Flower Disease 1/?: The Beginning

The flower disease had come for her already, and she knew it.

It felt like a choice in a way, to become sick. To not keep herself at a distance, out of sight and out of mind. Well, chosen or not, Eve was almost certainly going to die.

It had all started at the coffee shop. Eve was paid $7.25 per hour to sit at a stool and misspell people’s names on their orders for the sheer entertainment value. The apron wasn’t exactly flattering on her, a grayish brown vest thing with a single black name pin, but she needed the money.

Then the girl waltzed up to the counter in a yellow sundress dotted with white flowers, her flaming red hair tied half-up in a ponytail, boyfriend in tow. She ordered something, but Eve was looking at her dress. The flowers reminded her of her favorite kind, camellias. Five petals, delicate and round, almost like clouds.

Glancing up, she saw the girl’s slightly confused expression. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”

“I’d like a large black coffee, please.” She ignored her boyfriend’s less than subtle eye roll and gave a small smile.

“Medical major?” Eve guessed.

She laughed, a refreshing, airy giggle. “Neuroscience, how’d you know?”

“Med students don’t have time for milk and sugar. Plus, they always need more caffeine.”

Another laugh. “My name’s Daisy.”

Eve smiled. “I’m Eve.”

Daisy’s boyfriend, a stocky, gangly guy in sweatpants, let out a laugh, but unlike hers, it was cold and mean. “She means for the drink, Blondie.”

A blush rose to Eve’s cheeks and she scrambled to write Daisy’s name on the cup, careful to spell it correctly. Eve’s voice came out meeker than she would’ve liked, and an octave higher. “Sorry. Can I get you anything else?”

Daisy gave him a look, then turned back to Eve. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, John’s just being sour. He wants a cappu—“

“Black coffee. Large.”

Daisy sighed. “You don’t need to prove your masculinity to—“

“Shut up, that’s not what I’m doing,” he spat. “I just want my coffee.”

Eve took the hint. “Roger that, two large black coffees, for Daisy and John.” Eve carefully wrote out J-H-O-N on the paper cup. “Your order will be ready soon, they’ll call your names over there.”

A few minutes later, Eve was supposed to be grinding coffee beans for some middle schooler’s iced latte, but she paused for a moment just to hear her favorite sound in the world.

Eve’s coworker and best friend, Benji, stared at the cups of black coffee in his hand with unease. “Coffees for Daisy, and, ummm…”

Daisy stood up, and at Benji’s hesitation, shot Eve a knowing smile.

Benji made a sarcastic attempt. “Jh— zhhh-“

Eve let out an involuntary snort at that, knowing that Benji understood what she’d intended.

“It’s John, idiot!” His chair screeched against the floor as he stood, expression aflame. Watching him felt like staring through the window at the bull in the china shop, waiting for disaster to strike. His disheveled brown hair, raggedy goatee and yellowing teeth at the ripe age of maybe twenty made him appear almost dangerous. Breathing hard, he grabbed Daisy’s arm, snatched his coffee out of Benji’s hand, and stormed out of the shop.

Eve knew right then and there she was going to spell his name right next time.

The next few times came and went each day, with cheerful Daisy in a brightly patterned sundress and moody John stinking of last night’s beer, arm in arm buying two black coffees. One morning, though, their unfailing quotidian order was interrupted.

“Black coffees, yes? Daisy and John?” Eve wrote their names on the cups.

“Um, I’d actually like a cappuccino this time,” Daisy said, glancing at John. “He just wants the regular black coffee, though.”

Eve raised an eyebrow but wrote it in. “Coming right up.”

Armed with her own coffee’s motivation boost and sheer pettiness, she just happened to accidentally write ‘cappuccino’ next to John and ‘black coffee’ next to Daisy.

When Benji read out the prepared order at the counter, Eve could see the visceral anger written across John’s face. Her breath caught at Daisy’s horrified expression, as if she knew what was going to happen next.

“Weird,” Eve said quickly, loud enough for John to hear. “The drinks are mixed up. I’ll rewrite the names, I remember the black coffee was definitely for John.”

Scrawling quickly in recovery, Eve’s Sharpie squealed against the paper cups. Unfortunately, the rewriting came all too late.

“This is the last straw,” John said as he stormed to the counter. “I’m never stepping foot in this s***hole again!”

“No, wait,” Daisy said, standing to take his wrist, but he ripped her fingers off like Band-Aids.

It was the second time the couple had left in an angry huff, and both times it had been entirely Eve’s fault. The rest of her shift, Eve spoke and wrote on autopilot, still picturing the haunted look on Daisy’s face.

For a week they didn’t come. For a week Eve worried, thinking about what John was capable of doing, not just to retail workers but to Daisy.

How many times a month, a week, a day, an hour did Daisy look as agitated as she had?

The following Tuesday, though, Daisy was back. Alone, and blissfully so, in a 

baby-blue pinafore dotted with yellow sunflowers that fell just above her knees. She seemed to breathe a little easier in the coffee shop.

“Hey, nice to see you again,” Eve said with a careful smile. 

Daisy brightened. “Nice to see you. I like your braids.”

Eve automatically reached to touch her two plaits of ashen blond hair, blushing. She hadn’t done anything interesting with her hair in a long time— often it was tied back in a quick, thoughtless ponytail or left falling in its mild waves down her back. But that morning, feeling a bit masochistically sentimental, she’d tied it into a pair of braids. It reminded her of a time she’d felt significantly lighter, which really only served to weigh her down more.

“Thanks,” Eve said, then scrambled for a topic change. “Sorry about last time, by the way. I got… confused.”

Daisy looked down for a moment, her mind lingering on the memory. “No problem. John just… he just doesn’t like feeling like he’s being messed with.”

“Yeah, totally, of course,” Eve said. She sensed a void of awkwardness stretching between them. “So, what would you like?”

Seeming to remember where she was, Daisy blinked and said, “Two black coffees, please. To go.”

Eve repeated her usual robotic cashier speeches to the next few customers, but she found herself regretting ending the conversation with Daisy so quickly. She liked talking to her.

“Hey, Eve,” she would say every morning cheerily.

“Hey, Daisy,” Eve would reply, and attempt not to notice how her heart was beating just a little bit faster.

“I like your braids,” Daisy would quip. It was an inside joke at this point. Every day since Daisy first entered the store sans John and noticed her hair, Eve had spent a few minutes tying it into twin braids. The hairstyle was a bit of a double entendre for her; it represented not only the fleeting mercurial happiness of talking to Daisy but the memories of past happiness Eve still carried with her. And it felt, unusually, amazing.

“Thanks,” Eve replied to Daisy’s joke one day. She added the cursory mention of who the second black coffee was for. “How’s John doing?”

Daisy sighed. “Well. He’s still looking for a job, but I helped him a bit with his resume yesterday and I think he might get a gig at the old ice cream parlor down the street. They emailed him this morning for an interview.”

“That’s nice. Med school treating you well?” Eve didn’t want the conversation to end.

“It’s driving me crazy, and I’m literally learning why people are crazy,” Daisy said tiredly. “Eventually the difference between different kinds of neurons just blend together. Brains are cool, but mine might just dissolve before exams even start.”

Eve laughed, but before the silence could swallow her words, she spoke. “You should try some of those brain puns on John. I’m sure he’d appreciate a thematically appropriate pickup line.”

It was a bit of a reach, joking about Daisy’s somewhat flawed relationship. After all, Eve was just the cashier at their local coffee shop. An insignificant side character to their romance. Who was she to call their relationship flawed, anyway? The moment’s pause felt like the air was being sucked out of the room, until Daisy laughed. “Maybe, yeah. Got any ideas?”

“Of course,” Eve said grandly. “My mind is a vast abyss of knowledge.”

Daisy giggled again, and Eve’s heart soared with butterflies.

That was the beginning. Eve could feel it, the point of no return. The line had been crossed, and her fate was sealed.

In the present, Eve was in the bathroom. The coffee shop bathroom, notably. For the eighth time this week. She felt her typical combination of dread, fear, agony, and naively lovesick anticipation at the idea of exiting. Every day when Daisy came in, the skipped heartbeats were a painful reminder of her disease. The hacking coughs came on quickly and took an increasing number of minutes to quell. They never stayed away for long.

There was no pretense of it being a passing flu. The petals were small, and they tasted like soap but left a metallic aftertaste of blood in Eve’s mouth. Her throat and tongue and chest ached with every violent cough. They only hurt more when she realized the petals were the same shade of deep red as Daisy’s hair.

Eve took a wad of toilet paper and dabbed the blood from her lips, then splashed her face with cold water. She stared into her reflection in the smudgy bathroom mirror until her expression no longer looked quite so hopeless. Steeling herself, she spun on her heel and walked back out to the counter.

It was seven thirty-two in the morning. Daisy hadn’t arrived for her coffees yet, and likely wouldn’t for another ten minutes or so. Eve wouldn’t let Daisy see her like this— sick, and for an embarrassing, pitiful reason like falling in love with a straight girl. The worst part is it would cost her her life.

Two orders later, Daisy wandered in wearing the same yellow dress she’d worn the very first day— the one with the camellia flowers. Eve smiled while taking her order, offering the usual dry joke about med school, laughing shyly at the mention of her braids. By the time Daisy picked up her drinks from the counter, Eve was already back in the bathroom, coughing up the most beautiful, perfect red gerbera blossom she’d ever seen.