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hockeyboysiguess · 4 years ago

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sunflowers | m. tkachuk

a/n: today, i offer a humble too long matthew tkachuk fic, full of angst and thoughts about love.

i would like to thank @nolypats, for having a dream that i wrote a fic about? that dream looks nothing like this fic, but that was the og inspiration, and for being so supportive during the writing of this monster. also, @jasondickinsons and @slapshot-to-the-heart for freaking out every time i sent you a preview. never would’ve finished it without these three.

word count: 20K

warnings: swearing, and a ton of angst.

wine pairing recommendation: a full bodied cabernet sauvignon, because this fic is full bodied.

You ran a hand through your hair as you looked at Matthew across your apartment. The mug in your hands felt heavy and the tea inside had gone cold. The look on Matthew’s face when he walked in the front door had made you set it aside and forget about it entirely. He had been nervous, hesitant, his movements almost delayed, like there was too many thoughts swimming in his head for the signals to get down to his muscles at the correct timing. You drummed your nails on the cool ceramic, your fingertips tracing the outline of the sunflower on the mug, as you let out a long breath.

“We literally just-”

“I know,” Matthew cut you off. He stumbled through the next six words, but they stung all the same. “I think this was a mistake.”

It was as if he picked the words right out of your deepest vault of insecurities, sharpened them, then tossed them in your general direction careless, but still wasn’t surprised when they hit their mark. Your shoulders caved in, your body reacting to the weight of the insecurities you had tied to those words in your mind hitting you in the chest. You set your mug on the counter with shaky hands.

“Matthew,” you tried to start, but he just set his blue eyes to the ceiling instead of trying to look at you.

You pressed harder, this time, irritation in his inability to communicate with you boiling over, “You can’t just say something like that then not look at me.”

“Fine.”

His eyes were dead when they rolled back to yours, lifeless, emotionless, almost completely devoid of the person you knew so well that was usually behind them. He looked nothing like the friend you had for the past two years, nothing like the boy who you kissing on his birthday a few months before this terrible moment you were being forced to inhabit, and nothing like the boyfriend you had since that night. He was unrecognizable from the boy you loved, the set in his jaw unsettling you. Matthew had not come over to have a discussion. You could see that now. He was resolved to end this relationship when he walked through your front door. When Matthew Tkachuk’s mind was made up, you had yet to find anything that could redirect his course. You knew you wouldn’t be the first tonight.

“I think we can work on this, if you’ll just talk to me about it.”

The laugh that comes out of his mouth in response to your words made you instantly wish you had never tried. The part of you that had told you to just swallow the breakup he clearly wanted was screaming, “I told you so,” at the top of its lungs. There was no resolution to be had. This relationship was over before he walked in the door, before he walked in the building, before he had gotten in his car. It was over the minute he texted you, curtly informing you he was coming over. Now that your mind was ruminating, the tone of his text felt rough and succinct, like he just wanted to get through it to get to this.

“I think that there’s nothing to work on,” Matthew told you, his tone flat. “I think we were friends, are friends, good friends, and we just starting having feelings because we thought we couldn’t have each other. That whole forbidden fruit thing, right? And we got all mixed up. Sex was great, is great, don’t get me wrong, that kind of chemistry isn’t the problem, but I just don’t think we’re supposed to be together. I think we just got our wires crossed and mixed the chemistry and the friendship up to mean that we’re in love when I just don’t think we are. At best, I think we just had middle school crushes gone off the rails. I don’t think I really have feelings for you and I don’t think you have them for me either. I think that’s why we fight a lot. There’s nothing really here, in all reality, and I think we can both sense it. You know I’m right. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Get. Out.”

You spat the words out with all the venom and anger you felt. It wasn’t until the door shut behind him, not another word spoken in the tense moments it took to cross your kitchen to it, that you felt the pain in your chest. The anger, and the adrenaline that came with it, had disguised it while he was still here. Now, it was just you, in your empty apartment, realizing you not only had to deal with the pieces of yourself left over after Matthew just shattered you, underneath that was the agony of losing a friend. A friend you had come to know so well over coffees and sheet pizzas and margarita pitchers, in parties and houses and parks and arenas. He left with your now ex-boyfriend, because they were one and the same.

All you had was the now tainted memories of him and an even colder cup of tea.

------

You shuffled around your kitchen island, skipping the tea kettle in favor of your trusty slightly rusty coffee pot. This wasn’t a morning tea could handle. None of the mornings since Matthew told you that, in essence, your entire relationship was built on false pretenses and was doomed to fail from the start, had been tea mornings. They’d all be coffee caliber mornings.

Just as the coffee started to drip into the pot, your phone lit up on the counter. It was either your mom or another friend checking on you for what had to be the hundredth time. Your friends had be rotating who would check on you and who would bring you food. They were genuinely worried this break up was making you a bit of a recluse. The problem was, the person that had gotten you out of ever breakup funk you had over the past two years, every bad date, every ghosted text, was the person that caused this one. Your mind unwillingly brought you back to a memory you had been trying to avoid for the last four weeks.

There was a knock on your door. You pulled your sweatshirt sleeves over your hands to wipe your nose and eyes. You would have thought that after two weeks, a whole fourteen days, you would have cried everything out by now. Your body apparently had other ideas and was content to continue to produce tears until you felt better. When that would be? Who could say.

Matthew Tkachuk was trying to have a say about it when he was on the other side of the door you opened. You sighed. You weren’t in the mood for him and his persistence in getting his way.

“I brought donuts, Legally Blonde because my sister said to, and my sparkling personality and I’m not leaving until you smile, eat at least two donuts, and take a shower.”

He pushed his way into your apartment effortlessly. You didn’t consider yourself particularly weak, but there really wasn’t much you could do against Matthew Tkachuk with his mind made up on his side. He kicked his shoes off on the way to your coffee table, dropping the donuts on it before grabbing the TV remote.

“I said I brought Legally Blonde. I meant that I brought my intent to watch it with you. We both know I’m just gonna rent it on your TV for you. I don’t own a DVD player and neither do you,” Matthew said to you as he started pulling up the movie. “Also, I have no idea how to log in to my stuff on this thing because you have a Fire TV instead of an Apple TV like a loser, so I’m just going to Venmo you $3.99 for the rental.”

“Matthew,” you sighed, running a hand through your unwashed hair.

“Yeah, you can’t physically remove me from your couch, so I will not be leaving this apartment,” he informed you. “Watching Legally Blonde on your couch without you and stuffing my face with donuts I’m not supposed to have feels like it would be a pretty low point in my life. Unless you come watch with me and save me from half of these donuts.”

You saved him from half the donuts. He saved your hair from a record eighth day without washing it. You saved him from actually watching the sequel. He saved you from your torturous thought spirals and your tendency to look entirely for mistakes you made and flaws within yourself in lieu of acknowledging that relationships always take two people. He saved you from becoming a recluse that time, pulling you out of your apartment for dinner with him the next day. It was just Chipotle. He said he chose the environment for low social stress, high food volume ratio. You had hit him in the chest and he’d squeezed your hand softly, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss the back of it softly.

“You know he didn’t deserve you, right?” he told you as you waiting in line. “You can and will do a hell of a lot better than him someday, probably sooner than you think.”

“Thanks, Matty.”

Looking back on that memory, you couldn’t find any fondness for it. It just made the dull ache in your chest that had become a permanent resident over the last month transform temporarily in a sharp, stabbing one, before returning to its original form. You poured your coffee, each movement it required felt exhausting. You felt absolutely spent constantly because you were spending all of your energy trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Relationships were a two way street, but you could never drive down the other side, only your own. Matthew’s side, his view of it all, would always be foreign to you, but you could analyze every word, every movement, and every piece of Matthew’s reaction to all of your actions to find what you had done, what you had done to contribute to the car wreck that had caused the pain in your chest. Did you veer too close to him? Did you veer too far? What did you do?

When you get together with a friend, after years of mutual pinning, it’s supposed to work out. Every book, movie, and hell, every other couple you had ever seen that had been great friends first, then started dating, worked out. It always had a happy, romantic comedy kind of ending to it all. Everything was supposed to fall into place the second Matthew kissed you for the first time because friends falling in love felt inevitable in the kind of way that made you believe in predestination, in fated futures. You had come to the conclusion that fate either didn’t exist, or she was a fucking bitch.

“Come here!” Matthew shouted to you across the party when you were less than two steps into his front door. “I want a birthday hug!”

“I literally just got here!” you shouted back, your voice dropping in volume as you got closer to him, bumping your way through the party to get to him in the kitchen. “You couldn’t wait two minutes for me to like, put your gift down and take off my coat? Needy.”

“Ah!” Matthew raised a finger to you and shook it slightly. “It’s not needy when I’m the birthday boy. Hug. Now.”

You rolled your eyes, but tucking yourself willingly into Matthew’s broad chest. He was so warm all the time, but particularly now that he was definitely a few drinks deep and very much enjoying himself here at his party. Matthew always smelled the same, like the slightly too strong laundry detergent scent boosters his mom made him use and spearmint toothpaste. You couldn’t stand the combination at first, but now, pressed into his chest, you felt calm, the stress of the day washing away when you enveloped in him. He pressed a sloppy kiss to the top of your head and gave you an extra squeeze before letting you go.

“Also, you’re late,” he pointed out as he grabbed you a beer from the sink he’d filled with ice in lieu of people going in his fridge.

You took the beer from him after he slammed the top off on the edge of the counter. You chugged about a quarter of it before scrunching your face up and stopping. The first few sips were always the worst, before any of the wondrous affects of alcohol actually kicked in.

“Work,” you told him with a shrug.

Matthew rolled his eyes at you, a common occurrence, and you rolled yours back, and even more common occurrence. He laughed a little at your routine, before he tapped his beer suddenly on the top of yours, making foam rise rapidly, overflowing the bottle. You cursed and shifted your hand over the sink so the foam covered his makeshift cooler instead of the counter, but your hand was a lost cause.

“Matthew,” you groaned, your displeasure heavy in your voice as you shook your hand free of the foam.

Matthew threw his head back and laughed as you rinsed off your hand. When his head lifted, eyes finding yours again, he was met with a glare and the displeased shaking of your head. He smiled lazily, his blue eyes crossing your face to take in your expression.

“You’re cute when you’re pretending to be mad.” His words were a little more connected than they should be, his faint lisp expressing itself more, endearing in a way that cut through your annoyance at him. “I would like to request a birthday, ‘One of my best friend isn’t mad at me anymore,’ pass.”

You rolled your eyes again at him for the second time in minutes, “You’re going to get real annoying with this birthday thing, aren’t you?”

Matthew smiled wryly at you, “Comes once a year. Feel like I should get my money’s worth for the twenty-four hours I can, no?”

You shook your head at him, then took a sip of your beer. You were pretty sure you knew how this night was going to go and after a long day at work, it wasn’t exactly what you had been looking for. But the smile on his face, the curls falling down his forehead, and the fact that you were head over heels for him, meant that even though you hadn’t been looking to get on a rollercoaster today, damn it all to hell if you weren’t going to throw your hands in the air, scream your head off, and enjoy the ride.

“How about,” Matthew slurred slowly at you, “a birthday dance?”

“You could just ask me to dance. I’m used to you stepping on my toes and elbowing me in the face,” you threw back at him.

He faked pain, like you shot him in the chest, a large hand clapped over his heart as he winced. You giggled at his expression, before your laugh made him laugh. Matthew extended the hand on his chest out to you. You sighed before clapping your hand into his open one and letting him pull you toward where a few people were dancing. He spun you into his chest with a tug on your hand, purposefully putting your hands on the back of his neck.

“Odds you step on my toes tonight?”

Your beer bottle tapped between Matthew’s broad shoulders as he slowly started to sway with you, using his hands on your hips, one hand still with two fingers wrapped around his beer, to guide you. He smiled down at you knowingly. You knew the answer to your question before you’d even asked, but Matthew knew you were just teasing him.

“Oh, one-hundred percent,” Matthew told you with a smirk pulling up the corner of his lips. “I should get you steel toes for your birthday.”

“If you can remember when it is,” you laughed as Matthew spun you by your hips, your hands breaking from his neck to allow the spin.

“Don’t doubt me,” Matthew grabbed your wrists with one hand and pulled them against his chest. “I might have had to make it my phone passcode to be sure I don’t forget, but I definitely am not going to forget it.”

“That might just be the cutest thing you’ve ever done in your life, Tkachuk.”

He rolled his eyes and freed your hands, only to wrap his arm around your neck and yank you into his chest where your hands had been moments before. You squealed at the action, which only made him laugh. Matthew was a touchy drunk, but it was the closest you could be to him. These were the moments you could touch him, dance with him, and let yourself feel like the world you lived in was also the world in which he had feelings for you too. But you knew those worlds weren’t the same. The would you lived in was a world full of stolen drunken moments like these and unrequited love.

“Birthday beer?” he asked you, presenting you with the empty bottle you hadn’t realized he’d finished.

“You are really pushing your luck,” you told him.

The smile that came across his face when you grabbed the empty bottle made your heart beat heavier in your chest. You smiled back up at him and you could have sworn you saw his eyes glance down at your lips, but you shook off the idea like the intrusive thought it was. It was a self-indulgent misreading of him, your mind projecting a motion you wished Matthew had done, instead of accurately reading the moment for what it was. It might have been a false creation of your mind, but it made your chest hurt all the same.

You grabbed Matthew his beer. Then you birthday grabbed him a slice of his birthday cake. Then you had to birthday dance with him again. Another birthday hug. It started to wear heavy on your shoulders because tonight all Matthew seemed to want was you glued to his side. Your mind was twisting and turning, running down dark, unlit roads you had blocked off in your mind for your own good, but the combination of alcohol and Matthew’s hand on your hip was allowing your mind to blast through barricades you’d built to protect yourself and you were imagining this being real. Worse, you were wondering if maybe he felt like you did, which was as dangerous as driving down a twisty, forest road in the middle of the night, with your highlights out, and faulty breaks.

As the last guests trickled out of the party, Matthew said you didn’t count as a guest, he collapsed onto his couch, throwing his arm over the back. He motioned over to you as he polished off his remaining beer. He sighed when you had yet to move, letting his head roll back, curling bouncing at the movement.

“Come on, birthday cuddle,” he whined softly, gesturing you over to him again.

You groaned and hoped off the counter where you had posted up as everyone else left. Matthew smiled and lifted his head up when he saw you coming, adjusting on the couch to give you a clear spot, right under his arm, right against his side. You climbed onto the couch and slid in, dropping your head onto his chest as his arm dropped around your upper back instead of remaining on the couch. You sighed as you snuggled into his broad chest and Matthew’s chest suddenly rattled beneath you as he laughed.

“Well, make yourself comfortable then,” he laughed softly.

“You’re comfy and I’m tired,” you mumbled, tucking your face down to try and hide the flush rising in your cheeks.

Yes, you were tired. Yes, Matthew was pretty comfortable. Neither one of those things had anything to do with why you were thrilled to be snuggled into his chest. The smell of spearmint and laundry detergent was mixed with cheap beer, but you found yourself falling more into him, your shoulders relaxing, your mind slowly, but your heart racing. You might be pushing your luck, tipping your hand with how you were openly enjoying this, but Matthew’s hand playing with the ends of your hair and the steadiness of his breathing plus the sheer volume of alcohol he had consumed tonight was giving you hope that even if you were tipping your hand, he wouldn’t be able to recognize the cards.

“Come here. Birthday hug.”

“I’m literally snuggling you. Why do you want a hug? Snuggling is an extended hug,” you muttered to him.

“Hug,” Matthew repeated, a hand patting his thigh.

You groaned as you lifted your head from your comfortable spot, twisting awkwardly to get your arms around Matthew’s neck. He huffed, clearly not thrilled with your position. His hands found your waist, fingers sliding into your belt loops to pull you onto his lap, situating your legs on either side of his. He wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you tight against him, hugging you to his chest. His face was tucked into your neck, his hot breath fanning out over your skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

He mumbled something you couldn’t entirely hear, but you caught the word birthday again and rolled your eyes. You sighed as you pulled back, his arms giving way to let you sit up on his thighs.

“What did you say?” you asked him softly.

Matthew swallowed hard, his eyes darting away from your attempted eye contact. His jaw clenched, nerves getting the better of him. You just didn’t know what he had to be particularly nervous about.

“I want a birthday kiss.”

His words were soft, vulnerability keeping his voice tense, but his volume low. His eyes lifted up, scanning over your face, looking for some sign as to how you received his words. Matthew moved a hand to the back of your neck and gently pulled, ever so slightly, to bring your mouth closer to his. His eyes continued to take in your face, trying to read your expression, but he was clueless, his own feelings clouding his judgment. His tongue darted out, swiping across his bottom lip.

“You don’t have to, obviously, but fuck, I really hope you want to, ” he breathed out, eyes still trying to find some sign, something to hang onto in your face.

It was clumsy with excitement, but you dipped your head forward and pressed your lips against his. Your heart was beating loudly in your ears as he started to kiss you back, the sound blocking out everything except how you were finally doing this, you were finally kissing Matthew. All you could feel was him, his hands on your body, his lips on yours, his tongue working yours softly. Just him. You pulled back and resting your forehead against his as his fingers tangled themselves in your hair at the back of your neck.

“Thank god,” Matthew mumbled. “I thought I ruined us for a second there.”

You shook your head softly and smiled down at him, pressing a quick kiss to his lips again. He was smiling before you even pulled away this time.

“Fastest my birthday wish has ever come true in my life,” Matthew told you softly, a smile wide on his face as he spoke. “Also, my best birthday wish ever, if I do say so myself.”

“Wait, what did you wish for?” you laughed, letting a hand run down his chest lightly.

“You,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I wished for you.”

Everything after that was easy, for a little while. You both had dreamed, fantasized about having each other, so you were both in absolute bliss when everything came together. It felt like two pieces in a puzzle, finally finding each other after being separated by the expanse of the unfinished masterpiece in between if the masterpiece was the world as far as both of you knew. But you never found your place in it together, never locked into the bigger picture. Two pieces floating out in space can’t stay connected forever when hands start trying to smash them into place, hands that wonder if those pieces even belong together at all.

The hands that ripped you and Matthew apart weren’t from the outside looking in though. They were the same hands that held your hips so tightly on nights between the sheets. The same hands that held yours where you walked through the city after a few too many drinks at the bar together. The same hands that ran through your hair softly when you came over crying about something you couldn’t even remember anymore.

They were the same hands currently wrapped around a glass at a bar across town. The boy, not man, whose hands they were was running one through his hair hurriedly now. He couldn’t get you out of his mind and he just couldn’t figure out why.

“Okay, why did you break up with her again?” Johnny pressed Matthew for what had to have been the twentieth time over the last month. “Because you’re fucking miserable all the time. She’s fucking miserable. None of us can get her out of her apartment. So I’m just not getting this one, man. Why aren’t you at her place right now? Why weren’t you there a month ago really, begging for her to take you back?”

Matthew groaned and screwed his eyes shut hard. He had explained this so many times, the words and memories were starting to blur together for him. If you say the same word too many times in a row, your brain begins to question if what you’re saying if even real anymore. Matthew felt the same type of confusion and disassociation with recounting his reasons for breaking up with you. The version of him that had original thought those thoughts, felt those feelings, wasn’t here anymore. It was replaced with a shell of a boy who realized he’d made a terrible mistake.

“Wait, have you seen her?”

Johnny rolled his eyes at Matthew, but he answered anyway.

“No, I didn’t,” he sighed, motioning to the bartender for another beer. “A couple of the girlfriends stopped by, brought her some casseroles or something.”

“Don’t you bring casseroles when someone dies?”

Matthew forced the terrible joke and his own laugh in response out, in a poor attempt to disguise the ache in his chest at the thought of you. He could see you so clearly in his mind, pacing holes in the floorboards of your apartment, wearing out your favorite mug, but there was no way on God’s green earth you were wearing your Flames sweatshirt you usually did when you were upset. Hell, Matthew would be amazed if you hadn’t burned it after what he done. He knew you had to hate the casseroles, both based on the fact that you barely considered them an edible type of food, and the fact that they seemed to be an homage to the funeral of your love life. You would’ve made a better joke than him too and he wished he could’ve heard it, but you probably hadn’t made one. Matthew was the person who helped you out of the negative thought spirals that sent you spinning around your apartment. He caused this one instead and he was here, sitting in a bar, doing nothing about it because there was no way you’d even talk to him again, not with what he said.

“I just,” Matthew sighed again and fussed with his beer, lining and unlining it up with the condensation ring on the coaster as he talked, “I got too into my head. We were fighting. It just, it wasn’t good, Johnny.”

“It wasn’t good or you weren’t good?” Johnny pressed, watching carefully as Matthew’s body froze in response to the question, glass frozen mid-movement, eyes fixed on a broken neon sign in front of him. “Chucky, you don’t do anything unless you already know you can do it. You’ve never been in a relationship as an, I don’t want to say adult because that’s not entirely true, but as an adult, so you probably sucked at it.”

Matthew rolled his eyes before throwing back verbally at him, “Thanks, Johnny. Loving this pep talk. I’ll make sure when Gio retires, you get my recommendation for the C.”

“We both know exactly,” Johnny tapped Matthew on the forearm, “where that C is going next and don’t even lie. But that’s neither here or there right now. The point is that she was your girlfriend. You were supposed to talk to her about being a shitty boyfriend.”

“I am not in the mood for this,” Matthew groaned, dropping his head to the bar, recoiling when his skin stuck to it, his face scrunching up in disgust.

“I mean, Johnny’s right,” said Monahan as he slipped up next to Matthew’s other side, making a second groan slide from Matthew’s throat. “You were supposed to talk to her, not break up with her like a dumbass. She was your friend first. She knew you weren’t perfect and that she’s have to put up with some shit because you definitely don’t know the first thing about being someone’s partner. She went all in with you anyway,”

“Decided the person you could be and the person she could be with you was worth it,” Johnny jumped back in.

“Good one, Johnny,” Sean nodded appreciatively, tapping his beer bottle against Johnny’s across the bar in front of Matthew. “She gave you a chance, a hell of a good chance. And you decided to throw it all away? Because you fought?”

“Who the fuck are you right now?” Matthew cursed at Sean. “Where did you find all this girl advice, huh? If I wanted this, I would’ve asked your girlfriend.”

“Fianceé excuse you,” Sean reminded him, a smile pulling at his lips. “She relayed all of this back to me. She saw her a few days ago. This is all straight from the source, man.”

“Wait, she said that stuff?” Matthew choked a little on his beer.

“Yeah, she did. Wanna know what else she said?” Sean didn’t give Matthew time, much like Matthew gave you no time during that conversation a month ago, no regard to if Matthew could handle what he was about to say. “She said you weren’t good at communicating or being a boyfriend, but she was okay with it because she loved you. All she wanted was effort. Just a little effort from you, man. And you just left instead of trying.”

Your words, albeit coming through the probably clumsy filter of Sean, stung in Matthew’s chest. He felt like a coward, a fraud. He tried so hard to be tough, to be the guy that kept pushing, kept grinding, kept giving a shit even when his team was down three goals with five to play. He was the guy everyone counted on to try, even when everything else was screaming to just give up and accept defeat. That’s what he’d done with you. He gave up when the waves of trials started coming, when a storm kicked up. Matthew had taken one look at a swell coming that looked to be the type that could swallow ships whole, took the lifeboat, and ran without a second thought. He left you on a battered boat, full of holes, without even a bucket to bail yourself out.

To make matters worse, the wave he had been so scared of was either entirely a fabrication of his own mind and he had run from his own twisted imagination. Or worse, he had created the wave himself and ran before it could catch up to him.

It was catching up to him now though, sitting at a dive bar in Calgary, a warm beer in his hand, and the weight of what he had done sitting heavy on his shoulders.

“Fuck,” was all he could say.

“Your dream girl, really.” Johnny was twisting the knife now, but Matthew knew he deserved it when Johnny added, “And you fucked it.”

“Yeah,” Matthew laughed softly, but the sound didn’t reach his eyes that were still staring at a broken and sputtering neon sign, but really seeing something that wasn’t there.

He was seeing you, in that pretty sundress, the one with the sunflowers on it that Matthew loved on you because you always looked so happy whenever you wore it. Countless memories of you in that dress. You wore it out with friends, the second time Matthew had ever met you. That’s the first time he remembered thinking just how pretty you were, the way your hair fell down on your shoulders, the way your smile formed, the way your nose crinkled when you laughed. Matthew was used to thinking girls where hot, but you? You were beautiful, standing there, laughing at something Johnny had said, in that sunflower sundress.

He remembered that dress from the first time he almost kissed you, a month later, walking down the street together after dinner, his hoodie around your shoulders because you had gotten cold and Matthew was always warm. It was the first time you wore his clothes and it made Matthew’s heart beat loudly in his ears, so loud he couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t think about anything else, but kissing you. He almost went for it, but then you pulled him back to reality, actually pulled him out of the street he hadn’t noticed he stepped into because he couldn’t hear the cars over his heartbeat.

That dress starred in his memories of your first date that occurred a week after his birthday, the one where he finally kissed you for the first time, over two years after the first time he almost kissed you. It might have been January in Calgary, but there was that dress again, with tights and a thick coat and knee high boots and socks and a little hole at the bottom hem and it made Matthew want to die. If he died staring at you in that dress, kissing you in that dress, he was pretty sure he would be fine with whatever his obituary looked like.

Except that dress and all the memories of it were tainted because you had been wearing it when he broke your heart, when he watched you break apart and shatter, all of his own doing. Hell, he probably tainted sunflowers as a whole for you. He’d gotten you so many over the few months you’d been together, even though they had cost far too much money since sunflowers in Calgary in the winter weren’t exactly commonplace. The necklace for your birthday, a sunflower and his number in delicate gold, his sister’s idea.

Matthew wondered if people could hate certain types of flowers for the same type of reasons people loved them. People loved them because of how they looked and smelled, but also the memories associated with them. His mom loved pink tulips, but was it more because she always had or because his father always bought them for her and now she couldn’t look at them without thinking of his dad and all the times he has surprised her with them? Was the existing love or the associated love the more powerful factor in her love of them?

Either way, Matthew was just hoping you didn’t hate sunflowers anymore because of him.

“How do I fix it?”

Matthew’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper now, his hand tense around his glass. Matthew had too many thoughts running through his head, but he needed to make sure you didn’t hate sunflowers now. He just didn’t know how to even get you to talk to him to find out if you did.

Johnny and Sean looked at each other and Johnny sighed when the silent communication resulted in him being the one to answer. “I don’t think you can, Chucky.”

“No, I have to, I have to fix it, Johnny,” Matthew’s voice cracked. “I just, I have to make sure...”

He didn’t finish the thought because it wouldn’t make sense and they would both probably send him home, thinking he was either too drunk or having a breakdown, more likely both, if he started ranting about sunflowers.

“I think all you can do is reach out,” Johnny told him softly. “Just let her know that you now realize you made a massive mistake, that you want to be a team this time and work on it, I guess. From there, it’s up to her.”

“Should I bring flowers?” Matthew was asking the universe more than either of the two not so romantics next to him. “Chocolates? Something? Is there anything I can bring or do to fix it?”

“I don’t think you can fix it, dude,” Sean cut in with a sigh. “You can’t force it. if she even talks to you, she’s going to have to decide you’re worth a second shot and knowing her, she’s not going to just give it to you tonight or tomorrow or whatever. She’s going to want to see real change first. You just tell her that you’re going to try and then fucking try, even if she doesn’t ask you to try. Start working on yourself anyway. Start acting like she’ll give you a second shot.”

“Do you think she will?”

Matthew’s voice echoed how it sounded earlier, timid, small, a whispered prayer from a boy who knew his only hope was if fate heard him and decided to twist the world in his favor, if fate wasn’t a fucking bitch after all.

“I mean,” Sean sighed, thinking about himself now, trying to shove his feet into Matthew’s water-logged shoes for a moment to find an answer, “if I was her, I wouldn’t. But she’s a better person than all of us put together, so maybe she will, but I know I wouldn’t.”

Matthew let out a long, shaky breath, eyes fluttering closed for a moment before opening them to pick his phone off the bar. He knew you wouldn’t answer a phone call. He also knew your voicemail was definitely full at this point. He was always the person who had to tell you to delete the old ones whenever he tried to leave you one and couldn’t, but he wasn’t there to do it, so it would be full by now. He had to settle for a text, which felt like a much shittier version of a handwritten letter, but he had terrible handwriting and spelling, but at least it ranked well above an email in the power ranking of methods of communication.

Please tell me you don’t hate sunflowers because of me. I really hope I didn’t ruin them for you.

Matthew placed his phone face down on the bar, then nervously flipped it face up even though he knew you wouldn’t have even been able to read his text in the millisecond his phone was face down. He didn’t know if you would answer, or if you would even read it. You would read it, Matthew assured himself. He knew you. You never got a text or a message you didn’t read. Would you say anything to him about it though? Would it be on your phone, nested among texts from people who didn’t break your heart until one day, probably a year from now, you would meet someone else and have no need to remember him anymore, so only then would you finally delete it?

Matthew tried not to think about it, but his eyes glanced down at the screen every thirty seconds even though he was willing them to just give you time. He didn’t even realize it was past one in the morning. You were definitely up, he knew you better than to think you would be asleep, but awake and awake and answering texts were different. He just hoped if you were awake, that you didn’t hate sunflowers, maybe that you didn’t hate him, and that you weren’t crying.

You were awake though, holding that godforsaken necklace that you had ripped from your neck the morning after he ended it and thrown into the back of your jewelry box. The necklace was in one hand and your phone with Matthew’s text pulled up in the other. You were crying, something Matthew desperately wished you weren’t doing as he drank the last dregs of his beer and headed home with his head hung low, his phone alight in his hand as he ritually checked for a reply from you. You sighed, looking between his text and the necklace, wondering if you hated your favorite flower now. That question hung on another one though, one domino relying on the other to fall. Did you hate Matthew Tkachuk?

Yes, you did. That was decided the moment the door closed behind him and he left you to deal with the crashing waves of grief all by yourself, without even a bucket to bail you out.

Did you hate him more than you loved him though?

You stared at the necklace, the one you hadn’t been able to throw away, and you knew the answer. The delicate golden necklace would be buried deep in a landfill if you really hated him more than you loved him, not in the palm of your hand now. But here you were, staring at it until your eyes went cloudy with tears, before you had to put it back in the box. You couldn’t put it back on, not now, maybe not ever, but you also couldn’t bear getting rid of it, the idea making your heart twist in your chest in a way that made you physically wince.

You put your phone on your nightstand at the same moment Matthew did across town, both with your minds racing over the unanswered text. Matthew went to bed thinking you would never answer it, forever leaving the question hanging in the wind. You went to bed knowing your answer, but unsure if you were ever going to share it with him.

------

Matthew groaned when he heard his doorbell ring, followed by cautious knocking. He hated that doorbell. The noise was absolutely piercing, especially to his hungover brain. He hadn’t even drank that much last night, but he was so incredibly hungover. Matthew could only guess that the alcohol had worked in tandem with the ache in his chest after deciding he needed to feel worse to create a hangover this bad from five beers over three hours. He shuffled to the front door, not even caring he hadn’t bothered to find any clothes other than sweats on his way to it. Whoever it was was too goddamn early and they would need to come back another time.

When Matthew ripped open his front door, a groan falling from his mouth at the effort it took, he was looking at the ceiling, head thrown back in hatred of the exhaustion he was now feeling due to having to actually do something other than lay in bed and be hungover.

“Look, this building better be on fire or-”

Everything stopped when he saw it was you. You looked so small to him, standing there, a tray with two coffees in hand and a brown bag in your other hand. Your sweatshirt was swallowing you up and you looked like you were strongly debating making a break for the stairwell with the way your eyes were shifting to the right. There were dark circles under your reddened, swollen eyes, eyes that only looked like that when you had been doing a lot of crying recently.

Matthew thought you would have a lot of possible reactions to his text. He never once let himself think you would show up at his front door.

“I brought bagels,” you finally said, after far too long of both of you assessing the other.

Matthew looked almost as bad as you did. His hair was unkempt beyond normal, the curls broken and haphazard across his head, hanging into his forehead. His eyes were sunken and absent, vacant like a forgotten home on the outskirts of town. Days old stubble patchily covered his jawline, razor clearly lost among his things again. If you weren’t at his apartment, if you had just passed him on the street instead, you might not have recognized him. There was always a lightness to Matthew, an inability to keep his feet on the ground as he searched for the next adventure he could have, but he seemed rooted in place, held down by some outside force. He was complying with it, the force, but it was clearly under duress and it was exhausting him. The force was absolute agony and it was written all over his face, in his posture, in his every labored movement.

“And coffee,” you added after no words left Matthew’s mouth long enough for an uncomfortable silence to stretch between you both.

“You’re here,” Matthew breathed out, words spoke so softly as if he feared if he said them too loudly, you would disappear.

Matthew’s head was pounding. His mouth tasted awful since he went straight to bed when he got home, not even stopping to brush his teeth. He knew he looked like an absolute mess because there wasn’t a way a person could feel like he did and not look like a mess. He didn’t care about any of it. You were here. You were actually here, with coffee, and bagels, at his front door.

He didn’t think. He knew it was a mistake after the fact, really as soon as he did it, but he also knew there was a chance you were here just for personal closure, that this might be the last time he ever got to see you again. He reached out and grabbed you by your waist, crushing you into his bare chest. His face pressed into your hair, which always smelled like strawberries to him even though you swore your shampoo wasn’t supposed to smell like strawberries. If you never talked to him again after today, he just wanted to hold you one more time.

You hugged him back, hesitation evident in your loose arms and your tense shoulders. It was barely a hug, but it almost made Matthew cry. Even just the small response, no matter how cautious it was, made him feel better than he had felt in a month.

“Go brush your teeth and like, actually wake up,” you told him as you pulled away from him. “I’ll, um, toast the bagels, I guess.”

Matthew was on autopilot as he walked into his en suite and grabbed his toothbrush. His movements were slow, robotic as he brushed his teeth. There was only one thing on his mind, replaying over and over incessantly, persistently. Why did you show up at his place? Matthew was desperately trying to turn the broken record playing his mind over to the other side, hoping to find the answer, but it was only more of the same. There was no reason, no reason he could understand, why you had shown up at his front door. Why you had shown up with coffee and breakfast for him was so far outside of the realm of things Matthew could understand, he had to eliminate it from his mind.

Until it all suddenly clicked in place, Sean’s words from last night flowing back into his mind.

You were here because you were a better person than he was, a far better person. Sean had said you were better than all of them, very much including Matthew, put together and it was true. You were bright and beautiful and good, so incredibly good. You loved people with an honesty and a bravery that made Matthew’s heart ache due to the effort it had to put in to keep up with you when he’d been smart enough to accept your love. You were so much better than he was four months ago when you kissed at his birthday party, so much better than the bedraggled boy looking back at him in the mirror today, and somehow infinitely better than the person he was going to be in fifty years, already. Who you would be in fifty years? You were going to be the kind of person that needed a designated overflow zone at your funeral because too many people were going to want to acknowledge they’d felt your love in front of hundreds of others.

Matthew never deserved the piece of you he’d gotten. He knew that now as he heard you humming softly to yourself as you dropped the bagels in his toaster. Matthew had never deserved you and it’s why he had ended it because he’d known all along. He knew you were fighting because he wasn’t good enough for you and that he never would be. He would have spent his life running at top speed behind you, trying not to slow you down, trying not to be a drag on your life, trying not to lessen the impact for good you could have on the world. You would have never let him go, slowing yourself, stunting yourself in order to accommodate him.

But here you were, looping the train of your life to run back through the temporary station of your relationship with him that was in complete shambles, and Matthew let himself dream it was because you were ready to hold his hand and fix it up brick by brick, piece by piece because you were so good it hurt. Matthew knew the right thing to do would be to make sure your train left the station today, unencumbered by any damage from him, and more importantly, without him. But Matthew Tkachuk was three things that made that impossible. He was competitive, problematically so, always wanting to get better, always wanting to win. Damn it all to hell if he couldn’t spend the rest of his life running to keep up with you because one day, he just might actually catch up if he could figure out how to run fast enough. Matthew Tkachuk was also incredibly selfish and incredibly in love with you, one a personality flaw and the other the purest part of him that had ever existed. He had to figure out how to catch up because he couldn’t let you go.

Matthew stepped out of the bathroom with resolve settling into his clenched jaw. He knew asking you to take him back without any proof he could improve was a hopeless avenue. He couldn’t ask you for that; him asking for anything was already unfair, he needed to try to at least ask for the least he could. Any plan he had formed was tossed out the window of his high rise the second he saw you, sweatshirt hanging off your shoulder, hair piled on top of your head, humming softly to yourself as you spread cream cheese on his and your bagels, barefoot in his kitchen. For a moment, that moment Matthew held his breath so you wouldn’t hear him standing in the kitchen doorway, it was like the last month hadn’t happened and you were still his. Matthew hung in the moment as long as his lungs would allow, soaking it in case he never got to see it again.

“You going to keep staring or are you going to come get your bagel?”

Your words pulled him out of his thoughts violently, head shaking off the ideas that had been swirling, pulling him down that whirlpool of you and him that might just kill him. He yanked the nearest bar stool out, dropping down into it unceremoniously, before graciously taking the bagel and the coffee you’d brought for him.

“Why did you ask me that?” you finally said, words slicing like knives through the palpable tension in the air. “The sunflowers. Why that? After a whole month? That?”

You said a few extra words then you’d meant to say. You were trying to keep everything short and brief, just here in a quest for the peace you needed and nothing more. More words meant more feelings and more feelings meant the idea of peace slipped further away with each expressed word.

“I just,” Matthew ran a hand aggressively through his curls before starting over, “I just wanted to make sure that after everything I did, I didn’t ruin one of your favorite things for you.”

You sighed, debating if you wanted get into this or not with him. What could it hurt? It was just a story.

“I like them because my mom does,” you told him softly. “She always had them growing by our house when I was little. She always had them in a vase by the front door, and she had these sunflower earrings, these little golden ones. They’d kind of like the necklace-”

Your fingers touched the bare skin where the necklace he gave you had sat until a month ago, fingers finding nothing to touch to. Matthew’s eyes had followed your movement, saddening when he saw you weren’t wearing it even though he hadn’t expected you to be.

You cleared your throat before continuing, “Anyway, she lost them a while ago. But I guess they just remind me of home. That’s why I got that dress. I got it when I first moved here. I saw it walking around downtown in a window and just took it as a sign that everything was going to be alright, you know?”

Matthew nodded softly as he continued to listen and mindless pick at his bagel.

“And then when we started dating and you figured out they were my favorite flowers and started getting me dozens of them all the time, I guess you and us started creeping in as part of those reasons I love them. It kind of sucks because they make me sad now and I can’t wear that dress anymore.”

The words were tumbling out of your mouth now, practically on top of each other. You weren’t sure where you’re going, but more words meant more expressed and acknowledged feelings and you were saying a lot of words. Matthew was trying to keep up, trying to take time to process and read between the lines. You always said so much whenever you spoke, half of it jammed in between sentences in pregnant pauses and shifting eyes. He was trying to take it all in, trying to figure out how you were actually feeling, but you weren’t resting in any one emotion long enough for Matthew to identify it.

“But no,” you sighed. “I don’t hate sunflowers. They’re sadder now. It used to just be missing home, but now they make me miss us. But I don’t hate them. I don’t think you can fully hate something that reminds you of so many people and places and times that you loved. I don’t hate them because I don’t hate you, Matty.”

He didn’t ruin one of your favorite things for you and you didn’t hate him. In full honesty, Matthew didn’t think you hated him. He knew one of your flaws, but also your best quality, the one that made Matthew feel so lucky to have been with you, was your capacity for love. It got you in trouble sometimes, kept you with people you shouldn’t have been, made you believe in fake friends’ false pretenses, but it also the only reason you didn’t hate him now and the only possible reason you would ever accept any sort of olive branch Matthew could clumsily extend.

“I fucked up,” Matthew said suddenly. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t filtering. He should have taken his time, picked his words carefully, but it was you and you didn’t hate him and Matthew was painfully awful at this sort of thing and he was overwhelmed with the idea he might just have an opening back into the warmth that was you. “I’m so fucking sorry. I totally get if you can’t trust me again. I know I’m a shit boyfriend. But fuck, I love you. I know I do. I’m just so bad at showing it. I want to fix that. I want to fix it with you. I want you and I want to show you I’m not a fuck up and that I do love you. I won’t need a second chance ever again, just some patience. Please.”

Matthew let out a long, shaky breath when the final begging word left his lips. He knew he’d been pleading with you with each and every word, hoping something he could say might hit you in just the right away, might have just the right effect to get the result he so desperately craved. You. Back in his arms. Back in his bed. Back in his jersey at his games. Back with him, where he wanted you more than he had wanted anything in an embarrassingly long time.

“Is any of that even true?”

Your question stopped Matthew in his tracks. It felt like a punch to his chest, right over his already aching heart. How could you doubt that? No, Matthew knew how you could doubt it. You could doubt it because you could doubt every single thing about him if you damn well pleased. He deserved every bit of doubt and caution you presented. He had broken you because he refused to take his seat at the adults’ table and talk about how he felt, how he was feeling insecure, how he felt like a bad partner, and how he felt worse about all of that because he felt like he couldn’t fix any of it. He attributed the two of you not working out to you two not being a match, instead of acknowledging his own flaws and what they were doing to both of you. In retrospect, all of that probably would have been far better to say to you than what he had actually said, but words couldn’t be stuffed back in his mouth. They were now in your mind, in your memory, and Matthew would just have to live with another mistake on the laundry list of things he had done wrong regarding you.

“Every single word is true,” Matthew told you softly. “I have so many other ones too, if you want to hear them.”

You breathed out hard, shoving the air forcefully out of your lungs as you ran a hand through your hair, “You don’t get to say those kinds of things to me, Matthew. You don’t have the right to that.”

“I know,” Matthew grimaced in reaction to your words.

He should’ve held his tongue, but he had so much he needed to say to you. But there he was again. Thinking about himself, only himself. He wasn’t considering you, wasn’t communicating with you. He just vomited all of his thoughts and feelings up without even bothering to see if you were actually open to receiving them. Saying you didn’t hate him didn’t even correlate to being open to the conversation Matthew had forced into your hands, unaware he had even pried your fists open to put it there.

“I shouldn’t have forced that all on you,” Matthew admitted softly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just, I have so much I want to say to you.”

“Matthew,” you sighed. You had been doing a lot of sighing lately. “I don’t think-”

“I don’t want you to take me back,” Matthew cut you off. “At least, not right away. I don’t deserve that. I know that. I’m not asking for that.”

You crossed your arms over your chest, eyes scanning over his face to try and figured out where he was going. You thought he would ask you to take him back, something you weren’t going to do without a sign from him that it would actually be different this time instead of exactly the same, with a shorter honeymoon period. Another two months with him, only to suffer the same heartbreak wasn’t enough time to make you take a blind chance it would be different. You needed something to hang your hat on, something to make you feel like he wanted to be your partner this time around. You needed to see him try, try in the long nights apart, try in the close nights together, try in the afternoon dates, and try in the stolen morning moments. You needed to see Matthew try and be your partner, and not just some emotional, freeloading friend with benefits version of a boyfriend who would spin you around a dance floor, then into his bed, then leave whenever you asked for more.

“Then what are you asking for?”

Your words were quieter than you expected, confusion ringing heavy in each syllable. Matthew ran a hand through his hair, frustration evident in how his fingers tugged on his curls at the end. He didn’t really know what he wanted. He just wanted a shot to prove to you he was worth your time, that he could be the partner you deserved. He wasn’t even sure he could be, which was part of the reason he was struggling to speak to you now, feeling like he was trying to row up a rushing creek made of his current feelings and his past failures without any sort of paddle or even a life vest, about to drown at any possible second.

“I just, I want to show you that I’m worth a real shot again.” Matthew was begging now, figuring that if you said no, at least you would know how badly he wanted you. He couldn’t get more pathetic than asking you if he’d ruined your favorite flowers because it had somehow said everything without saying anything at all. “Just, let me be around, let me earn a second chance. Let me show you I’m trying, trying to get better, trying to communicate better, trying to be someone who is good enough to deserve half of you. Let me show you I can try and that I’ll keep on trying forever, if that’s what you want from me. If you want to watch me try for five fucking years before giving me another shot, that’s fine. If you want to watch me try to five fucking years and then not give me another shot, that’s fine, at least I spent five years trying for someone who is so goddamn worth it, it hurts.”

“So, you want what exactly?” you pressed, a defensive laugh edging at your voice. “You want to just, what? To be around all the time? To be together all of the time? That’s just being friends, Matthew, and you were always a great friend, but you were a shitty fucking boyfriend. You want to spend all day with me, showing me that you’re trying to be better, then do whatever you want when you’re not around me?”

“No, I, fuck,” Matthew groaned, hands digging into his hair, head dropping to the cold granite counter in dismay at the mess he had made.

“Here’s your first communication test then,” you told him, letting the passive aggressive biting words you held at the back of your tongue roll off the front of it instead. “Tell me what you mean.”

“I don’t want anyone else.” Matthew banged his forehead on the counter with each word, frustration getting the better of him now. “I don’t even think this is going to make sense, but let me be your boyfriend even though you won’t be my girlfriend. That sounds so fucking stupid now that I said it out loud, but I guess I’m just trying to say I’m going to be one hundred-percent, all gas no brakes, full throttle about you and trying to actually change for you and show you I’m changing, but you can do whatever you damn well please because even letting me try is a fuck load more than I deserve.”

Matthew let out a breath to try and steady himself before continuing, “I know I’m still asking for a lot, both of your time and of your ability to at least sort of try to look at me not like the guy who said all of that shit a month ago. But I promise, I’ll be worth it. You do whatever you want, no strings, no jealousy, nothing. Let me be around and prove I’m worth a real second shot, please. You can send me packing whenever you want and I won’t bother you. You’re just too fucking incredible for me not to ask to try, even though I don’t have any right to ask.”

You breathed out hard, forcing all of the air out of your lungs. Matthew was asking, begging, for an opportunity to prove himself, to prove he could do what you wanted all along, just for him to try. Standing in his kitchen, bare feet cold on his hard wood floor, the idea of giving him that opportunity made your heart pick up in your chest, but made pain radiate through it at the same time. The romantic in you, the part of you that wondered if maybe Matthew Tkachuk was actually worth it, the part of you that loved sunflowers even though the memories attached to them were so incredibly mixed now, wanted to give him a chance. The other part of you, an equal part of you, was screaming, demanding that you be protective of yourself, of your happiness, from the people you let into your life, especially ones who had already proven then had no problem burning the life you were building for yourself and leaving before the ashes started to fall.

But did you even have a happiness you needed to protect? If you didn’t, then the answer was simple. If there was nothing to protect, there was extremely limited risk. You were already in a variation of hell of his own creation, sponsored by the feeling of someone you love deciding you weren’t worth an ounce of effort. What could it do to you if he failed? It would just affirm what you already experienced as a perennial fact instead of a potentially annual moment.

But the romantic inside pushed back, hard. Would you always wonder what would have happened if you gave him a chance? Would you always carry a torch for him? Would there always be an empty room, with a light left on, for him, in the house of the life you ended up making for yourself?

Romanticism versus realism. That was the question at hand. You knew both sides of the argument, the angel and devil on your shoulder both just facets of you, screaming at each other, both trying to decide what was best for you. They were just extensions of you though, so if you didn’t know, they didn’t know. But you did know two things though.

You knew you still loved sunflowers and you still loved Matthew Tkachuk.

And that was enough to convince you punch him a round-trip, one month ticket on the train of your every moving, ever developing life. You would be directing the path, choosing which tracks you would take, making all the moves, and he would have to figure out how to be your co-director. You weren’t going to stop or simplify anything for him. You were just going to continue on. In a month, the train would loop back to the station and you would decide to punch him another ticket, offer him the seat next to you, or leave him stranded there, alone at a run down train station probably in the pouring rain like in all the movies, before he would leave and watch as the station crumbled to dust upon his exit along with the idea of you and him.

“Okay.”

You settled into your answer as you gave it, trying to get it to settle over your body in a way that made you feel warmer rather than colder. Matthew’s eyes were staring into yours and he looked like he was teetering on the edge of crying, like he wanted to tell you everything that single thing that word made him feel, but he bit his lip and held his tongue. He was listening instead of talking, a welcome change, a welcome first attempt.

“You get one month,” you told him, your voice shaking as you tried to force it to be level. “One month of being around, I guess we can call it that. You figure out how you want to prove it to me. I’m not here to help you out. You hurt me. This is me, unlocking the front door for you. You have to figure out how to open it all on your own, okay? After a month, I guess we can talk and see where we’re at.”

“Thank you,” is all Matthew can figure out how to say for a moment. One month to try and show you he was worth another maybe, or if he let himself dream for a second, one month until you might want to be with him again. “I’d take anything, so thank you.”

“Take your fucking breakfast,” you smiled softly, trying to break the tension as much as one joke can. “And your coffee is cold now but that’s going to be a you problem.”

“Is your coffee cold?” Matthew asked you. He just wanted to fix something, even something as small as a too cold cup of coffee. “I can fix it.”

“Well, it’s iced coffee,” you informed him, a genuine laugh in your voice this time as you reached behind you to grab your drink on the opposite counter, giving the cup a little shake, ice rattling, as you showed it to him. “So, I sure hope you’re not going to try and warm it up.”

“No, no,” Matthew laughed softly, hands fiddling with the collar on his now room temperature at best coffee. “Probably should’ve asked what you were drinking first.”

You nodded softly, “Your heart was in the right place.”

Matthew smiled softly as you and your heart picked up in your chest again. God, that smile. It cut through everything, through the dull ache in your chest, through the deafening noise in your head of your own thoughts, and hit you right in the room in your heart that was reserved for him. It was vacant now, but the lights shone brighter for a moment and the furniture in the basement that used to be in there for him rattled, drawers and cabinet doors smashing, a reminder that everything you felt for him was still there. It might be covered in drop clothes and an inch of dust, but it was there. Part of you was already ready for him, but it wasn’t most of you. Maybe one day it would be. Or maybe this was one of the worst things you’d allowed in a long time under the impression that he simply couldn’t make things worse for you, which was almost a challenge to that fucking bitch fate at this point. Your insecurity and shaky foundation got the best of you for a moment and a sentence like a child’s prayer slipped out of your mouth.

“Matthew, please don’t waste my time.”

“I won’t,” Matthew’s words followed yours without a second of hesitation. “I promise. I won’t.”

The romantic in you hoped he was right, that this would be worth how difficult it would be, how difficult it would be to look at him over and over again with his past words playing like a broken record stuck on a broken record player in your mind. If he truly did try, then enduring the torturous reminder of the past would be more than worth it because you were pretty certain that if Matthew Tkachuk could figure out how to be everything you knew he could be, he would be the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. But could he get there? You didn’t know, but sometimes people take risks, people bend until they almost break in search of love, like sunflowers bend towards the sunlight, in search of a new and brighter day.

------

You woke up the next day after breakfast at Matthew’s, after ducking out for a planned series of activities, lunch with a friend, and errands to run. You had tried to fill your day after Matthew’s to give yourself an out if it went poorly and a break from Matthew to process everything if it turned out positive. Part of you was wondering if what had happened was really positive or not, but you felt better today than you had over the last month, able to get out of bed and get the coffee pot started with too much extra effort. The bags under your eyes looked better than they had in weeks.

A knock on your front door, eerily reminiscent of the one you’d delivered on Matthew’s door the day before, brought you and your freshly poured cup of coffee in hand to the door. You opened the door and were greeted with an unfamiliar face with a very familiar expression, one far too cheery for the hour in the day. The smile plastered on her face didn’t falter as she read your name and address off her list to confirm who you were and that she was in the right place. You nodded as confirmation, which just made her smile impossibly wider.

“Great! These are for you then!”

Her voice was somehow worse than the fact that she was downright euphoric before nine in the morning. No one who could be this excited about life before nine could be trusted. She practically shoved a bouquet into your hands, turned on her heels, then seemed to skip down the hallway and out of your building. You shook your head as if to shake off the memory of the world’s cheeriest delivery person from your mind, before turning back into your apartment, kicking the door closed on your way to the kitchen table.

Of course, they were sunflowers. Matthew’s consistency with flowers was never in doubt. You grabbed the card, smiling at the words printed on the small card.

If you don’t hate sunflowers yet, give me a month. You’re going to get so many, you’ll be sick of them. Lunch today? - Matty

You tapped the card in your hand, taking deep steady breathes as you walked over to the counter where your phone was. You were really doing this. You were really giving him a chance to show you he could be better than your downright awful four months full of casual disagreements, fights, and near constant miscommunication had shown you. There were people in your life you didn’t think would approve. No, you knew they wouldn’t approve. That’s why you hadn’t told a single soul about yesterday, but this wasn’t about anyone else. It wasn’t about the opinions they would be bound to have. It wasn’t about what they thought was best. This was you and Matthew and everything that was still there. It wasn’t for other people; relationships never were.

You texted him, accepting his invitation for lunch. He texted back immediately even though it was way too early for him usually. If Matthew had practice at ten, he wasn’t out of bed until a quarter past nine and he lived fifteen minutes from the arena. Your mind wondered if he had been awake, just waiting for your text, but you pushed the thought of side as you headed to take a shower. He wouldn’t get up before nine unless his building was on fire.

Across town, a curly-haired boy who had woken up two hours earlier than he usually did, just to see if the girl he loved had gotten her sunflowers, smiled when he saw her text.

She had gotten them, thankfully. Matthew got to go to practice with a smile on his face, wondering how she’d smiled when she had seen the flowers arrive, and with the knowledge he’d get to see her smile in person after practice. Well, if he played his cards right, he’d probably be able to con a smile or two out of her. He felt damn near giddy, like a kid at a county fair who had too much cotton candy and who has just accidentally won the biggest prize the fair had to offer, even though he hadn’t even come close to winning you back yet. Getting to be around you again was his win, and it was so much more than he thought he would ever get, he could feel like a little kid for the morning if he wanted to.

He could and did feel like a little kid the entire time he waived for you at the restaurant. Matthew arrived fifteen minutes early. Being late had been his specialty the first time around, not necessarily a problem often within itself, but compounded upon everything else Matthew didn’t do then, a list that seemed to grow longer the more he picked apart the past from your point of view, showing up early carried more weight. The shock on your face when you saw him already waiting at the table when the hostess brought you around was proof enough that every effort Matthew made, every single thing he took notice of from the past and changed, would make a difference.

“Hey, how was practice?” you said as you dropped down into the seat opposite him.

Matthew had the smallest sliver of hope that the sunflower dress would have reappeared, but he knew he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to see you look like you had when he had gotten the opportunity to take you out the first time, to do this right the first time. If he hadn’t screwed everything up with his stubbornness and his general inability to be a boyfriend, he wouldn’t be wishing for that dress right now. He could be in your apartment, holding you, face in your neck, arms around your waist, decompressing from practice and life in general. But he was here, sitting four feet apart, in the middle of a restaurant, knowing he wouldn’t even get to hold your hand on the walk to his car later because you hadn’t even driven together.

“Um, practice was good,” Matthew told you, his mind still running through a seemingly endless list of things he could be doing with you right now if he hadn’t given up before ever really getting in the game. “How was your morning?”

“Good. Didn’t do much since I didn’t have work.”

Matthew nodded, taking a sip of his water before doing what he would need to do over and over again, if he really did want to get the chance to love you to you again. He tried again.

“So, um, how’s your mom doing?” Matthew asked, hands trying to find a resting spot on the table, his lap, somewhere.

“Fine.”

The distance across the table felt wider with each passing second to Matthew, like you were somehow slipping further away from him with each clipped answer you gave. It was painfully obvious that the sunflowers had only gotten you to show up. The magic of them had worn off the second you sat face to face with him and had to claw through all of the emotional shrapnel that was heavy in your chest and in your mind that Matthew had caused to sit across a table from him. Just sitting across the table from him, all you had was your past with him on your mind. You had too much time to think, to remember. Matthew needed to find some way to overcome it, to make you see the him from the present and not the past when you looked at him. It wasn’t going to happen in this restaurant with nothing but time for you to get hopelessly lost in the past.

“Okay, nope,” Matthew sighed, tossing his napkin and menu onto the table. “We’re not doing lunch here.”

“You picked it,” your brows furrowed down in confusion as Matthew stood from the table. “Do you not like see anything you like?”

“I see you,” Matthew slid in with a playful smile on his face and just for a moment, you remembered why it had been so easy to fall for him what felt like a lifetime ago. “But no, this just isn’t working. Let’s get out of here.”

Matthew threw far too much money on the table considering the only thing you had ordered was water, but he felt bad for wasting the wait staff’s time, and started putting on his coat. You slowly rose from your seat to do the same, confusion pulling your brows together. A patented Matthew Tkachuk date was a meal and that was pretty much it. A change of venue mid-date? Multi part dates? Definitely not in his wheelhouse. Especially when you considered you hadn’t even ordered an appetizer yet.

“Where are we going?” you asked him as he gestured for you to lead the two of you out of the restaurant.

“Honestly,” Matthew sighed as he pulled the door open for you, waiting for both of you to exit before continuing, “I don’t really have a plan. That just felt stuffy? Weird? I don’t know. It didn’t feel like us.”

“What does us feel like, Matthew?” you sighed, tucking your hair behind your ear, a nervous habit that would never die and never stop making Matthew want to die since he thought it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, every single time.

“I know what it used to feel like when it was good,” he told you. “We could talk for hours about anything. We used to be able to anyway. I know it might be awhile before we can do that again, but that wasn’t like the good parts of us and you know it.”

You sighed again, something you knew you would probably be doing a lot as you tried to give Matthew the space to just try, but the part of you, a large part of you, the part couldn’t stand not being the line leader in kindergarten, was screaming at you to do something, anything. Kiss him, which would have been the worst idea you might have ever had, slap him, also not advisable, get in your car and leave, not a great suggestion either. Just something, anything other than just standing in the street, looking at him and remembering how much it all hurt, how much it hurt to love someone who always seemed to have one foot firmly planted somewhere that wasn’t with you.

“Come on. I know a better place,” Matthew told you, pulling you out of your spiraling thoughts before you could fall too deep into them.

It took everything in him not to offer you his hand. He was pretty sure holding your hand might make him cry, which wouldn’t be the best look for him, but he was pretty sure it would feel like heaven. But no pearly gates were going to open for him today. He’d have to settle for standing next to you with the knowledge that maybe heaven did exist after all.

You walked side by side with him as he weaved through the streets of downtown, staying close, but far enough apart so you couldn’t accidentally brush his hand with yours. You stayed in step with him into a nearby coffee shop, the warmer more comfortable atmosphere already sinking into you and Matthew, loosening your shoulders, the tension softening. The restaurant had been cold somehow, harsh, and considering your love for him was pretty frozen in permafrost, this was much better.

“They supposedly, according to Benny, have the best blueberry scones in the city,” Matthew said softly.

“You know me,” you smiled softly.

“Love a good baked good.”

You and Matthew spoke in unison, bringing a laugh over both of you, tension continuing to loosen with each passing moment. Matthew asked you what you wanted and ordered for you, mostly so he could pay without hearing a fight from you about how you didn’t need him to pay for you. You sat down with your scone and your coffee at a table Matthew dwarfed, but he didn’t seem to mind too much as he looked at you.

“So, take two,” he joked. “Is this better by the way? You just didn’t seem happy at all there. It seems like this is more your speed.”

To say you were stunned that he was actually checking on you, trying to tune into your emotions, would be an understatement. He had showed up early and was asking about how you felt, genuinely. His blue eyes, long standing one of your favorite features of his, bounced across your face, trying to take in every micro expression before you could even answer the question.

“Yeah, Matty,” the older nickname sliding out, “this is better.”

“Okay, good,” he smiled softly and this one made its way to his eyes, crinkling them at the corners.

He asked you about work, desperate to catch up on the office drama he had missed. You asked for updates on the team, the things the media would never and could never find out about. He asked about your mom again and you actually told him. Sliding back into old ways, it didn’t feel like your relationship in the coffee shop. It felt like your old friendship. The world felt like it felt when you fell in love with him in secret originally. Matthew was actively listening to you the entire time, something he deeply struggled with because did he ever have the tendency to talk too much, but he was trying. He apologized for cutting you off once to tell his own story and you almost got whiplash when he sank back into his chair and verbally gave you the floor. He was making space for you, fully and honestly, and trying to appreciate you inhabiting the space he was making for you in the conversation and in his life. He talked too much, but there was a peace he found in listening to the best person he had ever had the privilege of knowing tell him stories, tell him about her life like she wanted to give him part of it and god, did he ever want part of your life.

Matthew went home that day and was damn near clinical about the whole thing, breaking apart everything he could remember about how you reacted to what he said, what you seemed to appreciate and what you didn’t. He treated his memories of it all like game tape, reviewing what he considered to be a win after a rough first period showing, looking to areas of success and areas of possible improvement and man, he was finding a lot of areas to improve. He kept getting stuck on your smile, the few true ones in the coffee shop, where you looked like the girl he fell in love with instead of the hollow one he created with his own words. Matthew let himself sit with those moments for a couple of steady breaths. You were worth the effort, he reminded himself again. You were.

The next morning you were thankfully already milling about, halfway through your coffee and halfway through getting dressed when the knock came to your front door. You had a suspicion based on the knock which somehow itself was cheery that you were going to open the door to the same delivery person as yesterday. There she was when your door swung open, ponytail swinging, smile tattooed on her face, unable to fall. This time though, she shoved a bouquet of a dozen red roses into your hands, much to your confusion. You almost asked her if she’d given you the wrong flowers, but she had already vanished who you looked up from the flowers, off to curse the next person with her cheeriness.

When you placed them on your side table next to your sofa, the spot on the kitchen table still inhabited by the sunflowers from the day before, you at least knew she’d given you the right bouquet.

Can’t always get you sunflowers, sweetheart. Got to keep you on your toes. :) - Matty

You immediately pulled your phone out of your pajamas pants pocket and shot off the first thing that crossed your mind to him.

Variety is NOT the spice of life, Tkachuk. Stick to the status quo.

You got a text back shortly after exchanging your comfortable pajama bottoms for the confines of work appropriate pants. You checked your phone seven times on your walk to your car, feeling like a version of yourself you thought you left behind in middle school. You had dealt with unrequited feelings for Matthew so long, fell in love with him in secret, that when you had the chance to love him out loud, you jumped at it and so did he. It might have been the only time you had ever been completely on the same page together. Before that, you had been fast friends, falling into friendship without any effort really by either of you. This was something else. Matthew Tkachuk was putting in more effort than you saw him put into anything besides his career. The effort was making you feel like you should be back in a plaid skirt, shoving a binder into your locker, and whispering about the cute curly-haired boy from your science class, a kid with a crush who had no idea what was yet to come.

But you could only wish you had no idea of what was to come. It had already come, running you over faster than you could ask, your heart shattering under Matthew’s feet due to his carelessness. One sentence from the speech he so carelessly used to break your heart felt like this moment. At best, I think we just had middle school crushes gone off the rails. The amount of times you had fallen in and out of crushes in middle school was too high to even attempt to count. Was what you were feeling just a recurrence, a temporary realignment of the train on the tracks? Was Matthew putting in all this effort for fleeting feelings? Was he right this whole time?

------

Matthew Tkachuk was working against himself with you, fighting the mess he’d made of you and him a month ago. He created the situation that made you build the walls he was trying to surmount with an army of sunflowers and his poor excuse for love. Matthew was good at a few things, hockey, being a pest, and creating chaos. Righting the chaos he made had never been a task that was asked of him before and now, three days after that first day in the coffee shop, he was struggling to figure out where to go from here. He wanted to make the right decision, systematically work through the heartbreak he’d caused, taking leaps each time he saw you until maybe he’d be close enough to wrap you up in his arms and never let you go again. He might have to settle for a baby step today though since you were at work, slammed with a new project from your boss, with no time to see him

He sent you lunch at work instead, from your favorite burger place you always went together. You swore you could have cried when you realized he included both sweet potato fries and regular fries, your mind pulled back to the first time you went together, back when you were just friends.

“Should I get the sweet potato fries or regular?” you asked him.

“Get the sweet potato ones,” Matthew told you, running a hand to push his curls out of his face. “You always get regular fries and complain about how you should’ve gotten sweet potato whenever we all go out to eat together.”

You agreed with his suggestion, letting the conversation fall comfortably back over the two of you as you waited for your food. You hadn’t even realized time had passed when the waitress dropped off your food. Spending time with Matthew melted away stress and your perception of the passage of time, letting you live in the moment, unencumbered by the stressful comings and goings of your day to day life.

The sweet potato fries had been a good choice. They had a honey drizzle on them and you were more than pleased with your selection. But Matthew’s regular potato fries appeared to have some sort of special seasoning on them and you were itching to try one, but Matthew wasn’t big on sharing in general, let alone when it came to food. He saw you staring at them and groaned.

“You’re the worst,” but he flipped his plate around so the fries faced you anyway. “Don’t say I never do things for you.”

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Tkachuk.”

You frequented that same burger joint with him throughout the years of your friendship that came after, and during your short relationship. The burgers you ordered changed, but never the fries. You got sweet potato. Matthew got regular. He let you steal as many of his as you wanted without a single complaint sliding between his lips despite dozens of repeat visits to the restaurant.

In your office, holding a container of sweet potato fries and a container of regular in opposite hands, you thought it was a little ridiculous that french fries were making tears well up in your eyes. He hadn’t forgotten. You shook your head to shake off the desperate thoughts that were swirling, the ones that were tying emotional weight to french fries of all things, and shot him off a quick text to thank him for lunch before getting wrapped back up in your day. You didn’t see his reply text until you had already kicked your heels off at home too many hours later.

Would never forget to get my girl her whole meal :)

Sometimes, love wasn’t big gestures. Oftentimes, it wasn’t even gestures that would make much sense to relay to other people. Two kinds of french fries wasn’t something you could explain to anyone else because it would just seem childish, but you felt cared for. Above all, you felt remembered when you’d opened that bag. You felt like Matthew Tkachuk had seen you almost two years ago in a restaurant and remembered exactly who you were in that moment and still knew who you were today. The french fries would go untold to anyone else, but they made you smile more than the roses on your coffee table when you fell asleep that night.

The next month felt like it happened all at once. There were enough sunflowers to create your own you-pick patch of them, rose and tulips and whatever other kinds of flowers Matthew knew the names of interspersed, just to keep you on your toes. Movies nights at his place, complete with half-burnt, half-unpopped popcorn courtesy of Matthew’s non-existent culinary skills. Nights out, full of laughter and storytelling that made you feel like nothing had ever changed, like you had flipped over an extra month in the calendar, skipping one entirely, the month you’d been apart, and moved on without it. He felt like your friend again, something that had lapsed when you’d started dating. You both tried so hard, arguably too hard, to change your relationship into a romantic one that you didn’t leave space for friendship, booting it out without anything solid to fulfill its previously occupied space. The relationship collapsed without a solid core, the frail coverings of romance too heavy for the hollow center to bear.

Matthew wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He still talked over you, parts of his brain running faster than others. He still forgot to talk to you on road trips sometimes. He still forgot your sister’s birthday. He still resisted emotional responses from you, physically pulling back and trying to dodge conversations that would bring discomfort. The gestures were there, hundreds of them in the form of your favorite flowers, but was it enough? Did you truly believe you two were hand in hand, putting the train station of your relationship back together, or was this just an attractive paint job hiding the cracks for a few months until they became exposed again because of time? Was the effort a permanent fixture? Or was it just a passing small town station that Matthew had created to attract you, pulling you into town with the promise of nice accommodations and restaurants always being available, only to abandon them as soon as the train left the station and your life got on without you, leaving you stranded, trapped in a small forgotten town forever?

As you walked into your favorite coffee shop, you cut the line, heading right to the front like you had become accustomed to doing. Matthew had called your order in and paid for it over the phone every work day before you got there since that first day after he sent you lunch. He knew what time you usually got to your favorite shop, and worked it out with the staff that they had your order ready for you now like clockwork every day. You had been able to gain twenty minutes of sleep from it, but you were wondering now if this would all stop if you took him back or not. Really, the coffee order ceasing would be more than fine. Love wasn’t in monetary gestures like this one technically was, but what else would disappear with it? Would Matthew trying to verbally and physically make space for you in his life disappear too? Would him genuinely trying to, even if it’s hard and he’s pretty shitty at it, understand your emotions fade away? Would all the effort fragment into sporadic moments, slowly growing further and further apart until they stopped happening all together and you wasted years of your life giving Matthew Tkachuk your love and not getting enough back?

You didn’t know the answer, which is why you were thrilled you were having dinner with some of your closest, non-Matthew related friends after work. You had been keeping Matthew a bit of a secret. Actually, a complete secret. You knew your friends wouldn’t approve at the start, so you hadn’t told them a thing. They would have told you he didn’t deserve any semblance of a second shot, that the things he had said in the past could never be overwritten by future good actions, that you weren’t supposed to give people who break your heart second chances. But now, you were at a crossroads.

You could give Matthew more time, maintain the status quo until inevitably your heart gave out. You could open your arms to love him again, knowing full well that you would never be one hundred percent sure or not. You could brush him aside, thanking him for his temporary effort that would never be enough for you. Three clear options left you further from a solution than you thought possible. You needed advice. You needed opinions from people who only had stake in you in this relationship. You needed to be more selfish than you knew how to be, so you were passing the task off to your friends.

While they were usually quick to pass judgment, they were silent as you went through every painstaking detail of your past month, starting with that fated text about sunflowers, through every dinner, every movie, every moment until the text you got before you sat down in this chair at dinner with them. You were exhausted by the time you got through everything, emotionally and verbally spent, feeling no closer to your answer. You had hoped retelling everything would pull you in one direction or the other, with no such luck. Your friends, however, weren’t undecided in the slightest.

“So, you’re ending this experiment, right?”

You were shocked, almost spitting out your drink at the harshness of the words that spilled out of your best friend’s mouth. She shrugged off your shocked expression.

“I mean, it was a nice experiment, I guess, but a total waste of your time,” another friend added. “There isn’t any way to prove this is a permanent change and I, for one, will never tell you to take that kind of a risk. You’re too good to put up with a guy who very well could end up not being worth it.”

Your friends were talking a mile a minute, all at you, but really at each other in their bubble of agreement, agreement that Matthew Tkachuk was not worth your time. He could buy you flowers, coffee, as many lunches as he wanted to. He could make promises about listening and trying and making an effort, but he was on trial during it all. He was under a performance review. It was a manufactured situation as far as they were all concerned, entirely unrepresentative of who he would be outside of it. When there wasn’t a close date, a date he could begin to slack off again according to your friends, and you demanded engagement and effort from him every single day without any relief from that pressure, he would fail. He would fail every single time.

How had you not seen that? You created a situation with a time limit, a window in time he would have to be a different person than he was, with a definitive end date. Was anything he had done representative of actual change, or was it just a temporary side step towards being closer to what you needed, only to return back to his original spot when you took him back? There was no way to know if anything he had done over the last month was real or some elaborate farce.

The farce, this charade of a month, it swept the both of you up with returning feelings of seemingly endless longing from when you loved each other in secret. You were pretty sure Matthew had gotten swept up right along with you by the fantasy of fate and love being something unbreakable that would always pull people back together. This effort wasn’t real, even if Matthew believed it was. It was all part of some twisted game fate was playing by telling the both of you that you were meant to be. Two puzzle pieces that aren’t supposed to go together don’t go together, even if one tries to bend their corners until they can. Matthew thought he was cutting corners off, not just bending them, making permanent changes to fit with you, but it would never matter. The picture the two pieces that were you and Matthew created together would never be correct. You were shades of blue, like the sky on a Sunday morning as you remembered it as a child full of wonder, like the ocean, powerful and unstoppable. Matthew was red, like the deepest tones of a fading sunset, like the feeling of sitting by a fireplace on Christmas morning. Both pieces individually were beautiful and important to the larger picture, but they didn’t belong anywhere near each other. There were no transition colors. It was blue and red, black and white. They couldn’t mix. They just had to fit. And you two just didn’t fit. You didn't create a picture together. It was just two pieces trying desperately to create something you couldn't because red was your favorite color and blue was Matthew's and fate was a fucking bitch.

You were crying as you walked into your apartment building and pulled out your phone. You typed out a text that echoed one you’d received two months ago without even meaning to do it.

We need to talk. Come over?

It was identical to the one Matthew had sent before he set all of this in motion and you were about to mirror him even more closely. Before he came over, you had to have your words collected. You knew he would push back, try and argue that your friends didn’t know the two of you, that they didn’t know what you both felt. But feelings were fickle and often told lies and it was telling you and Matthew the same one right now, that this would work if you tried hard enough even though it would just hurt a thousand times worse when the lie became undeniable six months down the road.

You almost didn’t notice the small package on your doorstep, eyes too clouded with tears to successfully unlock your door on the first three tries. You snatched it off the doorstep, a sob breaking through your chest when you realized it was from Matthew, no address on the package, just your name scribbled on the top in his horrendous handwriting. He had dropped this off himself and somehow that made it all feel more heartbreaking in your chest. You shuffled inside, the fourth attempt being the charm today, and tore into the package as you kicked the door shut behind you. The wrapping was even his handiwork, too much tape, not enough but somehow too much paper, and you were ruining it with tears dripping on and staining the paper.

You sat down on the floor, back against your front door. The lid of the box slid off easily and you tossed it aside. You were greeted with a picture of your mother, one you had framed on your front table, mere feet from where you had collapsed on the floor. It was your favorite picture of her, something you had definitely told and retold to Matthew one too many times. You flipped it over in search of some reason for it’s inclusion, finding more of Matthew’s handwriting on the back.

Hey sunflower,

Hope work was good today :) If it wasn’t, I’m sorry and call me and we’ll talk about it. They switched our flights around for this roadie so I’m on a plane right now, but I wanted you to have these before I left.

You told me your mom was a big part of the reason you loved sunflowers and that she had these sunflower earrings you loved growing up, but that they were lost. I saw your mom was wearing them in this picture, so I took it to a jeweler and well, they aren’t the ones your mom wore, but I hope you like them anyway.

I know you probably aren’t ready to hear it from me, feel free to skip to the end if you aren’t, but I love you and the past month has made me realize just how much I do and how stupid I was in the past. I’m going to keep trying to get a little better every single day and maybe, if I try hard enough, I might become someone who deserves you.

- Matty

Your hands shook as you slowly set the picture on the ground next to you and pulled back the tissue paper. Nestled safely in the box were two golden sunflower earrings, delicate golden wire bending to make up their shape. They were identical to the pair your mother had worn almost every single day of every summer of your childhood. Except these were yours. And they were made for you by a boy who loved you who was trying really hard to become a man who loved you and deserved to be loved back by you.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter. Your judgmental friends didn’t matter. Your negative thought spirals that tried to ruin everything good you ever had that was risky because the best things in life were always inherently risky didn’t matter. Fate and whether or not she was on your side or not didn’t matter. Matthew Tkachuk mattered. His effort was real and raw and pure and the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for you and it mattered. And all Matthew needed for all of his effort to matter was exactly one single act of effort from you. It would have to be a continuous act, a constantly, daily task, but all he needed was your patience with him. And as you sat on the floor, tears staining your cheeks, holding a pair of sunflower earrings you knew Matthew Tkachuk was worth your patience, that he was worth your love, and that you didn’t hate sunflowers at all, not even a little bit.

People weren’t puzzle pieces. You and Matthew Tkachuk didn’t fit together seamlessly to create one image because that’s not how people work. Puzzle pieces are stagnant, fixed, unchangeable. People are supposed to flex and grow and change, be mutable over time, with contact from others. You were blue now, but there was no reason to say throughout your life, from touching other people and their beautiful lives, that you would always be the same shade of blue you were now. Tomorrow, maybe you’d meet the most yellow person you had ever met in your life, and you’d be a little more green for it. Matthew Tkachuk was red and just maybe, purple was supposed to be your favorite color.

You pulled out your phone and deleted six words and two punctuation marks you had typed walking into your apartment building, but never sent. You replaced that text with a picture of the earrings in your lap, and simple red heart emoji because you knew words would fail you and any words that came to you, you wanted to say to his face when he got back from his trip. He texted you back almost instantly, just a simple red heart emoji. Matthew had started the red hearts. When you were friends, he’d send every other color except red. But when when you started dating, he would send a red heart whenever he wanted to kiss you but couldn’t, when he was on the road and wouldn’t see you for a while, when he was across the table from you at dinner with his parents. It was one of your little quirks, little things that neither of you had forgotten, an old habit that never worked its way out of your behavior. You didn’t send red hearts to anyone else anymore, and neither did he. But you sent one to him now.

Matthew Tkachuk sat on a plane that night, wishing he could driven across town fast enough to deserve to get pulled over and kissed you instead of sending you a stupid fucking emoji. He fell asleep that night, letting himself remember what it felt like to kiss you, something he had kept in the back of his mind for the last month because the thought of never being able to do it again made his knees pull up into his chest to try and block off pain that was unfortunately coming from inside himself. But tonight, tonight he let himself remember it, let himself pretend that you were thinking of the same thing, let himself remember what it was all like with you because you wanted to kiss him too. He fell asleep with a smile on his face for the first time in months and woke up the next morning with it too, still thinking about you and getting back home to you to finally get to kiss you again.

------

Matthew didn’t even think twice when his feet touched the tarmac a few days and two road wins later. He knew where he needed to go. He got to his car and tossed his tie into the passenger seat before starting to drive way too fast to your apartment. He didn’t hit a single red light, which made him think about fate again for a brief moment, but then he remembered this wasn’t about her or anyone else. Everything was just about you, you and your love affair with big yellow flowers and hopefully, him again. He took the stairs two at a time after parking incredibly poorly in front of your apartment, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to kiss his best friend, the girl whose heart he broke, the girl that somehow didn’t hate him or sunflowers, the girl that just might love his undeserving self in spite of it all.

He barely got two knocks on your front door before you yanked it open and Matthew could swear he wanted to die. There you were, a lightness in your eyes he hadn’t seen for months returned to you. Your hair was pulled back, the earrings he had made for you on display. His eyes drifted down, taking in the familiar golden chain around your neck, the one that had been missing for two months now, the one that held a small sunflower and the number nineteen at its base. But Matthew Tkachuk swore his heart almost gave out when he saw the familiar white neckline of that damn sunflower dress. You hadn’t worn it in the past two months, unable to take it out of your closet without crying, but you put it on today and it made you smile.

“Hi,” he breathed out.

Driving over with the intent to kiss you was as far as he’d gotten and you in that sunflower dress was making it impossible to think of anything other than that one word he had managed to say.

“Hi,” you breathed back, a genuine smile pulling up the corners of your mouth.

Matthew cleared his throat, letting his eyes close for a second so maybe he could try and think about something other than how you looked right now. He let his head fall back, taking in a deep breath, giving his head a shake in a vain attempt to shake off some nervousness from his mind to clear his thoughts. It worked well enough so one thought could slip through as he let his head fall forward and opened his eyes into your gaze again.

“Do I, um, get another month?” Matthew asked you, his voice timid and frail, on the edge of breaking. “Today is a month.”

You looked up at him, eyes taking him in. The parting of his lips, the happiness that finally reached his beautiful blue eyes, the curls falling on his forehead, the wrinkled game day suit sans tie that you knew was probably crumpled in the passenger seat of his car. He was on a tightrope, ready to fall to either side with your answer. One side was absolute heartbreak, the kind he was pretty sure would taint the concept of love for him for most of this life, and the other was joy and love and happiness and everything he ever wanted. He was ready to fall with your words, giving you all the control to push him to one side or the other.

“No, Matthew,” you told him softly.

Matthew’s face started to fall instantly and he felt like his heart dropped into his stomach where his own body started to eat away at it immediately. The dress, the earrings, the red heart, everything, he thought he had finally broken through to you. More than that, he had thought he finally was loving you in a way you wanted, in a way that you deserved. He thought he finally had enough of the pieces of what you needed, wanted, and liked together in himself to be someone you wanted to give your love to. He knew a month wasn’t a lot of time, but he’d loved for over two years now. He loved you as a friend. He loved you when he thought there were only unrequited feelings. He loved you when he was your lover. He loved you when he broke your heart out of sheer stupidity, when he thought fighting meant you would never work together, that somehow he was wrong to love you. He loved you the entire month he didn’t see you. He loved you this past month he spent desperately trying to show you he could love you through actions, not just in his own head and chest, that he could love you like a partner, like you deserved to be loved.

“You don’t get another month,” you continued, each syllable twisting the knife deeper into Matthew’s chest. “You don’t get another month because you don’t have anything else to prove to me, Matthew.”

Matthew willed his eyes to find yours again, hoping the hope that had just alit itself in his chest wasn’t misguided. You were calm, your eyes steady, keeping contact with his. Matthew almost dared to feel reassured for a moment, like maybe the hope he felt when you said he had nothing left to prove was correct. But if he was wrong, which he so often was in general, but especially with emotions, yours in particular, it would just serve as an additional twist of the knife. When it was already in so deep, did it really matter anymore?

“You’re not on trial. No more tests,” you said to him, letting your love for him you had tried to store away pour out. “I want you, Matthew. I want you and me. I want to see if purple is my favorite color.”

The purple part was beyond Matthew and he made a mental note to ask you about it in a minute, but he needed to kiss you right now. He reached out and you leaned into his touch for the first time in a long time. His hands cupped your face and you rocked up on your toes as he pressed his lips to yours. Your hands came up to rest on his chest as he kissed you so softly, tenderly. He wanted to crush you into him, but that wasn’t what this moment was. This was hopefully the end of the longest period of his life he’d ever have to go without kissing you again. He wasn’t going to rush this, his second chance with the girl who loved him for some reason and sunflowers for much more obvious reasons.

Matthew was slow as he pulled away and tilted his head down to rest his forehead against yours. One of his thumbs shifted to ghost over your lips, his blue eyes staring into yours, but really past your eyes, and into you, seeing you better than anyone else did. He loved you without the rose colored glasses. He saw you and loved you, it had just taken him almost too long to figure out how to show it. It had almost taken him too long to figure out that love wasn’t just something you could feel and ride the feelings to bliss. Love was daily effort, trying and retrying and sometimes he would fail, but it was constantly showing up anyway. Love was hard, but holding your face in his hands, he knew you were worth the effort he planned on putting in every single day for the rest of his life.

“I love you, sunflower,” Matthew whispered, the words left raw and unpolished by how real the feelings he injected into them were.

“I love you too.”

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