There was a sharp ‘tap tap tap’ on her window, and she drew a breath in sharply. Tilly very rarely left the house, save for her one hour a day to sit with her book while she ate her lunch in her car in the parking lot of the grocery store around the corner from her apartment. She worked for a market research firm entering survey results from home, which was perfect for her because it meant that she never had to interact with anyone at all save for the odd email exchange with her manager or a colleague. Something about the lunch hour ritual in her car, with her book, brought her tremendous peace. It was as if she were a normal, functioning member of society, taking her lunch break like everyone else. Plus, sometimes ordering a latte at the drive thru was the only time that she spoke for days on end. It was good to be sure that her voice still worked.

With a deep impending sense of dread, she turned her head ever so slightly in the direction of her driver’s side window. The most handsome man that she had ever seen in real life was standing outside of her window, visibly freezing as the Minneapolis winter wind whipped around him, holding a rather impressive bouquet of deep, crimson red roses. He had the most unbelievable piercing blue eyes.

Tilly lowered her book ever so slightly and looked at him expectantly over the top of her glasses. What could this beautiful man possibly want from her? She watched a lot of Dateline, and this guy had serial killer written all over him. Nobody with good intentions had eyes that blue. Unsure of what to say, she said nothing at all; just continued to stare blankly back at him. He was very handsome, for a serial killer.

He gestured downwards, indicating that he wanted her to roll her window down, and against her better judgement, she wordlessly lowered the window about 4 inches. Just enough to hear him, not enough for him to get his arm in the car.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly, “I… I got these for… well, I guess I just wanted you to have these,” he lifted the lavish bouquet up slightly with a sheepish shrug of his shoulders.

Tilly felt her brow furrow instinctively. What in the hell? She continued to stare at him, willing him to just walk away. To deem her “too much work” to interact with, like so many thousands of other people had before him. But he didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“It’s uh… kinda cold out here! Do you mind unrolling your window so that I can give you these?”

She looked him up and down one more time. She thought about speaking but could sense that she had some phlegm build-up in her throat. A quick mental review of her last 48 hours told her that she had not spoken a single word since this time two days ago, when she had ordered her latte. She remained silent.

After what felt like an eternity, the man smiled, his cheeks flushed pink from the biting cold air. When he spoke, he spoke a little bit louder, as if her hearing was the problem,

“Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ve done enough of that… I just… wanted to make someone happy.” He paused, and when she didn’t move a muscle, he awkwardly stooped down and laid the flowers on the ground outside of her driver’s side door.

“I’ll go now, I’m sorry to bother you.” He started away from her car, and then turned around over his shoulder, “I hope…I hope you have a really good day.” And as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone, striding briskly around the corner of the supermarket and out of sight.

Tilly rolled her window the rest of the way up to seal out the cold, and tentatively peered over the edge of her driver’s side door. It really did appear that a crazy, albeit beautiful, man had just laid a lush bouquet of deep red roses on the icy pavement outside of her car door in the supermarket parking lot because she had refused to roll down her car window. She looked around to see if anybody else had noticed this completely bizarre interaction, but nobody paid her any mind, families bustling in and out of the supermarket with their carts loaded, children in tow. That was familiar to Tilly. Nobody ever paid her any mind.

Tilly took intense pleasure and solace in being alone, preferably with her books where she could slip into another world for a time. For over a decade, she had wanted friends more than anything in the world and she had worked hard to make that a reality for herself. She had gotten down on her knees and prayed for a social circle every night before bed. Closed her eyes and wished every time that her gaze landed on 11:11 on a clock, every time that she blew out the candles on a birthday cake. More practically, she had made the plans, sent the messages, attended the social events. She had even tried online dating for a brief and horrific moment. But it was simply not to be.

Most likely it was her fault. Everybody else seemed to have no trouble navigating the raging minefield that was friendship. And while many people had been friendly to her over the years, floating in and out of her life like snowflakes in the Minneapolis winter wind; nobody stayed. She was tolerable enough to say good morning to, perhaps a comment about the weather, but never palatable enough for anyone to really know. Never someone that another person would voluntarily choose to spend their time with.

Somewhere along the line, the sting of rejection, unrelenting self-loathing and exhaustion had become so desperately unbearable that she had given up the frantic swim upstream the raging river that was social interaction. She had slowly melted back into the social safety net of exclusively her parents’ company. And she had been so much happier that way.  

Something about spending time with her parents, as she had almost solely done for many years, had given her a cool and calm sense of ease and relief. She had never had to work for their love and acceptance, she could simply come home to rest in it. If social interaction was an agitated battle to swim against the current upstream, then time with her parents was the gentle downstream flow; effortless, beautiful, and comfortable. Try as she might, she had never been successful at replicating the sense of ease with any other human being.  It was as if the unrelenting dialogue that tormented her from the inside out, jeering every step that she took throughout her life, had been silenced. Anyone that would do her harm, be it from the inside or the outside, had been powerless before the towering, unconditional love of her parents. But then, they had died.

She had to chew an extra couple of times on her sandwich to swallow the bite around the lump in her throat, and she paused to take a drink from her water bottle.

It was shameful, wasn’t it? Downright embarrassing, really. A grown woman being so attached to her parents? She logically knew that she was supposed to grow up and get on with building her own life. It had been nearly 3 years since her parents passed away within 6 months of each other, and by all reasonable measures, she should have been progressing in her grief by now. But Tilly was frozen in exact time and space to the day that they had left. 3 years later, and she still missed them desperately; so much that it physically hurt her, as if she had gone for days without eating, and her stomach was eating away at itself, hollowing itself out all the way to her backbone. If anything, the grief intensified with every passing day.

It was the most painful dichotomy, similar, she imagined, to the impossible contract that you sign when choosing to love an animal, or watch the Titanic. Where there is great love, there too is inevitably great loss. And the ending was always the same. Barring any atrocities that upset the natural order of things, you will have to say goodbye to your beloved pet. No matter how many times you watch the damn movie, the boat will most certainly sink. And you should outlive your parents too.

She turned her head back towards her driver’s side window, her eyes blurred over with tears. Oh yea. The fucking flowers.

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