My mother's flower shop used to be a dive bar once upon a time, and when she bought it, she kept the name, so the same gold script lettering of The Ordinary was still etched into the front window.

I couldn't remember a time that my mother didn't have The Ordinary, but if I had to guess, it was how she kept busy with my dad being gone all the time. Guys on Coast Guard cutters were away on average 185 days of the year. There were years he'd be home for almost every important holiday, like birthdays and Christmas, but there were years he wasn't. I'd learned to accept my father's transiency a long time ago. Did it impact me negatively? Who the hell knew. I just knew he loved the ocean, and it was why he named me Kai - from the sea.

The little bells on the door handle jingled when I walked into the shop, and I was instantly greeted by a blast of cold air. We were always slow in the mornings, so I didn't expect to see any customers, but my mother was nowhere to be found.

"Mom?" I called as I weaved my way further into the shop, the cement floor still damp with puddles from the morning sprinklers.

"Back here," she called from the back office behind the register. I snaked my way around shelves of orchids and vines of Boston fern that hung from the ceiling. Mom kept the back office neater and tidier than a hospital should be, which meant I didn't dare step foot past the threshold of the door. I'd sneeze and turn the place upside down. She looked up at me from a pile of papers on her oakwood desk, her dark eyes narrowed at me over the rim of her glasses. Her expression softened in an instant, and she returned to the papers.

They say moms have bullshit radar, but it never stopped me from dicking around, mostly because she never let on what she knew...or didn't.

"I'm going to be back here most of the day just going over some month end stuff for the books," she said, shuffling through more files. "You can handle the front for now, right?"

"Yeah, sure," I croaked out, my jaw numb and my words heavy. I needed ice water, and about 100 milligrams of modafinil before I passed out.

On my way back to the front of the shop, I picked up a lone rose from the floor that had fallen off its stem and tucked it behind my ear. Flowers had been part of my life since I was little, and I stopped caring a long time ago how un-masculine it made me. Flowers were also the first thing I truly learned to draw, and I remember sitting in the corner of the shop on a stool when I was 7 or 8 during summer break from school, watching my mom make bouquets and clutching my little sketchbook in my grubby hands. When I graduated from doodling in sketchbooks to oil painting, and playing in the sandbox turned into smoking behind the coffee shop, I still painted flowers. I needed anything that brought color into my gray haze of a life.

At this point, I just hoped the rose would hide the fact that I smelled like death warmed over, but I still drew flowers when I was bored, and I kept a sketchbook tucked away in the bar-turned-register at the back of the shop. I learned not to think too much when I sketched - sometimes I didn't even look at the page, I just let my hand do what it felt like. I had the outlines of a few roses before I realized I was drawing the silhouette of a girl - long hair made of threads of gold, and eyes as big and as bright as the sun.

The bells on the front door jingled, and when I looked up, I was staring right at my own sketch come alive. A pair of round Ray Ban sunglasses sat perched on her head, and those same bright blue eyes stared right back.

"Oh hey, it's the boy who sleeps on beaches." She brushed her hands over a few of the ferns that hung from the ceiling as she walked further into the shop. I stammered and quickly slammed my sketchbook shut, jamming it onto a shelf under the bar.

This was karma, telling me I was a shit person.

"Can you keep it down?" I hissed at her through my teeth. "I don't need the whole world knowing."

She looked me up and down, and suddenly I felt like I was burning up, despite the icy color of her eyes. She gave me a half smile, giving me a glimpse of perfect, brilliant white teeth. The kind that people in commercials for dentists had.

"So, I take it when you're not asleep on the beach, you work here?" she asked, and there was genuine curiosity in her voice past the playful smirk she wore.

"I mean I don't wear flowers in my hair because they bring out my eyes." I shrugged.

"Hey, I wouldn't judge you." She smiled wider at me, and it wasn't a coy or devious smile. She smiled like she meant it. "Anyway, maybe you can help me."

I barked out a laugh. "I've been told I'm pretty useless, but I could try."

If she thought I was being somewhat serious, she didn't show it. She half-heartedly laughed and kept smiling at me.

"Well, I'm not really a plant person." She turned away from me, giving me a breather from the heat of her gaze. She brushed her hand over a small eucalyptus plant, smiling down at it like it was a puppy or something. "I kill everything green I touch. But I figured I'm in a new place, might as well try something new. Plus, my aunt has me stashed in this bland, eggshell white guest room in her condo and I'm not allowed to paint the walls, so I need some color."

"So...you're not from around here?" I returned that half-smile she gave me, and when she looked back at me, she lit up.

"Native New Yorker." She pulled a leaf off of the eucalyptus, and it made me wince. "My whole world ended at the Hudson...until about two weeks ago, anyway."

"Oh yeah," I rolled my eyes at her. "That explains the whole talking fast and with your hands thing. Plus, you're wearing black in May."

I jerked my head at the leather jacket she had casually draped over her shoulders. Effortlessly cool in a way I could never even hope to be.

"So what?" she fired back. "I wear black all year round."

"Not here you won't." I shook my head. "Here's a tip from an island native: Summer starts in April and ends in November. It might get hot in New York, but you're on the edge of the map here. The sun hits you differently, and trust me, you'll feel it."

"Spoken like a true islander." By now she had taken the tiny pot with the eucalyptus in it and clutched it to her chest, almost as if she was afraid it would run away if she didn't hold onto it. "You can hear it in your voice too, ya know."

I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Hear what?"

"That subtle southern twang you try to hide so you sound more educated." Honesty like that normally felt sharp, but not from her. She was all sweet and soft and everything I wasn't used to. "But when you're used to hearing people pronounce things like cawfee and wudder, it's pretty obvious."

I leaned back against the bar and crossed my arms over my chest. "So, what else do you think you've got figured out about me?"

I wasn't smooth or charming by any means, but sometimes my apathy and general lack of interest in life worked to my advantage, including the ability to keep my cool around girls. But not her. She had me burning up, and I found myself more interested in her after only knowing her for a collective 30 minutes than anyone else I'd known for years. When she smiled back at me, it was like a fire that outlasted all the rain in my life.

"Well..." she took a step closer to me, and she smelled just as sweet as she sounded. "I bet that smile of yours gets you whatever you want."

When she said it like that, I couldn't stop my lips from curling up into a smile. Aloofness gone. I was sure the color of my cheeks matched the rose still tucked behind my ear.

"That depends, does it get your name?" I asked.

Without missing a beat, she extended her hand to me. "AJ."

My hands were nowhere near as soft and warm as hers, but she still smiled when I took her hand in mine. "Kai."

She beamed at me, and for a moment it was silent, but not an awkward kind of silence. The kind of silence you share with someone that you tell all your secrets too. Except she was the kind of girl that was too pure for all my secrets, and it made my chest burn.

"You uh...you look like you've taken a liking to that eucalyptus." I gestured to the pot in her hands.

"Oh, yeah it's cute and it smells nice."

I chuckled and shook my head. "Alright, well if you cut some off and hang it in your shower, the steam will release the oils from the plant. It's supposed to clear your sinuses and have anti-inflammatory properties."

A look of shock flashed across her face, as if she didn't actually think I'd know anything about plants despite working in a flower shop, but was quickly replaced by that sweet smile. "I'll keep that in mind. And um..."

AJ gestured up to the rose behind my ear. "Can I have one of those too?"

I reached up and plucked the flower from my head, twirling the stem between my fingers. "You can have this one. Bury it in sand overnight and it'll preserve it. That way even you can't kill it."

She gingerly took the rose from me and placed it in the pot with the eucalyptus. "How much do I owe you?"

I shook my head. "Nah, don't worry about it. Consider it your northerner transplant discount."

"Thank you." For once her words came out slowly, and they dripped off her lips like honey. "I guess...I'll see you around. Maybe next time you'll actually show me that drawing you were working on."

Heat tore through my body, and by the time her words really registered, she was out the door. I reached back down under the bar and pulled my sketchbook back out, running my fingers over the rough sketched outline of her hair and face. The adrenaline I didn't even realize was coursing through me finally wore off, and I found myself crashing, not just from the high, but back down to reality. Girls like her didn't belong with guys like me. I'd wreck her without even trying.