The afternoon sun filtered through the greenhouse windows in golden streams, catching on the dewdrops clinging to the ferns I'd just misted. Friday afternoons were always like this—quiet, peaceful, the kind of slow that let me lose myself in the work. I was adjusting the display of potted violets near the register, making sure each bloom faced outward at just the right angle, when the bell above the door chimed.

This was my favorite part of the job, really. Not the customer service—God, never the customer service—but this. The arranging, the caring, the way I could coax a wilting petunia back to life with the right amount of water and a whispered encouragement that no one else was around to hear. I'd been working at Hartley's Flowers and Garden Supply since I was sixteen, and in the four years since, I'd transformed the place from a dusty shop with half-dead inventory into something I was genuinely proud of. Mrs. Hartley always said I had a gift, but I think it was more like devotion. Plants didn't judge you. They didn't care if you stumbled over your words or if your hands shook when you had to make small talk. You gave them what they needed, and they flourished. Simple. Honest. I didn't look up right away at the bell. In a town this small, you develop a sixth sense about these things. I knew everyone who walked through that door—had known them my whole life, actually. That was the beauty of Heartopia. Population: 2,347. No surprises. No strangers appearing out of nowhere to catch you off guard. Mrs. Chen would be in later for her weekly carnations. Mr. Hoffmann was due for his succulent browse. This was probably Sarah coming by early for her mother's arrangement.

"Be right with you," I called out, tucking one last violet leaf into place. My fingers were gentle, practiced. I'd learned early on that you had to treat delicate things with patience, never forcing them into position but guiding them where they needed to be.

When I finally turned around, my rehearsed greeting died somewhere in my throat. The person standing in the doorway was a stranger. My brain stuttered over that fact like a scratched record. A stranger. In Heartopia. In my shop. Looking right at me.

And they were—I felt heat creeping up my neck, spreading across my cheeks in what I knew was a mortifying blush—they were stunning. The kind of beautiful that made you forget what you were doing, made the whole world tilt slightly off its axis. Afternoon light haloed around them like they'd walked straight out of some painting I couldn't afford to see in a museum three towns over.

This was exactly the kind of situation I'd spent my entire life avoiding.

My hand flew up automatically, some useless instinct to smooth down my fuzzy hair or straighten my collar or do something to make myself more presentable, and that's when I remembered. The ears. The ridiculous, fuzzy tiger ears perched on my headband that I wear because little Emma Hoffmann giggles every time she sees them, because they make the children smile when their parents bring them in, because in a town where I'd known every customer since childhood, there was no one left to be embarrassed in front of.

Except now there was.

I could feel my face burning hotter, that awful prickly sensation crawling down my spine. My fingers found the edge of my green gardening apron—the one with the embroidered daisies that Mrs. Chen's daughter had made for my birthday last year, the one that had seemed charming this morning—and I gripped it like it might somehow shield me from this moment. I was acutely aware of everything wrong: the soil probably smudged on my cheek, the way my hair never sat quite right, how my frame was too bulky and awkward in a way I'd never grown out of, how I was twenty years old and wearing tiger ears like a child.

The stranger's eyes meet mine, and I realize, I’m staring. I’m staring, frozen like a deer in headlights, wearing tiger ears, in an apron covered in daisies.