He'd snuck up on me, this time.

I'd been sitting in bed, suffocating myself with the beautiful ramblings of the internet and drowning in the glory that is Mumford and Sons. This time, he'd knocked; not a single creak in the wood echoing through the apartment, the squeak of his shoes never reaching my ears.

  "Are you there?" he boomed, the smile in his voice all too evident. I sighed – not with enough sorrow and vigour for his presence to be deemed a problem – and found myself at the door, standing, my hands hovering awkwardly beside me.

We'd been talking through the door for weeks, and I still hadn't opened it for him. And here he was, possibly making it clear that the large slab of wood could not be our middle man anymore.

  "I went to this flower place today," he said, tapping his foot against the linoleum floors, "and found some sunflowers. You're literally always talking about them, and I thought —"

My arm shot forward, and in an ephemeral, captivating moment, the door flew open, revealing the shaggy-haired, blue-eyed masterpiece standing awkwardly in the hallway.

  His face nearly came as a shock; the half-moons underneath his eyes more prominent than I'd ever seen them, his lips dry and trembling, his eyes wide and slightly bloodshot and more joyful than I'd ever seen them.

All at once, we collided – his arms securing themselves around my back, mine hurrying for his neck, my face resting in the sacred place I'd found in his between his chin and his collar bone, breathing in his frighteningly sharp, musky, retail-store scent. The same one I'd walked away from not too long ago.

  His breaths came out jagged, and mine didn't at all, somehow building up in my lungs until I couldn't grip him tightly anymore.

"God, I missed you." He whispered into my hair, charming and endearing and so raw that I almost overlooked everything else. Almost.

  And that's when a trace of doubt planted itself within the depths of my mind, watered by a single thought.

You opened your door for flowers, but he'll shut his before the last one wilts away.