I Wish for Love and Got Him

Zara's Pov; The heat woke me before the sun did. I lay in my bed staring at the slow turn of the ceiling fan, its blades slicing through air that already felt too thick to breathe. July in Seaport Blossom always arrived like this, sudden, heavy, and unforgiving. By the time I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my oversized T-shirt was already clinging to my back. I padded barefoot across the creaky wooden floor of my apartment above the shop. The window was open a c***k; even at this hour the breeze coming off the ocean carried no relief, only salt and the faint smell of low tide. Downstairs, the flowers would be waiting for me, some already drooping in their buckets from yesterday’s heat. I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror and paused. My curls had frizzed overnight into a wild halo, and my hazel eyes looked bruised from another night of shallow sleep. I am thirty-two years old and I still don't recognize the woman staring back sometimes. Not since the accident. Not since everything fractured. I splashed cold water on my face, tied my hair back with a faded blue scarf, and pulled on the lightest sundress I owned, a pale green linen that skimmed my knees. I am sure it will be soaked by noon anyway. The narrow staircase from my apartment spilled directly into the back room of Blossom & Tide, my little flower shop. I unlocked the door at the bottom and stepped into the shop. The air here was cooler, thick with the perfume of hundreds of flowers. Lilies, roses, and hydrangeas in every shade of blue the ocean could dream up. Buckets lined the walls, spills of color against the white shiplap. The sunlight slanted through the big bay window, painting gold stripes across the worn wooden floor. I moved on autopilot. Turning on the record player in the corner is an old habit. Billie Holiday’s voice filled the space, low and smoky, singing about love that slipped through fingers like water. I started trimming stems, stripping lower leaves, and filling fresh water. My hands knew this work better than anything else. Flowers didn’t ask questions. They didn’t judge. They just opened or closed depending on how you treated them. But today my fingers felt clumsy. I snapped a sunflower stem too short. The bright head tumbled to the floor and rolled under the worktable. I just left it there. Outside, the town was waking up. I heard the distant clatter of the breakfast crowd at the Driftwood Café, the laughter of children already heading to the beach with boogie boards under their arms. Tourists in straw hats drifted past my window, peering in at the displays. A couple paused to take a photo of the buckets of dahlias spilling over the sidewalk. They smiled at each other the way people do when they’re still new and everything feels possible. I looked away. The morning dragged on. A few regulars came in—Mrs. Langston for her weekly lilies, a teenage boy nervously buying a single red rose for someone he clearly adored. I wrapped, I smiled, I made small talk about the weather. Inside, the same hollow ache sat heavy behind my ribs. By midday, the heat had turned brutal. I flipped the sign to CLOSED for lunch, even though I rarely ate. I just needed the quiet. I sat on the stool behind the counter with a glass of iced hibiscus tea, condensation dripping onto my wrist, and stared at nothing. It is July 1st. The calendar on the wall mocked me with its bright red circle around the date. One year ago tomorrow would mark the exact anniversary. July 2nd last year I’d woken up in a hospital bed with tubes in my arm and no memory of how I got there. They told me later there had been a crash. That I’d been drinking. That someone else hadn’t made it. I remembered the party in flashes only, the bonfire on the beach, music thumping, too many plastic cups of something sweet and strong. After that, nothing until the hospital lights. I set the glass down harder than I meant to. Tea sloshed over the rim. I couldn’t stay inside any longer. The walls felt too close, the flower scents suddenly cloying. I grabbed the half-empty bottle of rosé I’d opened two nights ago and headed out the back door to the small brick courtyard. The fire pit sat in the center, ringed by three Adirondack chairs no one ever used. Overgrown jasmine climbed the fence, dropping white petals onto the bricks like confetti no one had bothered to clean up. I sank into one of the chairs, the wood hot against my thighs, and uncorked the bottle. The sun beat down. Cicadas screamed in the trees. I drank straight from the bottle and let the alcohol burn away the edges of the day. Sometime after six, the heat finally began to ease. The sky turned soft peach and lavender. I gathered kindling from the pile under the eaves—dry driftwood and newspaper, and built a small fire. The flames caught quickly, snapping and popping. That’s when I remembered the stationery. I bought it on impulse last week at the Page bookstore. Thick pale blue paper, deckle edges, the kind meant for important things. I’d told myself it was for thank-you notes to customers. This is a lie I told myself. I went upstairs and dug the pack out of the drawer. Back in the courtyard, I sat cross-legged on the warm bricks, bottle beside me, pen in hand. The first line took forever. Dear Fate, I wrote it, then stared at the words until they blurred. I almost laughed at how ridiculous it looked. But the laugh caught somewhere in my throat and came out sounding more like a sob. I kept writing anyway. I’m tired. Tired of waking up alone every morning and going to bed alone every night. Tired of pretending I don’t want what everyone else seems to find so easily. I want someone who looks at me like I’m worth staying for. Someone who sees past the quiet and the careful smiles to the parts I don’t show anyone. Someone whose hand fits mine like it was always meant to. I want true love before this month ends. The kind that doesn’t vanish when things get hard. The kind that chooses me back. Please. Zara Ellison I read it over once. My cheeks burned. It sounded desperate, childish, impossible. For a long moment, I hovered over the fire, ready to crumple the page and let it go up in smoke without ceremony. Instead, I folded it carefully—once, twice, three times, into a small, neat square. Then I leaned forward and placed it gently on the burning logs. The edges browned, curled. Blue ink vanished as flames licked across the words. A sudden updraft caught the sparks, sending them swirling high into the darkening sky like tiny orange stars. I watched until the last fragment turned to ash. The rosé was gone by then. I stayed by the dying fire until the coals glowed dull red, and until the courtyard filled with the soft hum of night insects and the distant hush of waves. My skin smelled of smoke and salt. I felt scraped raw, but strangely lighter, as if I’d finally admitted something out loud that had been eating me from the inside. Eventually, I stood, legs stiff, and went upstairs. I showered off the day, pulled on the same old oversized T-shirt, and crawled into bed. The fan spun lazy circles above me. Through the open window came the rhythmic crash of the ocean and the low, steady song of summer nights. I was drifting toward sleep when a breeze moved across my skin—cooler than the others, carrying a scent I couldn’t place. Clean. Salty. Like the air right after a storm passes over the sea. It was gone as quickly as it came. I turned my face into the pillow and let the darkness take me. I didn’t hear the soft, solitary chime of the bell downstairs long after midnight. I didn’t see the coals in the fire pit flare once more, bright and brief, before settling into darkness. And I didn’t feel the presence that lingered for just a moment in the alley behind the shop, looking at the window where I slept. Watching me.