The Florist

A twenty-something man was attempting to put on the moves on a few girls in the downtown area of a big city one weekday afternoon. He thought he could pull off the moves but he was failing miserably. He was decent-looking enough and his moves were smooth but he kept getting shut down.

"Why must every girl be taken in this big city?!" he yelled. If it kept up like this, he felt as if he was going to chop off a certain appendage or something.

A young girl then approached the man, trying to figure out what was going on. She looked somewhat like a modern-day interpretation of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

"Would you like a flower?" she asked.

The man was angry. "Would I like a flower?!" he angrily repeated. "Look, lady! I'm getting my ass handed to me and all you can say is "Would I like a flower?" Hell no, I do not want a flower!"

The girl ran away crying. The man then noticed that a lot of people were watching this go down as it happened. The man was then walking around the city when he saw a flower shop. He walked in and began looking for the girl he made cry. She wasn't there. He found another shop. She wasn't there either. The man then proceeded to go to seven different florists until he found the girl.

The girl was sitting on a stair step, still bawling her eyes out. The man attempted to get her attention but she got scared.

"Rape!" she yelled and attempted to get her whistle out but the man stopped her.

"I'm not going to rape you!" he told her. "I came to apologize. You came to me at a bad time. My name's Scott."

"I'm Adela," the flower girl replied. "Now go away."

"What are you doing tonight?" Scott asked. He hoped his persuasiveness would work this time.

"I'm going to tend to the flowers and then go home," Adela answered.

"What time do you get off?" Scott asked.

"About 7:00," Adela answered.

"I'll be waiting," Scott replied. "Wait, that sounds too creepy. Excuse me while I go hate myself."

Scott then went to a nearby coffee shop and watched Adela do her work. She really did not know what the outside world was like, Scott observed while she spent all of her time with the flowers. She hardly talked to anyone and didn't seem to be bothered by the presence of others in the room. It was as if she was invisible.

7:00 pm came. Adela left the flower shop where she saw Scott waiting for her. As she began to speak to Scott, a guy with a big maple bat came up for some reason and smashed Scott's left kneecap. Adela got from her purse a can of mace and sprayed it right in his eyes. The man with the big bat dropped to the floor and Adela took his bat. She then prompted another employee to call the police while another bystander was given the bat while Adela tended to Scott.

"Are you okay?" Adela asked.

"My kneecap feels like it's a thousand pieces," Scott answered.

"The ambulance will come shortly," Adela assured him.

It took nearly a half-hour but finally the ambulance came. For some reason, they wouldn't let Adela come so she got a ride to the hospital. As expected, the prognosis wasn't great: Scott had a broken kneecap and would have to spend some time in a wheelchair. He spent the night in the hospital and Adela stayed with him.

The next morning, Adela took Scott home and she got to see what he was: some rich idiot with no day job. A trust fund kid, pretty much. But Adela managed to see through his exterior and found some heart in him.

"You saved my life, Adela," Scott told her. "If I hadn't yelled at you, I'd be dead."

"It's nothing, really," Adela replied. "I would have done the same for anyone else."

Adela decided to keep Scott interested by taking him to her work for the next few weeks. The accident changed Scott for the better, as he went from a smarmy jerk to a reliable friend. He helped Adela out with her social skills while she helped him respect the ladies a bit more. It was a relationship that didn't go past a friendship but they certainly cared about each other. And none of it would have happened had she not offered him that flower.