Oh no nonnie. I imagine he spent… quite a bit of time Just Super Casually Happening to pick out white roses, which…. what do they mean?
“Early tradition used white roses as a symbol for true love, an association which would later become the hallmark of the red rose. Also known as the bridal rose, the white rose is a traditional wedding flower. In this sense, white represents unity, virtue, and the pureness of a new love.”
0/10 for hiding your feelings, Frank. No effort was made.
Now that he’s decided he needs to know more about this mysterious Micro, whatsoever the fuck he wants or what he could be up to, Frank is well aware that there’s only one place – one person, really – who he can absolutely trust to do that and keep it quiet. Actually talking to her is going to be a little more difficult, given that she either thinks he’s dead or wishes he was, given what she said to him the last time they were face to face, in the woods with Schoonover while he was dragging the bastard into the shed. He definitely isn’t going back to her apartment, since she might actually shoot him. He’ll have to meet her on the street somewhere, where she just happens to walk, and he’ll need some way of communicating with her. He could just get a burner phone. You can buy one with cash in any number of sleazy pawn shops. But Frank knows that this is a reach, that he has a lot to implicitly apologize for, and – well. Maybe he’d kinda like her to be happy to see him. He sure as shit doesn’t know if she will be, but still.
That is how he has found himself lurking around a bodega (a real one, not a yuppified nightmare, though everything is still overpriced) with six minutes to go until closing and the owner throwing him increasingly aggravated looks. Frank is dressed like a hobo, for starters, and has a full beard, which makes him look like a homeless guy bumming in here in hopes that someone will take pity on him and buy him a sandwich. Either that or they think he’s a hipster here to complain that they don’t have enough quinoa or what-fuckin-ever. He should pick something out and make his goddamn exit, in other words. PDQ.
Frank scans the shelves, trying to think what, exactly, you get the woman who is your… well, he has no idea what to call Karen. He’s thought about her on and off ever since all that shit went down on the rooftop with Red and the ninjas (really, ninjas? Jesus Christ, this city needs help). He’s pretty sure she saw him standing on the parapet, and… well, she didn’t grab a can of hairspray and a lighter and try to blast him off it, right? That was a good sign?
“Hey, asshole,” someone says. “You’re standing in front of the peanut butter.”
Frank jerks up, gives them a withering look, and takes two far-too-deliberate steps to the left, to allow them to get the goddamn peanut butter. This brings him into eye level with the boxes of chocolates, which he thinks about getting, but you can’t really Forrest Gump your way into secret messages with that shit, and he doesn’t know if Karen is a chocolate person. Women like chocolate, right? He could get her one anyway. God, he really hopes she doesn’t call the cops, instant she sets eyes on him. That’d be a downer.
“Sir,” the owner says. “We close soon, okay?”
“Sure, yeah.” Fuck it, he’s desperate. “Hey, so I’m gonna see this woman tomorrow, and I haven’t seen her in a while, and she’s probably still a little pissed at me. What do I do?”
The owner blinks, clearly not expecting to dish out relationship advice to the less fortunate of New York’s citizens (least, so far as he knows) but gamely takes it on. “Ladies, they like flowers, yes? You get her flowers?”
Flowers, Frank thinks. Part of him has to admit, he wants to either way. The owner is eager to get rid of him, and hovers at his elbow to guide him over to the fresh-cut bouquets they have. “What did you do?” he asks. “How bad to make up for, exactly?”
Frank isn’t sure he needs to explain that in detail. “Bad enough. So what?”
“Roses are nice,” the owner says. “We have roses.”
Roses, Frank supposes. Sure. He’s an old-fashioned guy, believes in that sort of shit, you treat a woman nice and you give her flowers, hold the door and whatever else. Maria’s favorite were peonies, but he somehow wants to get Karen something a little different, and his eye lands on a bouquet of white roses. He recalls vaguely something about them being a symbol of innocence, purity, rebirth. Karen isn’t an angel, isn’t some spotless saint gazing down on him from on high – their souls know each other, he knows there’s something dark in her, something lurking, even as there is in him. But in comparison, she is radiant. She shines. Like he’d do anything to catch even a bit of that light, and stay.
“Yeah,” Frank says. “Yeah, these’ll do.”
He takes them to the front, pays, and is chivvied out the door as the owners lock it behind him. He shoves it in his backpack and tries to think of something that will guarantee Karen to talk to him. He knows the route she takes to work, so maybe if he sat along it, posed as a homeless guy, asked for some change… well, she’ll give it to him. That’s just her. She’d stop and open her wallet and give him a little money for lunch, and then…
Probably not the most idiot-proof plan he’s ever come up with, Frank thinks. Then again, he’s the only idiot it concerns, and he’ll take it from there.
God.
God, he can’t wait to see her again.
hello! i have a prompt if you would like it – so frank decided to give karen a potted plant as a communication tool. he picked up a potted rose bush, thought “this will do” and threw it in his backpack. i was wondering if you could write that thought process out because objectively that’s hysterical to imagine, and i’d love to see how you would have it play out
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