His cheeks are pink, and his free hand slides up and down the back of his neck. His eyes return to the pastry bag and remain there.
Jeannie can’t contain herself. “Are you alright?” she’s asking, approaching Martin, concern on her face. “Is everything okay?”
I look over to Brad and he’s looking concerned too.
Something washes over Martin’s face and he’s suddenly himself again and smiles, forcing a shallow breath. “I’m fine,” he says. “I must say I think I would prefer wildflowers.” He coughsinto his hand and clears his throat. “The other flowers are just too perfect.”
Brad suddenly looks dejected like we’re attending a flower debate and his team lost. I can’t stop looking at Martin, who is smiling at me with quick glances to the bouquet in my hand.
“I’m going to get this bouquet,” I find myself saying to Martin without looking away. I’m not sure why I’m telling him directly. Maybe I want him to stop me, help me see what a foolish idea this is. With a growing smile, he keeps glancing at the flowers. “For my secret person,” I say.
Jeannie coos and grabs Brad by the arm for a squeeze. Martin doesn’t move, except for his eyes, darting to the flowers and back.
I’m suddenly aware of the presence of a clerk beside me who is beaming, and apparently heard me announce my purchase plans. I’m sprung from the spell of the bouquet, and I’m trying to dig for my wallet. I can’t figure out how to hold both my sourdough loaf and the floral arrangement while doing so.
“Can you even deliver them to your secret person?” Brad is asking, ever thinking of logical details. “I mean, do you have a way to send flowers?”
My quest to pay is not thwarted by his painful, but truthful, logic. I casually thrust the flowers into Martin’s face and say, “Can you hold these please? I need to get my wallet.”
He freezes. He doesn’t reach for the flowers. He doesn’t blink.
I’m frozen now, too, holding out the bouquet, loaf swinging as I stare at him. We lock eyes and try to communicate, but I can’t read it. He won’t touch the flowers.
Jeannie leaps in, reaching for the bouquet. “I’ll hold them,” she blurts, but before she can grab them Martin snatches them from my hand gracefully and says, “I can hold them for you. I got it.”
Both Jeannie and I stare at him as he seems suddenly transfixed by the bouquet, pulling it to his face to breathe in the fragrance. She and I look at each other briefly before I go digging through my pocket for the cash I need, handing it to the clerk.
When I turn back around, Martin has already started moving down the sidewalk in small steps, enchanted by the flowers in his possession.
I catch up to him, reaching out to retrieve the flowers, which beckons him back from whatever mental voyage he had been taking. “Thanks. I can get them now.”
He smiles at me, following the flowers with his eyes as he places them in my hand. “Those are beautiful,” he says finally.
I couldn’t agree more.
Before I know it, we’re on our way down the sidewalk again, pastries and flowers in tow, each of us smiling in our own way.
The human body, it turns out, can only consume so much bread at one time, so my loaf of sourdough becomes something I carry all day. The bouquet finds itself in the same situation: still inspiring, still beautiful, but completely undeliverable and needing to be carried, my hand clutching the fragile stems with sweaty perseverance.
Our pastry desires at Oven & Bloem are incredibly realistic when we arrive, so we end up splitting a few danishes and Martin orders several sourdough bread-bowls which he intends to use when he experiments making clam chowder in upcoming days - which I hope to be there to experience when he does. By the time we reach The Cedar and Fig, none of us are wishing for bread, no matter how tantalizing the smell of naan seems, so we just order dinner and eat instead. I love Indian food, but I’m a stickler to what I know, whereas Martin always goes crazy and orders something he’s never heard of with the intentof broadening his life experiences. Today it broadens all of our lives when he lets us try it. He orders Kosha Mangsho, which is a goat curry with a dark, intense gravy. It is a deep burgundy like I’ve never seen in Indian food before, and is so intense that I’m glad to be sampling it only. I’m relieved to be back within the comfort of my butter chicken, but Martin savors every bite, exploring life to the fullest.
I can’t help but admire his sense of adventure and novelty, and for some reason today I can’t stop watching him do it. The way he smiles and thinks and explores and takes it all in. He catches me staring several times, but only responds with a smile and never judgement or wonder.
I’m not so lucky with Jeannie, though. At some point during dinner, I excuse myself to use the restroom and Jeannie follows. She throws her arm around my shoulder, tucks in for a personal conversation and says, “So, Liam. What’s up?”
I don’t slow my pace, but since she’s attached she keeps up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Liam…” She whispers, “Why have you been staring at Martin all night? You haven’t looked away from him all during dinner.”
I try to make my face express confusion, but I’m not sure it’s successful. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What’s going on with you two?” she asks. We arrive at the ante-room outside the two bathrooms which results in a natural freedom from her arm, but we both pause outside our respective doors, waiting for the conversation to resolve. “There’s something you’re not saying.”
Her eyes are sparkling with equal parts concern and enchantment and I have to look away, inspecting the intricate pattern on the rug. “It’s nothing. I don’t know what you’re seeing, but it’s nothing.”
She tilts her head and exhales. “It’s your secret person.”
It’s not a question and the statement quality of her words make me look back at her. “My secret person?”