There’s meaning in the word finally.
I smile. “You too, Arthur.”
As I turn to head out into the corridor, Arthur’s voice follows us.
“Careful, Bambi.”
Phil stops walking for half a second.
Just long enough for me to see it.
Then he keeps going.
We walk the length of the corridor without a word. Close enough for our shoulders to almost brush, not quite close enough to risk it. He cradles the vase in both hands, careful, deliberate, as if it might bruise. When we reach the other two, he shifts the first under one arm and reaches for another before I can. I’m left with the last one.
Outside, the rain has softened into something gentler, the air cool and clean when we step out through the front entrance.
My van is parked in the small loading bay to the left. I open the back doors and move aside so he can place the vases inside.
“Here,” I say, fastening the strap around them to keep them secure. “We’ve learned the hard way that flowers and sudden braking don’t mix.”
He nods, his eyes flicking briefly to my hands, then away again.
“Thank you,” I say when everything is secured.
He shrugs, but it isn’t dismissive. More like he doesn’t know what to do with gratitude.
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
The quiet isn’t uncomfortable.
Just full.
I lean back against the van doors, studying him openly now that he isn’t trying to disappear into a crowded pub. He looks different here. Less guarded. The tension still lives in his shoulders, but it doesn’t own him completely.
“I didn’t know you supply flowers here,” he says finally.
“We started bringing the unsold arrangements after we opened the shop,” I explain. “It seemed like a waste to throw them away when people here would enjoy them.”
He nods slowly.
“That’s… good,” he says.
It isn’t much, but coming from him, it feels like something.
“I usually hang out a bit as well. I stayed the first time because one of the residents asked me about my hair,” I add lightly. “She told me it reminded her of a singer she loved in the seventies and then proceeded to tell me her entire life story. I didn’t have the heart to leave.”
A small smile flickers across his face. Brief. Real.
“I stayed the second time because she asked if I was coming back,” I continue. “And after that, it just became part of my routine.”
I don’t say the rest.
That sometimes I stayed because of him.
That seeing him here had shifted something in me.
That he made this place feel less like somewhere people waited to disappear and more like somewhere love still existed.