I never really liked gypsophila. Nor did I like how the meadows looked as if they had been painted with powdered sugar and neither how their little heads hung in all directions, almost staring at me. I did not like the way the blossoms got entangled between my fingers or my hair or did not even make it that far at all because I had not cared enough and had lost them somewhere on my way. But my sister thought gypsophila were pretty. And that gypsophila would look even prettier in a bridal bouquet.

So, there I was, balancing a few strands of gypsophila tied together with a baby blue string and packed in scrunched paper, on my lower arm. The city around me was stressed, there were people in suits or on their telephone or in suits and on their telephones as they pushed their bodies through the crowd. Nobody was carrying flowers. Nobody even seemed to care about flowers at all. Nor the people, nor the weather. Instead, the wind kept blowing endless snowflakes onto my coat and onto my gypsophila. Initially, I looked down onto them, and just in time caught myself from striking the snowflakes from the blossoms. My clumsy fingers would damage them probably way more than all snow could do.

Amidst all the suits and snowflakes, somewhere was also my house. Well, actually it was not my house, solely the building in which I rented an overpriced apartment. It was nothing noticeable, nothing that stood out. If it weren't for my name under the door bell I probably myself would not know which house it was that I lived in. It was just one house that looked like all the others in the abbey. The walls were made of red bricks and embedded with a couple of plastic windows that stared directly onto another same-looking house on the other side of the street. I slightly lifted my head, number fifty-three, and walked up the front porch. As I did, I slowly lifted one hand from the gypsophila and towards my coat pocket. I grabbed to the left, I grabbed to the right, I grabbed into the fabric, and eventually I grabbed my loose door keys.

My feet made their way past the entrance and up the old spiral staircase to the fourth floor. Once again I started looking for my name and unlocked my apartment door. Whenever I opened the door, I could see my entire flat in one glance. It measured only thirty square metres, rounded up, with an unmade bed in the corner and a couch right in front of it because there was nowhere else to put it. In the other corner stood my fitted kitchen - a fridge, two hot plates, a sink, a worktop and a microwave whose cable stretched right up to the socket on the kitchen ledge.

I went inside a little. My shoes left slushy traces of snow and I frowned at first. So I slipped off my sneakers, left them in the entrance behind me and very carefully placed the bouquet of flowers on my kitchen counter. And by that I meant the kind of careful where I put one hand under the paper wrapping and the other hand over the flower head. I acted as if they were cerebral. And then I looked at the paper wrapping that was now laying in front of me and frowned a second time: the snowflakes had melted tears into the paper.

Passively, I watched the paper absorb the last of the moisture, the faint damp lines forming on the exterior. I traced one finger along the wrinkles in the paper and felt how the baby blue string had left indentations where it had been tied too tightly. Huh.

I hesitated, I took the bouquet out of the wrapping, scrambled for one of my morning cups in the board above me, filled it in with water and put the gypsophila in there instead. The flower heads that had been staring back at me just one breath ago were now dangling sadly towards the counter. They seemed so out of place against the peeling laminate of my counter, their stems bending slightly, like they already regretted being here. I took them out once again.

And of course, just at that moment, my doorbell rang. At first, I swirled around in confusion, and another moment later at my best friend Zayn, who was standing in my still open doorway. He also looked quite surprised at what was waiting right in front of him as well - at me in my coat, not wearing any shoes and a dripping wet bunch of gypsophila, which I was practically holding out to him, in my hand.

"Oh, are these for me?"

Zayn's sweet nature wrapped itself around the stuffy air. He stepped over the doorsill, and his black hair, which peeked out cheekily from under his cap, fell a little deeper into his face. Gently, Zayn sank into a crouch and tilted his head. With the tip of his index finger, he lifted one of the flower heads. "Well, this guy has certainly had better days," he dropped his gaze, "and that punch cup from the Christmas market three years ago. Oh, Harry, you really never fail to impress me."

A slight smile ran over my lips. I thought of me and Zayn and all our other school friends sitting on the ferris wheel, holding tightly onto our cups not to slip the alcohol - and not to throw up (from both the punch and the ferris wheel). I chuckled up, Zayn pulled his eyebrows together. "You are not thinking about the ferris wheel incident, are you?", he admonished me just as chucky. "Ferris wheel incident? Is that what we call it now? As I can remember it went like", I started to imitate Zayn's accent, "Hold my drink, my articulation switched back, "then me not holding it, and the punch becoming the problem of the couple in the cabin below us." - "Well, to be positive, at least the cup hasn't become part of the problem too. Because if so, it certainly wouldn't make for a temporary vase but would rot away along with us behind bars."

As soon as I had said that, Zayn placed both hands around the cup and slowly lifted it out of mine. He tilted it and twisted it, and with every movement he made, my hands shrugged towards the gypsophila. "That's exactly how I think it's going to end when your sister has to walk down the aisle with this sad bundle here. Let me see what we can do ...", he said thoughtfully.

​​Then, he handed the cup back to me. Instead, he now slipped his tote bag off his shoulder and pulled open one half of his trench coat. A bouquet of pink lilies peeked out from the inside pocket. Unlike my gypsophila, there were no melted snowflakes pouring down the stalks, not to speak of the flower heads that looked proudly against my ceiling. That must have been because they were home-bred and grown in the greenhouse of Zayn's parents-in-law, I tried to convince myself.

I could not help but to stand there and watch as Zayn's creative mind took over the room. He picked up the gypsophila, he picked up the flowers, he also picked up his tote bag again and wandered past me to my couch, only to sit not on it, but in front of it. However, he then realized that my floor wasn't quite comfortable and he snatched a cushion and sat down once more. Looking up at me, he said, "I tell you every time and I'm going to tell you once and for all: Please. Get. Yourself. A. Table." A distinctive smile crept onto his lips, mine were pressing together. I liked my floor. I liked the fact that nothing was standing around, and I liked that despite the thirty square metres, I still had enough space to stand around, to walk in circles, and to stand around some more. But most of all, I liked lying against the parquet on hot summer nights.

And I liked how Zayn kept holding the flowers against the sunlight to make sure he chose the most beautiful ones. He removed the gypsophila from its blue thread, pulled out a few flowers and put in a few lilies instead.. And a few more. Instead of a bouquet of gypsophila with lilies, there was now a bouquet of lilies with gypsophila. And yet it looked so very right: Alongside each lily, Zayn had placed tiny, different-sized bunches of gypsophila and sprinkled some golden shimmer on the white flower heads. Finally, he laid a ribbon around the bundle and tied it together in a tight bow.

"Et voilà!"

His eyes lit up in pride. And I couldn't blame him. Zayn had always seen order in all the things I saw as chaos. When the night was dark, he gazed up at the moon, and when it rained, he searched for the rainbow behind the grey clouds. When I did not know what I wanted to say, he called himself speechless and when everyone else turned away, he stopped and turned around.

He turned around to me. "Now there's just one small thing missing," he announced in an almost dramatic tone and lifted something that I could not recognize out of his handicraft equipment. Semi-elegantly, I sat down next to Zayn. There was gypsophila, there were lilies, there was a bow that formed the flowers and the gypsophila into a bouquet. That was quite it, or wasn't it?

I flinched a little when suddenly a tiny little envelope on an even tinier thread was swinging in front of my nose. Zayn couldn't hold back his laughter. "Come on, it's not that scary. I just reckoned it would be a really lovely idea if you could write down a few words for Gemma, put them in this envelope and then we'll tie it onto the ribbon. What do you say?" he explained. My eyes moved from him to the envelope to the flowers and back again. It was a lovely idea, I couldn't deny him that. "But what if it doesn't come out right?", I thought out loud.

"Oh, Harry, please don't think like that. And I don't want to force you to do anything you don't feel comfortable with. Just remember that no matter what you write - or don't write - it comes from you, and that is what's most important." He patted my shoulder, he winked at me, he twirled the thread between his fingers. Lost in thoughts, I followed every of his movements, "okay. I'll do it." - "Yeah? Oh, that's so cool! Do you want me to leave then? Or for me to be with you? Whichever you prefer, either way is fine with me."

Zayn's fingers let go of the thread and suddenly I didn't know where to look. I turned my head towards his, his dark eyes resting caringly on me. "Could you please... I mean, would you mind if you stayed? ", I asked, begged, him. I exhaled with relief when Zayn nodded. "I was hoping you'd say that. Do you still have enough beer in stock to keep me awake?". he laughed and I did too. "You know the way. The ... stock hasn't changed much since last time." - "Well, that sounds like a task!" He sounded so euphoric. Then, he reached for the envelope, neatly tied the string around my index finger. Even with a little ribbon on top so matched the bouquet. I held my hand in front of my face and twisted it a little. The envelope wobbled in the air just like the gypsophila heads did. "I already don't like you, and we've barely even met."

image created by AI <3