I got off work when the store closed at ten, so by the time I did some cleaning up, got out to my car, and drove home, it was a quarter to eleven. As I walked up the stairs to our apartment door I noticed a blue vase with a single dyed blue carnation. Wrapped around the neck of the vase was a blue ribbon.
I bent to pick it up and this time there was just a blue sticky note on the vase that read Jesse. Whoever left it knew that carnations were my favorite flower and blue my favorite color. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, holding the vase.
“Gilbert?”
“Yeah?” he called from the living room.
Carrying both my backpack, which I took everywhere with me, and the vase, I walked into the living room. “When did this come?”
Gilbert was sitting on the couch, watching television. He frowned
