Alice's POV:

When earlier this week I received a call from an unknown phone number, my first thought was that it must be someone from my long list of family members. It had been years since I'd changed my phone number but there were still a few of my cousins (they kept reminding me every chance they got) who didn't have my phone number.

Must be one of them, I'd told myself as I answered the incoming call, only to hear the last, the most unwanted person on the other end.

"Hello there, Alice." It was Michael. I knew it was Michael because I had nightmares of his voice sometimes and it was ingrained in my head. Stuck in a sickening way. "I finally got a hold of--"

I'd hung up on him. Obviously. And the very next second, I'd blocked his number as well. It would've been a little hilarious, considering I'd never stood up to Michael in any way before, if I hadn't been seconds away from freaking out right in the middle of campus grounds.

That's why when I received another call from another unknown caller ID just a day ago, I panicked and I didn't answer it. It wasn't the same number as the one Michael had called me from but it was still an unknown number, and it had taken me almost everything to not start freaking out in the middle of the lecture Nico and I were currently taking.

"Just answer your goddamn phone, Rhodes." Nico had hissed at me.

I'd only just switched my phone off and stuffed it inside my pocket, ignoring his questioning glance and focusing entirely on the laptop that sat before me.

It would've been just fine if I hadn't received another phone call from that exact number the next day.

This time though, I wasn't in between a lecture or anywhere near Nico, thankfully. I was once again taking a jog around my dormitory building, the sun slowly rising in the morning sky, and it was a little difficult to breathe in the harsh cold air but was still better than staying in my dorm--not being able to sleep, and constantly finding myself staring over at Brooke's empty side of the room as if she'd just...magically appear out of thin air.

I was practically wishing at this point that she'd magically appear out of thin air.

Stopping near one of the compact greenhouses at the back of the campus, I leaned against the wall and panted, looking down at my phone when it started ringing, and frowned.

Then I answered the phone,

"Hello?"

"Hello, ma'am. This is Ivy and Co. I was just calling to confirm the order you placed with us. Is this Ms. Alice Rhodes speaking?"

I blanched. I must've because I felt the blood draining out of me. The only words I heard were Ivy and Co.

I knew Ivy and Co.

Michael, Michael, Michael.

"Here you go," he said, slipping a single red rose between my fingertips, one of his fingers caressing a petal. The same fingers that had just been there, gripping the back of my neck, digging soft and sharp into my throat. "Just as pretty as that face, Alice."

And I would press the pad of my thumb against the thorns every single time. Pain, pain, pain. Because I felt scared and ashamed.

"Ma'am? Hello?" The lady on the other end broke me out of my thoughts.

I swallowed and tried to breathe evenly. "I-I think there's been a mistake. I didn't make any orders. Sorry."

There was a clicking noise before she spoke again, "Your number was stated within the customer details, ma'am. And the order is quite...large or we would've processed it already. Do you mind visiting our shop so we can fix the issue with your delivery details? We're also open to service feedback and any other queries, and the shop's open till ten pm."

I stared up at the sky, at the pink and purple and the yellow. A bad idea, my conscience reminded me as if I'd forgotten even for a second. But I still agreed anyway.

•••

I somehow convinced (desperately begged) Nico to drive me to Ivy and Co. and I was practically desperate when I asked him to walk inside the shop with me. Because even if it looked to be as harmless as a flower shop could be, I was still scared that I might, God forbid, find Michael already in there waiting for me.

Alyssa. I really needed to talk with Alyssa.

"Whose grave are we burying and then buying these flowers for?" Nico asked me as he tagged along, looking curiously around the street.

I wiped my clammy hands over my jeans for probably the twenty-third time. Or not. I'd lost count at this point.

Instead of answering him, I pushed the glass door of the small, cozy shop and went inside. A tinkling chime came from above us and even something as tiny as that managed to relax a little bit of my tense posture.

The shop was empty save for Nico and me and a few unfamiliar-looking people. Shop workers, judging by the identical dark green t-shirts they wore. There was no Michael.

"Seems like the right time to say this," Nico whispered behind me. "I'm allergic to most of the flowers here."

I turned around and looked at him wide-eyed. "What? Why didn't you say it before I dragged you out here with me?" I scanned his face but there weren't any signs of discomfort. Although he looked a little red on the nose.

Nico rolled his eyes and pulled the neck of his hoodie up until it covered most of his nose. "I'll be fine as long as you don't shove one up my nose. And don't look at me like that." His voice was muffled.

"Like what?"

"Like I might die any given second. I won't. I can live--" He sneezed "--through this."

"You can leave," I told him worriedly.

"What? No!"

"Just get in your car and drive back to campus. Seriously, it's...it's all right. I just needed a ride here and if I'd known you were allergic to flowers--which, Nico, why did I not know that before?" I asked him. "I saw a daffodil in your dorm once."

"It's fake." Or I think that's what he said since his voice was still so muffled.

"Why do you have a fake daffodil in your dorm? Is it your roommate's?"

"I don't have a roommate." He gave me a look.

"You don't have a roommate?" I asked, baffled. "I thought--"

"I threatened my parents that I'd homeschool myself if they didn't use their influential power and get me a roommate-less dorm." He was grinning. I could see it even though half of his face was covered.

I smiled back, part astonished and part confused. "You rebel."

Someone cleared their throat behind me and I was startled, turning around to find a ginger-haired lady behind the counter offering me a polite smile. Oh no. Oh fuck. For a second there I'd totally forgotten where I was.

"Hello. What can I help you with?" She asked.

"I'm so sorry," I told her and stepped towards the counter. "I'm Alice. Alice Rhodes. I got a call this morning from your shop, asking me about my...um...order?"

Nico stepped beside me, curious.

"Oh, okay. Give me a second." She said and pulled out a thick binder from somewhere behind the counter, eyeing Nico and the way he was still covering half of his nose.

"Allergic." He told her.

"You can still leave," I whispered to him because I was still worried about the sudden revelation of him being allergic to flowers--such pretty flowers!--and I was afraid his face would get red and blotchy and start swelling.

"No way." He roughly nudged me on the shoulder. "I've gotta see this. There's a fucking funeral you're not telling me about."

"Nico, people don't buy flowers just for funerals or when they're visiting someone's grave."

"I know."

The lady looked up, one finger on a specific page of the binder, before speaking, "You did place an order--"

"I didn't actually." I interrupted her quickly. "Someone else put it under my name. I'm just here to figure out who it was and...what's been ordered." No roses. God, no roses.

Nico was practically bristling with curiosity.

"Well, there is an order put under your name recently." She glanced back down at the binder. I could see that she was blinking a little too fast. "It's a little...considerably large order."

My heart started racing and I wondered if it was too late to run out of here.

Nico plastered himself against the counter. "What? Why? Can I see it?"

The lady pushed the binder a little towards him and he craned his neck, still holding the hoodie over his nose to read the page properly. "Oh. My God." He started cackling. "Holy fuck, you bought the whole fucking shop, Alice!"

I stared and I felt the moment my heart nearly stopped beating.

"Not exactly the whole shop." The lady grinned sheepishly as Nico continued wheezing and bending over the counter. "But there are rather...a lot of bouquets and houseplants. Frankly speaking, we haven't received a booking like such in years, probably."

"That's more than a hundred of them!" Nico looked at me with wide, what the fuck eyes. "What the fuck for, Alice?"

I didn't know what to say, couldn't say anything other than, "I don't want roses. Please." in a quiet, scared voice. My hands were shaking and for a few slow seconds, it felt like there wasn't solid ground beneath my feet.

Nico and the ginger lady didn't seem to notice it.

"Strangely enough," she continued, looking at her binder once again, "there are no roses. Just sunflowers. Oh, and the last one of our Juliet Roses. It's nothing like an average rose, though. Let me show you. Jade! Would you mind getting out the last of the Juliets?"

Nico pulled the binder towards him and rubbed his gloved hands in glee. "Sunflower bouquets. Jesus, you'd look like a living, breathing sunflower by the time we get out of here."

I crossed my arms and gripped my elbows because I was still scared and freaked out and a little...overwhelmed. I liked sunflowers, though. They weren't roses, I told myself. They weren't red roses.

Michael couldn't have done this.

I swallowed and slid my hand inside my pocket, taking out my phone and a hair tie along with it as the lady behind the counter went towards one of the shelves. "I...I don't know who ordered this for me, Nico." My voice was still shaky.

"I'll tell you who." He gave me a look. "You hooked up with someone, it was a mistake, but you also happened to have told him about your eternal love for sunflowers. And now that he's obsessed with you, he bought you a whole flower shop."

I gripped my phone so tight that it dug into my skin, because my mind was still somewhat telling me I would receive a call from Michael any given second now and it was terrifying. How did he get my number? Who did he ask for my number?

One of the employees--Jade, the lady behind the counter had called her--came back with a single flower wrapped up in a sheet of brown parchment. I twisted the hair tie around my fingers as I looked at it, at the huge rose, even though it wasn't really like a rose. It was big and frilly and just so...so beautiful.

"Juliet Roses are pretty rare and Ivy and Co. happens to be the only shop within the whole state who sells them." The ginger lady came back and smiled at me, at the expression on my face probably, and placed the rose on the counter right before Nico and me. "You're pretty lucky you came by before this last one was sold away."

"You don't say," Nico muttered, still half-buried beneath his hoodie. "This is amazing. We need the name of the admirer, ma'am. You have to understand, this is like a life or death situation now."

"Didn't they leave any sort of contact detail or anything before they made the order?" I asked her before she could've said anything to Nico.

"Just the email address." She said, trailing a finger over the binder, and looking down at it. "There is also a house address."

The address was of a penthouse, unfamiliar and way on the outskirts of town. Not that it mattered. I didn't know what I was to do with a house address and an email ID. There was the tinkling chime behind us once again and I looked over to see an employee walking past the doors with a big bushy styrofoam bouquet in each hand. Bouquet of red roses.

I think my reaction wasn't very much of a poker face since Nico elbowed me. "What did the roses ever do to you?"

"So." The lady continued with a polite, and a little confused, smile. "If you can confirm the delivery address one last time, we'll make sure to hand-deliver it all in two working days. I've got a few samples at hand and you can return with them for now, if you want?"

I stared at her. "Delivery address?"

She nodded and pointed at something on the binder. When I looked down at it, I noticed my parent's house address printed on the receipt. I gripped the counter, shaking my head. "That is a bad idea."

Nico snickered.

The lady looked confused.

"That's not...my address." I didn't have a place for hundreds of sunflower bouquets! I couldn't have them in my dorm and I couldn't let them deliver them to my parent's house. My mother would quite possibly kill me. "This is my old house address. I'm looking for a, um, apartment currently. I haven't found one yet."

Nico pressed his face on the cool counter and I tried to ignore the way his shoulders shook.

"Oh, I understand." The lady was so polite and I felt bad for lying. "We can keep your order on hold for now until you confirm the delivery address, ma'am. The payment's been done, however, so I hope you let us know soon enough?"

The payment. The fucking payment. I didn't want to know how much this must've cost. Why would anyone in their right mind spend so much money on me?

By the time Nico and I left the shop, with me carrying a bunch of sunflowers and a pretty Juliet Rose in my hands, the traffic on the roads had somewhat doubled. Nico blew out the longest of sighs. "I cannot believe somebody bought you a whole fucking flower shop. If Brooke were here, I know she'd be screaming and jumping around us right now."

My heart panged at her name and I looked down at one of the sunflowers peeking up at me. I took a small, discreet sniff and was rewarded with a...sunflowery scent.

"At first I thought it could be Soren." He added, sounding inquisitive. "But no, he's too much of a dick to pull such a...stupidly thoughtful move."

"It's not stupid."

"I know." He sighed again. "It's romantic. Even for a dark, cursed soul like mine."

"I'm scared because I have no idea who did this." I clutched the flowers a little tighter as we walked. "People don't just buy me flowers, Nico." Except for Michael and his had only been to mock me, forever remind me.

"Maybe it was your parents and they wanted to let you know that you've been a sweet little child all year round."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that my mother hated buying me things. Let alone something as sweet and thoughtful as flowers. If she was buying me anything, it was mostly just out of a sense of obligation. "My mom hates flowers. So does my stepdad, actually. Making sure the gardens are tamed enough is a chore my mom hires a gardener for."

Nico stopped and stared at me. "You have a stepdad."

"I do."

He punched me in the arm. "Ow." I pouted, stepping away from him as I cradled my sunflowers.

"All of a sudden, your life sounds interesting, Alice. I always thought you were boring."

I tried not to smile. "Is this like, the moment you tell me we're best friends?"

He rolled his eyes. "You look like a sunflower." And he said it like it was an insult. It wasn't.

I looked down at the yellow and blue flannel shirt I was wearing and hugged the sunflowers closer, grinning at him. Nico looked over and gagged. I laughed and the remaining tension left my shoulders.

•••

When I came back to my dorm (I'd only just received a few stares from my fellow dorm neighbors), I made myself busy finding the flowers in my hands a new home.

A temporary new home, by the looks of the fallen petals already on the floor near my feet.

I rummaged around for a water bottle and found one in my bag before draining it and cutting it in half. There was a pretty blue bird perched on my closed window, which I noticed as I filled the bottom part of the bottle with water and placed it on my side table. The sunflowers went in the water.

And the Juliet Rose went to Brooke's empty side table. I smiled sadly because this was the first new thing in weeks, the first new change at Brooke's empty side of the room.

I sat down on her bed, her kempt bed, and phoned her. It went to voicemail like it had been doing for weeks now.

"Hey, Brooke," I murmured, knowing she probably won't listen to it like all the other voicemails I'd left her. She hadn't replied to a single one. "I miss you. I'm sorry if I...I made you think you had to go away. You know I am sorry, don't you? Please come back. Or maybe just call me and let me know you're doing okay? I promise I won't--"

There was a beep and the voicemail ended. I sighed and looked over at the sunflowers on my bedside table.

They seemed to be the only bright thing in the whole entire room. The only bright, lively thing within the dark, gloomy air around me.

I shuddered and fell on the bed, on my back, and closed my eyes, wondering what I would do with the rest of the flowers that were apparently ordered and bought under my name, for me. The ones I'd left back at Ivy and Co.