As I was contemplating FFF this month, I was also sorting through old images... then I had a flashback memory to a story about flowers that I posted here some years back. There are lots of new readers now, so here it is getting a slight revamp and re-run.

Friday's Flowers

Erith stood and stared at the vase of decaying roses.

Here she was on a Sunday night, trying to get herself together in preparation for work tomorrow. It was the same thing every weekend. Until this moment, though, she hadn't understood that it was her own fault.

Hardy was just so… gorgeous! An Adonis. Action Man personified. There he was at her door every Friday evening, red roses in hand, a bottle of bubbly and a plan for some wilderness adventure that would also involve a lot of frisky physical exploration. It was an adrenaline boost on all levels, and she was hooked. The man seemed to have no end to his energy.

Then it would all be over. He'd drop her back at the flat by six o'clock Sunday evening, rarely more than five minutes adrift. She could only recall one event that caused this scheduling of Hardy's to become unstuck. A flat tyre is a flat tyre, and every car will get one at some stage.

Hardy, though, was beside himself. Not only the timetable became unstable that day.

Erith shuddered as she remembered the dark cloud that seemed to descend. As this had occurred only a few weeks into the romance, she had never dared to test out the possibilities that she would have liked, such as "Do you think, Hardy, that we might extend until seven this evening?" or the giant leap of "Hardy, would you stay over at my place on Sunday?". Something always held her back from this.

It was now six months into the relationship, and no variation at all. Was it even a relationship? This thought sprung upon her today, and she blamed Peter for setting this doubt in her mind.

Peter "Plumply" as she liked to tease her co-worker and not-so-secret admirer. Not that he was actually that plump. Well, not at all, really. He had a pleasantly round face which tended to give that effect. Not the chiselled tautness of Hardy's.

Peter had, for eighteen months, been bringing Erith a single Gerbera every Monday morning to put on her desk. He would bring a bag of chocolates to share with all others in the office, but only one flower arrived. He would tease her about Hardy at first. Why she even told him about her boyfriend, she wasn't sure. She and Peter certainly had an easy rapport during office hours, and they were equally at ease during parties or outside events. She knew he was soft on her, but he never pressed the issue or made a fool of himself - or her.

The latter thing started to bring a thorn into their contact. Peter had begun, a few weeks prior, to get more vocal about Hardy, claiming that she was actually making an idiot of herself. Finally, a month back, he let fly at her.

"Can't you see Erith? The bloke brings you end-of-week store-bought roses that don't last two days, takes you out of your environment, uses you to his full satisfaction and drops you like a dead petal before racing back to whatever life he has elsewhere. Do you even know what he actually does? Then here you are on Monday, exhausted, out of sorts and living only for Friday again, sending messages he never returns. He's some kind of pathetic automaton, and you…! You're no different from those Friday flowers, stuck in the same old vase and left to wilt!"

Erith had been aghast. Then, when no more gerberas came her way, she felt a stabbing inside that she could not understand.

The weekly, homegrown gerbera brought to her on Monday and still standing by Friday. The weekly, lovingly tended gerbera, which was then taken back by the giver to be added to the compost, there to nurture more of its kind. She missed those gerberas. She missed her supportive, caring, concerned Peter and hated that he now kept his back to her.

To hide his own pain, she realised, as her heart shrivelled within her.

"Ooohhh!" Erith cried out loud. Grabbing her telephone, she left one last message for Hardy, then wiped his number from the speed dial. Next, she grabbed the Friday flowers and put them into an old metal tray, setting light to them. They burned well, and the ashes fitted neatly into a matchbox. She wrapped this up in white paper and wrote 'sorry' across the top, dropping this into her handbag before going to bed.

On the way to work in the morning, she stopped to buy some gerbera seedlings.