Stems

She loves him not. 

He sets the daisy stem in his box, leaning back against the tree. The box is full of bare stems, of imaginary rejections that have never actually been given. All those petals doing it for her.

A car door slams. He tucks the behind himself out of her line of view.

She doesn't need to see his collection of cowardice. 

"Hi Icarus!" she calls out, attempting to collect all of her shopping bags in her arms. She lives on the second floor above him, and he knows how much she hates making a second trip.

He thinks it's because she doesn't want to pass him twice.

A loaf of bread falls out the top.

"You want help, Galena?" His voice squeaks on the second syllable of her name. The smile that cracks on her face leaves him with knobby knees, and he struggles to walk towards her. It shouldn't be this hard to put one foot in front of the other.

"Can you take this one? It has all of my crushables." His eyes flit down to the bread on the ground. "Well, had."

He nods, because words are too hard. He takes the bag, fingertips gliding down her arm. They feel like fire. He bends to grab the bread. It gives him a moment to collect himself, and another to notice that box still sitting by the tree.

He hopes she doesn't.

He hopes that she doesn't think he is some sort of weirdo collecting daisy stems in a cigar box. They're reminders of why he has to stay in line. He has to act like she isn't just a knock away, like he can't just lean over and kiss her. Which honestly, he can't, because all he can see are the bags up to her eyeballs, and he isn't going to kiss the first piece of skin he can see, because it is her elbow, and nobody kisses elbows.

Also nobody kisses people that aren't attracted to them. Not when they live underneath them.

"Ick, can you get my key out of my pocket?" She angles her hip towards him. Her hands are full. It's a completely normal request, yet the burning sensation returns in his fingers, and he nearly crushes her grapes as he squishes the bag to his torso to free his hand.

He sticks the key in the lock. The door swings open, and he sets the bag on the table at the entry.

"Your key," he manages.

"My hands are still full. Give me a second." She walks into the apartment, setting her bags in the kitchen. 

He waits for her. Anyone with sense would have set the key on the table and left. There's no reason to place it in her palm. There's no reason to keep his fingers ablaze, to touch this girl. He has a box to collect.

She takes the key back from him. He bolts off without another word, her voice echoing down the stairs after him.

"Thank you!"

He collects his box of stems and runs back into his apartment. His roommate looks up from his magazine to acknowledge him.

"Had I known that you were going to grow flowers only to behead them and not give them to the girl upstairs, I would have never driven you to the nursery." Gabe takes the box from him. "This is just sad, Icarus."

"This is what reminds me of my place in the world." He takes the box back.

"That's a self determined place. You're the one who always starts with 'she loves me.'" He picks his magazine back up. This conversation is over, because Icarus never listens, and he is done wasting his breath on words that'll never penetrate his brain.

Moving to the window, he looks out at his flower patch. It's growing barer by the day, his hard work shoved in an old box, out of fear of blooming into something bigger. 

The thought scares him.

He heads back outside, frantically uprooting all of his flowers. Petal after petal he pulls until he's left in a mess of stems and broken daisy bits. 

She loves him not.

He started on she loves him not, and he still lost.

"Feel better now?" Gabe extends a hand to him. It gets swatted at, so he shrugs and sits amidst the mess.

"Any chance you can give me a ride to the nursery after I get out of work tomorrow? I think we should grow tomatoes."

"Yeah dude. We can grow tomatoes." 

They sit in silence for a while, and Icarus finally moves to pick up all the daisy stems and put them in his box. It's a tight squeeze. He'll need a rubber band to keep the lid shut.

He follows his friend back into their apartment and tries to fall asleep. Tries, and fails, because he feels like he is going to explode. That box is taunting him, and he pulls the blanket over his head to tune it out.

Morning comes, and he heads out for work, looking over at the empty dirt patch left in the yard. It's depressing. His head droops, and he walks to work without looking up. His head stays down the majority of the day. In fact, it only pops up once he's back home, passing by that patch of dirt again.

There's a giant wooden daisy planted in the ground.

Galena comes out from behind it.

"I noticed that someone destroyed the flower garden last night, so I got us a new flower. Let's see them try to uproot this baby." She slaps her hand against it and frowns. "Paint's still wet."

"You, you, th-there's," he stutters, dumbfounded.

She grips his arms. "Out with it boy."

There's a green handprint on his arm now. Also a frog in his throat, because he's forgotten how to form coherent sentences.

"Wow, that is one big flower," Gabe says for him, slamming his truck door. 

"Thanks. I spent all day on it. I know how much the garden means to Ick." 

He looks to the handprint on his arm. Words still are struggling to make it past his lips, and he really should get going to the nursery so he can pick up those plants before they close.

"Yeah. We're actually headed to the nursery now to get some tomatoes to plant. Maybe you can help us plant them when we get back?" He loops his arm around his friend's shoulders, tethering him to the spot.

She grins. "I'd love to."

Gabe rushes him to the truck. When they're far enough away to breathe, he runs his finger across the dried green paint.

"How many plants do you think we'll need?"

"Dude, she's totally into you," he says, ignoring the question.

Icarus stops to assume defense. "No she's not."

"She built you a giant flower."

"That doesn't mean anything."

His answer earns him a look, one that says he knows he isn't going to win this argument but still disagrees with him. The look fades as they buy their plants, and only reemerges when they make it back home to find a tray of lemonade and egg salad sandwiches waiting for them under the tree. She's sitting beside it, twirling a miniature umbrella between her fingers.

"I thought you might be hungry," she says. Her eyes connect with his, and she drops the umbrella into the glass, handing it off. 

"Mhm," he responds. There is a straw between his lips, and he uses it as an excuse to take the time to dislodge that frog that's made its way back into his throat.

There's a sandwich in his other hand now. He takes a bite.

"Wowza." Great. His words finally find him, and of all of them to volunteer, wowza had to step up to the plate?

She giggles, amused, taking a sip of her own drink. "Thanks."

Gabe grunts, setting down the last of the tomato plants. Grabbing a sandwich from the plate, he tucks both corners into his cheeks and chomps down. Within three bites it's gone, save for the bit that has dropped onto his shirt.

"Ooh, I better get this out before it stains."

"You're going to get covered in dirt anyway," Icarus counters, seeing through his friend's ruse. It's hopeless. Gabe runs off, failing to return in favor of camping out in the window, shirtless as the washer runs.

She talks to him as they plant the tomatoes, and he does his best to keep up. It'd be easier if his heart would slow down.

The last plant gets tucked in, and she collapses back into the grass. He falls back too. She spots a stem on the ground between them, one last petal attached. She plucks it off.

"He loves me." 

Where did that come from?

Galena turns her head, and he can feel her eyes on him. He's frozen. Unsatisfied, she holds the stem above his head until he reaches out to grab it. She doesn't move her hand, and his fingers are blazing, but he doesn't move either.

Gabe moves out of the window, grabbing the box off the shelf. It spills into the trash can, as he never did find that rubber band. Not that he'll need it.

He returns to the window to find that Icarus has turned on his side, and they're both still holding onto that bare stem. He shuts the window, along with the curtain and makes his way to the basement to move the laundry into the dryer.

"For a boy named Ick, you sure don't live up to your name," she says, pulling away from him.

His lips can't form words. They want to go back to where they were fourteen seconds ago, on hers.

"You match the tomatoes."

He lets go of the stem. His hand moves to cradle her face. She leans into it, and now the stem is abandoned on the ground as she rolls over it, crushing it as she pulls her body closer.

She loves him.