Julie still waits for her roses

...And Julie Still Waits for Her Roses

Valentine's Day meant extra customers at the restaurant, and tradition held true. Couple after couple enjoyed a night out. Julie especially loved the married couples of forty years or more, holding hands across the table as they decided what to eat, their wrinkles hardly noticeable from the gleam of such a longevity of satisfaction in their eyes. Out of her coworkers, Becky's husband had flowers delivered. Carol's two boyfriends gave her balloons, she said. Julie quit listening after that.

The exhaustion Julie felt came not solely from the business of the night. In the car, she reflected on those happy faces, knowing someone waited for her at home, with no flowers or candy. Hell, he probably wasn't even awake. He never put importance on anyone's birthday or any holiday, save Christmas. She loved his enthusiasm about Christmas. He tended to be nearly human, then.

Julie parked her heavy-metal car. She liked old cars, their size, and their seeming invulnerability compared to the compacts of the present. The bathroom light kept her from tripping over her son's exercise circle as she slipped in.

Steve slept on the couch, something very, very unusual. He preferred his bed. He looked positively angelic there, his blond hair spread on the pillow and his face relaxed, free of his childhood memories, without its usually rigid features.

Julie walked cautiously, careful not to allow the jingling change in her uniform pockets wake anyone, especially her young son, who slept at the end of the hall. She reached behind herself to untie her apron and leave it in the kitchen in order to stealthily slip into her son's room and smile over him, letting him sleep through her adoration. Love started the same instant she heard him cry, the selfless love of motherhood, the complete and unconditional love she knew existed but never found until his first breath. She cherished that epiphany, always wondering how to apply it to the man who gave the beautiful infant to her.

She placed the apron on the counter and turned to go see her baby, but something on the counter caught her eye, the color dominating her tiny kitchen. Her heart stopped as she counted the roses in the foot-high vase, three dozen, blood red, and her hands shook. She glimpsed back at the couch where Steve slept.

Her hands continued to shake as she reached for the vase and then buried her nose in the first three buds. Oh, the smell. The excitement! For once, she put herself at the tables in the restaurant on the day meant for lovers across the world, and was one! Tears rolled down her face as she took the card off the plastic holder and opened it.

It read: To Veronica, Love Bart. I hope we can work things out.

She dropped the card. As it floated, her heart reached the floor before the card did. The flowers, meant for Julie and Steve's busy neighbor, probably got left with Steve by the delivery guys when Veronica wasn't home.

Julie, unable to look at those flowers, replaced the card, picked up the heavy, heavy vase, and walked them across the apartment hall and put them next to Veronica's door, where they belonged. Veronica usually came in at 3:00 a.m., and Julie didn't expect anyone else in the building before then. God help her, she wanted to be a good neighbor, but those flowers haunted her. No way could she look at them any more. No way.

Steve still slept. Her son slept, too. Julie, fighting tears, changed into a T-shirt and shorts, and crawled into bed, huddling next to the wall, and let those tears go. After a hard night's work and bitter disappointment, the tears stopped only when she went to sleep.

She saw Veronica the next afternoon on her way to do laundry at the apartment complex's four machines, her pocket full of the change from last night's work.

"Hey. Someone brought you flowers, so I put them in front of your door. Did you get them?"

"No."

Julie nearly dropped her basket.

"It was after midnight," she stammered. "I didn't think anyone would come in."

"Who were they from?" Veronica wondered.

"Brad? No. Bart," Julie said. "God, I'm sorry."

She looked relieved. "No big deal," she said. "I don't want anything else from Bart. I don't even want to know what the card said."

"I'm sorry," Julie repeated.

Veronica smiled. "I don't even want to know how many there were." She waved and went inside.

Julie did her laundry, preferring to tend to her young son, avoiding Steve the rest of the evening.
Valentine's Day never brought roses or dinner. Many, many years later, she still waits for her roses.