys she had been avoiding and refusing to get into relationships with for forever. She had thought briefly that he might be the one who was different, the one who actually deserved a chance. But now he was acting like all the others.
Quin didn’t need flowers or songs or elaborate schemes. All she needed was the exact reason why he wanted her and so far, she hadn’t heard it.