Cute as a Button

Author: Janet (SkyGirl5)

Genre: S/V, AU

Summary: In the small town of Button, Maine not much goes unnoticed by the townsfolk. Least of all the newest addition to the town: a young man named Michael Vaughn, who seems to be very interested in keeping to himself. One town member, flower shop owner Sydney Bristow, tries to be receptive of their new neighbor, but will it work? And just why does Michael seem so sad?

Disclaimer: Sydney, Vaughn, etc are properties of JJ Abrams and ABC.

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Chapters 1-10 // Chapters 11 - 20 + Epilogue

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Part One Chapter 1

Button, Maine, located just a few miles off of New England’s gorgeous coastline; population three hundred residents plus fifty to seventy-five tourists (give or take) on any given day. On the cusp of the town limits stood a weathered sign in desperate need of a new coat of paint that read, Button, Maine – Cute as a Button!. No one was quite sure how long it had been there, but they would never remove it. After all, the town motto fit the atmosphere perfectly.

All of her life Sydney Bristow and her family lived in Button; they never had a reason to leave. Her father owned the only pharmacy in town and did a good business selling townsfolk prescriptions as well as over-the-counter remedies for their ailments. Her mother taught pre-school at a nearby town’s daycare center. Growing up, especially during their high school years, Sydney and her younger sister, Nadia, would talk of moving away from Button to the big city, or at least a bigger city, but they never really meant it. As much as they hated the small town way of life they loved it all the same.

Every morning when Sydney crossed the street to grab a cup of coffee from JoAnne’s Java, she would wave, smile, and say hello to everyone who crossed her path as they would with her. She loved the friendly everybody knows your name atmosphere and would not have traded it for the hustle and bustle of the big city. Sure, it became annoying when the gossip mill churned over something she done, but the good often outweighed the bad.

After her caffeine fix, Sydney would head back across the street to her store to continue her morning routine. Upon graduating from high school, Sydney attended a local community college and earned a two-year degree in business in order to accomplish her dream of starting her own flower shop. She could not explain why it had been her dream for several years, yet she wanted it more than anything. Luckily, with a significant loan from her father and Button Savings and Loan, she was able to actualize it.

Sydney’s slightly more ambitious younger-by-two-years sister went off to obtain a four year degree also in business. When she was done with that, she returned to Button as well. She made it clear she was not going to stay for the rest of her life, but for the time being it would suit, especially since she had free room and board at her parent’s house and casual working hours at her sister’s flower boutique. Needless to say, Nadia’s ambition only went so far until sloth took over.

One grey, dank May morning when rain was expected at any moment, Sydney scurried into the flower shop just in time to hear the phone ringing. She set down her coffee cup and picked it up, answering it in a rather breathless manner. On the other end of the line was her sister stating that she could not possibly make it into work that morning due to issues of the feminine kind. She would, however, attempt to make it in by lunch. Slightly miffed, Sydney gave her sibling a mild threat before hanging up the phone. She was beginning to think that her parents and her own lax attitude towards Nadia’s lack of real life were becoming seriously detrimental.

Going on seven years in the flower business, Sydney’s shop was a well oiled machine. While she would never be rolling in millions of dollars, she did alright for herself, especially since her floral providing was the only one in her town and two towns next door. She was slowly paying off her loans on the store itself and saving money by living in the tiny apartment located on the second floor. She hoped that at one point in her life she would be able to buy a nice house with an actual yard and more than just two rooms, but for the time being the combined shop and apartment were her own little haven and she loved them.

Midway through the morning, just as she was putting the finishing touches on a display to be picked up that afternoon, the phone in Sydney’s shop rang once more. She hoped that it was her sister stating that she was on her way, but sadly it was not. Instead, it was Marjory Freemont, a waitress at the town’s greasy spoon down the street. Marjory was just a few years Sydney’s senior. The two of them had been friends during their school days and continued their friendship to that day.

“Sydney!” Marjory hissed into the phone as though she was divulging critical yet secret information. Then again, when it came to Marjory and the town’s gossip center, Ernie’s Eats, nearly everything was critical and secret. “You have to look outside! Something’s going on at that empty storefront beside you!”

“What?!” Sydney responded with total shock. Her flower shop was part of a large old building that had been converted into a duplex; her shop and apartment were located in half while another shop and apartment were in the other half. For the previous four years, ever since the knitting supplies store next door shut down when old lady Krantz passed away, the storefront had been empty. “I didn’t know someone bought that…”

“Well apparently they did. Go find out what’s goin’ on and call me back!”

Obliging to this snooping insanity that she was all too familiar with, Sydney quickly hung up the phone and scurried to the front of her shop. Acting as casually as possible, she stepped outside onto the sidewalk and glanced next door. As Marjory had informed her, there truly was activity going on there.

Instead of torn bits of paper covering the windows, there now appeared to be a clean white sheet draped across the storefront picture frame window. Also, someone (presumably the new owner) had chipped off the old store logo on the door window. Intrigued by all this activity, Sydney ran into her shop and all the way to the back, where she received all her flower deliveries. Cautiously peering out the back door, she saw a black GMC truck that she did not recognize parked behind the other half of the building.

As she was spying so surreptitiously, she heard a door slam and saw a thin, blonde figure of a man walk over to the truck’s cab and open up the passenger side door. She could only see the back of his head from her vantage point, but already knew she did not know this man; he was a stranger. A stranger – a newcomer – in Button was certainly newsworthy both on and off the gossip mill. She could not wait to find out who this stranger was and what sort of store he would be opening up next to hers. Neither, she knew, could the rest of the town.



Chapter 2

By lunchtime, the entire town was abuzz about the activity beside Sydney’s flower shop. Nadia had finally made her way into the store, but instead of being helpful manning the register, she had perched herself by the back door with a pair of binoculars hoping to catch a glimpse of the new stranger in town.

That day, due to the activity next door, the flower shop was much busier than usual. Of course, no one was actually purchasing flowers; the shop had merely become the central gossip gathering place since it was so close to the action. All of the town’s residents were wondering what sort of store would be opening on Main Street and what sort of crowd it would draw. Naturally, they were concerned it was something entirely scandalous that would draw riff-raft and the like. Sydney merely rolled her eyes at this, though; it seemed so unlikely that such a store would be opened up in Button it was not even a concern.

“Whoa baby!” Nadia exclaimed suddenly from her position at the back door. She scampered into the main shop where everyone immediately turned to hear what she had to say. “This guy is smokin’! Seriously he’s hot!”

“What do you mean?” one of the elderly townsmen asked.

“I mean he’s hot, good looking, sexy,” she clarified. Intrigued by this description, Sydney and a few younger women walked towards the back door to try and catch a glimpse of the good looking stranger, but he was already inside the shop next door.

The gossiping continued for another twenty minutes, until Sydney’s father, who also happened to be the town mayor of sorts, arrived, bearing lunch for his daughters. “What the devil is going on in here?” Jack Bristow demanded of everyone.

“We’re talking about the newcomer,” someone said.

“The man who’s opening a shop next door to the flower shop,” another clarified.

“Ah yes… nice young man,” Jack commented before handing over two paper bags, one to each of his daughter’s.

“You’ve met him?!” Nadia demanded.

“Briefly. I was at the bank when he was purchasing the property next door. He was polite, but seemed very shy. Not very old either – perhaps twenty-nine or thirty,” Jack informed the crowd. This only succeeded in piquing their curiosity even further. The mused aloud about who he could possibly be and why such a young man was moving to a town like theirs. Sydney listened silently to their tales, each more outlandish than the last, before she was sick of it.

“Oh this is just ridiculous,” she muttered. Quickly, she grabbed a handful of tulips and stuck them in a simple black vase. Then, she tied a yellow ribbon around the stems and headed towards the front door.

“What are you doing?!” someone demanded.

“I’m being neighborly and giving him a welcoming present. Then maybe we’ll find out who he is and this insanity can stop!” she insisted. Holding the vase under her left arm, she walked out the front door and crossed the four foot long area of sidewalk to the next door, which she rapped on rather loudly. It took a few moments before the blonde man she had seen earlier came to the door and looked out curiously. Sydney forced a smile as her heart began to flutter slightly in her chest. Nadia’s assessment had been correct; he was very good looking.

“Can I…help you?” the man asked slowly.

“Not really, I just wanted to welcome you to Button. My name is Sydney – Sydney Bristow – and I own the flower shop next door. I just wanted to say hello,” she said, thrusting the black vase through the narrow crack he had opened in the door.

“Oh… well, thank you,” he said simply, taking the vase. Then, without another word, he shut the door.

Sydney stood there rather stunned for a moment, wondering what had just happened. He offered her a thank you, but no name? Not even a first name or any proper introduction? If he was indeed a shy individual, not offering any small talk to go along with it could have been expected, but not even giving a name? That was flat out rudeness.

Still rather befuddled, Sydney shuffled her way back to the shop, where everyone was waiting with bated breath for her assessment. “He just… took the flowers, thanked me and shut the door… he didn’t even tell me his name,” she said rather distantly.

Immediately the room buzzed with curious whispers, now taking their original stories to an even more bizarre level. Within moments they had him pegged as a sociopath come to kill them all. “But he was hot, right?!” Nadia asked proudly.

Sydney laughed softly and nodded. “He was good looking, yes…”

“See!” she grinned.

“That’s so weird, though,” Sydney sighed. “I mean… why wouldn’t he tell me his name? Where’s the harm in a proper introduction? We’re going to find out anyway…”

“Maybe he’s a criminal on the run!” Nadia suggested. “Maybe he murdered a bunch of people and he wants to come here and start over… and he hasn’t figured out the right alias yet! So he can’t tell anyone his name…meanwhile he’s probably over there burying all the bodies in the basement…what?” she asked innocently when her sister glared. The insanity of that town did not need to be fed with stories of bodies in the basement of their duplex.

“I highly doubt he’s a murderer,” Sydney said matter-of-factly.

Nadia put her hand on her hip and gave her sister a look. “How do you know?”

“Because…,” she let her voice drift off as she tried to formulate a legitimate defense. “He’s good looking… killers are usually ugly people. Good looking people don’t need to kill anyone because they always have friends…,” she said weakly.

“Yeah, okay,” Nadia rolled her eyes.

“There’s a sign!! He put a sign out!!!” an excited voice called from the flower shop doorway. Immediately, everyone inside the shop rushed out the exit, nearly trampling each other on the way. Sydney brought up the rear, but pushed her way to the front of the crowd to see the sign hung on the glass front door to the shop. Vaughn’s Hardware.

“So he sells murder weapons!” Nadia proclaimed just moments before Sydney elbowed her painfully in the gut.

“There, see, a hardware store. That’s perfectly rational; it’s fine,” she concluded before going back into the flower shop to continue working. The townspeople were really blowing the whole situation out of proportion. Their new neighbor was not a murderer nor was he a sociopath. Always a believer in the good in people, Sydney felt there had to be some sort of rational explanation for this man’s rudeness to her. They merely needed to give him time and not ambush him, especially since he was shy; in time, he would come to them and introduce himself.



Chapter 3

After forcing everyone who was not a customer to leave her shop, Sydney and her sister were able to get a significant amount of work done. Well, Sydney was able to get work done; Nadia spent the entire day on one floral arrangement simply staring at it as she tried to contemplate ways to sneak over and get a glimpse of their new neighbor.

“It could be nice to have a new piece of meat in town. I mean, all the town guys are age…yuck,” she scrunched up her nose.

“Love that phrasing, Nad – “new piece of meat”. Why don’t you just brand him with a giant NB,” Sydney suggested with notable sarcasm.

“Well I at least want to give him the chance to settle into his shop first…,” she rationalized.

“Coulda fooled me,” Sydney muttered.

Despite the fact that her working day had only started at noon, Nadia left at four-thirty as she always did. Once she was gone, Sydney began closing up the shop for the day. Typically, her store was open until five or five-thirty (later on the days before flower-giving holidays), but that day she had virtually no customers mostly because everyone in the town was preoccupied with their new storeowner. Since she was not in the mood to have anyone else using her store as a gawking point for her new neighbor, she locked the doors and hung the ‘closed’ sign on the front window.

Knowing that the few eateries in town would be bursting with talk about the new hardware store, Sydney decided to eat in that night. While some of the town’s gossip certainly had its amusing points, sometime it just became boringly repetitive and borderline cruel. She was not in any mood to listen to the townies muse about sociopaths and murderers, especially when they came in the form of a perfectly handsome and probably polite once you got to know him man.

Upstairs in her tiny kitchen, she set a pot of water on the stove to boil. Then, she laid out a box of pasta and began rummaging through her cabinets for a jar of tomato sauce; she really was not in the mood to cook anything more extravagant than spaghetti. As she waited for the noodles to cook and the frozen garlic bread to heat up in the oven, Sydney leafed through the mail she had received that day only to find bills, more bills and junk mail; nothing interesting.

As she was eating, Sydney could not help but notice an unusual amount of activity going on outside her apartment on the streets. Curious, she walked to the windows in her bedroom which gave a clear view of Main Street. Outside, she could see a peculiar amount of people milling around, making their way towards the south, all of them looking up towards her duplex as they passed. Intrigued, Sydney went to investigate. Down on the street, she quickly noticed that everyone was headed in the direction of the town hall, located at the end of Main Street. She knew that could only mean one thing: a town intervention. This was not a good sign.

Slipping into the back of the meeting house, Sydney noticed her father up at the front podium, gavel in hand. Shaking her head slightly, Sydney tucked herself into the corner out of view. They were having a meeting to talk about the newcomer; she just knew it. It was, of course, incredibly rude to do this behind his back, not to mention ridiculous. Sadly, they did it with every new town member. It was always the natural assumption to believe a newcomer was the devil himself instead of just a nice, quiet person like the rest of them.

After just another minute, Jack banged the gavel in his hand against the podium, calling the meeting to order. Immediately the hum of whispers in the crowd died off as people focused their attention on him. “This meeting has been called due to the outburst of gossip relating to the newest member of our community, Mr. Vaughn. I do believe you all are blowing this a bit out of proportion.”

“But he’s a sociopath!” one man insisted, standing up to address the crowd. “He wouldn’t even talk to Sydney when she gave him tulips! How are we supposed to react after that?!”

“Perhaps he was just having a bad day or had a headache,” Jack suggested rationally.

As the arguing continued, Sydney decided it was best to remove herself from the meeting house, less the insanity overwhelm her as well. Walking back to her house, she could not help but feel ashamed by her town. They were being completely over the top (as usual) and the worst part was, as time continued on, more townspeople were being taken down with the crazies.

When she reached the back door of her shop-slash-apartment, it was beginning to get dark out. As she fiddled with her key ring, looking for the proper key, she noticed some movement out of the corner of her eye. Glancing towards her left she saw the sandy-haired stranger sitting on the back of his truck bed eating something from a styrophome take-out container. She debated for a moment about whether or not she should go over and attempt to speak to him again, before he beat her to the punch. He looked up, caught her eye, gave her a soft smile and said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” she echoed.

He put down his takeout container and hopped off the back of his truck before walking up on the back porch to their duplex. There, he leaned against the railing a few feet away from her. “I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I was a bit rude to you and I didn’t mean to be. I was having difficulties putting up shelving and I guess I took out my frustration on you. You were so nice in bringing me those tulips I just… I wanted to say I was sorry.”

Sydney smiled softly; she knew there had to be an explanation. “Well thank you and don’t worry about it; I figured you were having a bad day or something…”

He nodded. “My name is Michael, by the way; Michael Vaughn.”

“Well it’s nice to meet you Michael Vaughn of Vaughn’s Hardware,” She smiled. He smiled softly as well and looked down towards his feet. “Welcome, once more, to Button.”

“Button,” he repeated with a slight laugh. “So you guys are serious about that? I thought it was some sort of joke when I saw the sign.”

Sydney laughed. “No, sadly, its not. We’re…cute as a button…”

“See I never understood that phrase… I didn’t! I never found buttons cute… sure, kittens are cute, but buttons? Buttons are made of plastic… kittens are all…furry…”

Sydney laughed again. “Well if you think about it that way I guess I don’t understand that phrase either. Hey listen if you ever need a break setting up your store in the next few days, c’mon over and I’ll take you to lunch; my treat.”

“How about I take you to lunch?” he countered. “After all, you’re the only person who has bothered to welcome me to this town. Everyone else just stood outside and stared at the storefront all day…”

Sydney cringed inwardly. “You noticed that, huh?”

He chuckled inwardly. “It was kind of impossible not to.”

“Well it’s a small town… they fear change and new people. Give ‘em time though and I promise they’re friendly,” Sydney assured him.

“Well even so at least I know one friendly person,” he smiled at her. She smiled back. “Hey listen, I gotta go, but I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Definitely.”



Part Two



Chapter 4

One Year Later

“Sydneeeeeeey,” Michael whined loudly. “I don’t want to go to this meeting; I hate those stupid things. Can’t we just turn around and go back…” As they walked, he began dragging his feet so that he was hardly moving forward at all and making loud noises with his sneakers against the gravel. Sydney, who was holding his hand, was soon practically dragging him along behind her with all of her weight.

“Michael Vaughn stop it,” she scolded. “You are being a big baby! You’re so agoraphobic it’s sad.”

“Excuse me,” he retorted. “I am not agoraphobic; I’m antisocial.”

“Whatever,” she rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious! I went to the movies twice with you this past month – isn’t that enough?”

“Um, no,” she told him seriously. “You are going tonight whether you like it or not and you will enjoy it – trust me. Jeez, one time won’t kill you.”

“Fine,” he pouted in a tone that made it clear it just might.

Sydney shook her heat at him before continuing to drag him along the way. That night she had a particular need for Michael to attend the specially scheduled town meeting. Of course, there was no meeting at all. Instead, it was a surprise party for him, but she did not want him to know that; hence the surprise part of it.

In the year since Michael blew in to town causing the uproar of all uproars not much had changed in Button. They still had no traffic lights and few stop signs; they were still just as backwards as ever. Sydney was still running the flower shop with her sister’s help. Although, Nadia was even less of an assistant as of late due to her new boyfriend—the cousin of someone who lived in town. Michael’s hardware store was doing surprisingly well for its first year in business, though Sydney suspected it was mostly out of intrigue from the town’s patrons that he received business at all. At first, anyway.

In that three hundred and sixty-five day period of time, a friendship had blossomed between Sydney and Michael. True, Michael still was a generally shy individual and did not easily strike up a conversation with just anyone. For some reason, though, he was always willing to chitchat with Sydney. Being residents of the same duplex, they ran into each other frequently – taking out the garbage, retrieving their mail, or just coming and going in their day-to-day activities. Each time they bumped into one another they would smile and chat for a few minutes, sometimes making plans to share a meal or go to a movie together.

Though Sydney would not hesitate to label Michael as one of her friends, she was hesitant to consider him a close friend. Though she would have gladly done so, there were still many things about him she did not know; things he was unwilling to discuss. Most of all, these topics surrounded anything and everything that happened to him before arriving in Button. Sure, he would occasionally share a funny childhood memory or an amusing yet scarring event from his teen years, but these incidences were few and far between. Any time Sydney would try to bring up a topic related to going to school or his family life he would change the subject immediately, leaving her to wonder what had happened in his life just before his move to Button.

Sometimes the two of them would talk for hours about a movie or a current event, and yet at other times she could hardly get five words out of him. Michael was always polite to anyone, yet he hesitated to talk about something more intimate than the weather. In a way, his closed off attitude made her very sad, wondering if he would ever be able to open up to anyone about his past life or if maybe it would stay locked inside of him forever.

“Okay, good, we’re here. Now we can go,” Michael said as he went to turn around right at the threshold to the town hall.

“Not so fast bucko,” Sydney said, placing her palms flat on his chest and shoving him towards the entrance. He groaned and stomped his feet like a two year old. “I swear to god Michael, you’re going to like what’s going on inside. If you don’t I’ll give you free flowers for a month.”

“What the hell am I going to do with a months worth of flowers?” he asked her seriously.

“Free lunch?” she offered. He still made a face. “I swear if you don’t get in there this second I’m going to give you the world’s worst wedgie.”

“Ew Syd,” he scrunched his nose up for an entirely different reason. Reluctantly, he walked over to the door and pulled it open only to be met with a loud chorus of, “SURPRISE!”

“What’s….going on,” Michael asked slowly to Sydney, who was standing behind him, beaming.

“Well gee, I don’t know,” she said playfully. Then she looped her arm through his and pulled him into the meeting room. There, she pointed across the room to a sign that said, Happy One Year Anniversary, Michael!.

“You…threw me a party…,” he said slowly, glancing over to see if she was serious or ready to jump up and yell, ‘Gotcha! You’ve been Punk’d!’

“Of course,” she grinned. “We had to mark the momentous one year after the opening of Vaughn’s Hardware occasion somehow. I mean, I know its still a few weeks yet until the official day, but if I threw it on the actual day it wouldn’t have been as surprising!” she told him with a happy laugh. “Aren’t you surprised?!”

“Definitely surprised…,” he said flatly.

“Excellent. C’mon let me show you around,” she said with a happy giggle. She pulled him in the direction of the congratulatory sign, under which was a large table full of snacks, sodas and a cake, which was decorated with the same message as the poster above it. Sydney informed him that the cake was chocolate with white icing; Michael’s favorite kind. Next, she showed him the table filled with memorabilia for that one year, including the tablecloth on which was a message written by many of the town’s members. Finally, there was the large sound system set up to play only his favorite music despite its differences from her preferences and that of the town’s aged population.

Once their tour was over, Michael wandered back over to the food, still looking rather shell-shocked. Sydney was not fazed by this, though; she had sprung the whole thing on him rather suddenly. Yet, she was very proud she had pulled off her secret plan and could not wait for Michael to start enjoying the party just for him.

Twenty minutes later after speaking with her sister and parents and a few other town members, Sydney set off to look for Michael, figuring he was also mingling with the guests. She looked around the room for a few minutes with no avail until she saw him standing behind the table of memorabilia looking sadder than any person she had ever seen before. In that moment, her heart broke for him. Why did he look as though the world around him was falling apart? Shouldn’t he have at least been content, seeing the display before him, proving that people cared? She had no idea, but feared she would never know the true reason why.





Chapter 5

Plastering a smile across her face, Sydney decided the best plan of action was to pretend she did not notice that Michael appeared to be the most depressed person on earth. Maybe he would open up to her and tell her what was wrong. Maybe.

“Hey, having fun?!” she asked happily.

Michael’s head snapped up from its hung-low position and he forced a grin as well. “Yeah this is… this is really great Sydney. I can’t believe you did this.”

“Of course! Did you read your table of memories?” she asked, gesturing behind her.

He nodded. “Some of it. I don’t think I’ve talked to some of those people more than a few times though,” he laughed softly.

“Eh well you know a small town; everyone knows everyone even if they don’t really know them.”

“Right,” he smiled. “You…you, um, didn’t write on it….”

“Oh no,” she said, glancing back to the table quickly. “No I was really busy organizing all this and dealing with flower deliveries and stuff… I will, though; I promise.”

“That’s fine; I was just making sure I didn’t miss it,” he told her.

“Right,” she nodded. Then, she crammed her hands down into her jeans pockets and rocked back on her heels. “So, um… we can cut your cake if you’d like. That’s kinda the best part of the party anyway.”

“Yeah sure whatever,” he shrugged with indifference. Sydney flashed him an even bigger smile, hoping it would result in at least a half one from him, but it did not. Slightly discouraged, she walked over to the cake and pulled out the large knife she brought. She handed it to Michael, letting him to the honors since it was his cake after all. He cut about half of it up into smaller pieces before taking a piece himself along with a plastic fork. Once again, he retreated to his corner, practically avoiding everyone eyes as he walked.

“So what’s with Michael? He looks like we strung his stupid little cat up by its stupid little neck in the center of the room,” Nadia commented to her sister.

Sydney gave her a look. “Why exactly do you hate Snickers so much?” she asked, referring to Michael’s brown and white tabby. The cat’s name actually was an interesting story. When naming his pet, many people suggested people name the cat Kit, so that it became Kit the Cat, a play on the candy bar with a similar name. Keeping with the candy theme yet straying away from the norm, Michael named him Snickers. Ironically, he hated peanuts and thus Snickers bars.

“Because he stares at me with those little beety eyes and I know he’s judging me!” Nadia snapped. Sydney rolled her eyes. “Anyway, seriously what’s his deal?”

“I really don’t know,” Sydney sighed honestly.

“It really is a shame he’s such a freak… there always has to be something wrong with the smokin’ hot ones, right? They’re either gay, married, have commitment issues or herpes…,” She sighed tragically. Sydney gave her a peculiar sideways glance. “Anyway I’m gonna bounce; this party’s a snore. The cake was good though.”

“See you tomorrow!” Sydney called to her sister as a subtle reminder that she was schedule to work at the flower shop. In return, Nadia merely gave a casual hand wave which Sydney knew meant she probably would not be in to work…as usual.

Once her sister was gone, Sydney’s eyes turned back to the corner in which Michael had parked himself only to find that, shockingly, he was not there. She scanned the crowd for a moment, wondering if he had finally decided to be social, but he was nowhere to be seen. She wandered around for a minute, hoping she had missed him, but he was gone. Knowing he could not have been far, she quickly escaped the meeting house and looked in the direction from which they had walked. There, she saw him.

“Michael!” She called out his name as she jogged towards him. After three tries he finally stopped and turned around to face her. “There you are… are you leaving? Aren’t you feeling well?” Sydney questioned rather breathlessly once she caught up to him.

“Yeah I was leaving… I, um, I’m alright…well, actually I kinda have a headache – migraine actually. I think I’m just gonna go… thanks for the party though; it was great. The cake was really good,” he told her with a soft smile.

Though she could not see his face in the dim light of Main Street, it was easy to tell he was lying by the tone of his voice. “Michael,” she began in a serious tone. “I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… I mean, I was stupid. I had this great idea thinking how cool it would be but I didn’t realize it would be cool for me – someone like me or my sister – not for you… you probably don’t… didn’t…”

“Sydney what are you talking about?!” Michael asked with genuine confusion, having trouble deciphering her ranting.

“This party; you hate it don’t you?” she asked sadly.

Michael sighed and lowered his head slightly. “Well I wouldn’t say hate…”

“But you don’t like it,” she concluded flatly.

“It’s not that, Syd. I love the gesture, really; it was one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever done for me but… well, I always feel so claustrophobic in situations like that. There are so many people; I never know what to say and when they’re all there for me… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it… it’s my fault, really. I know you’re not the most social guy in the world, I should have taken that into more consideration.”

“No harm done,” he promised her. Then, he turned to leave, but she stopped him before he could take another step.

“Are you sure that’s all it is? Social claustrophobia? Because… you seemed really sad in there Michael. I mean, you were acting like it was Snicker’s wake or something… I just… I know you don’t like to talk about your personal life but are you okay?” she asked in a serious tone, hoping beyond hope that he would tell her something – anything – even if it was just something small.

For a solid minute Michael said nothing. The only noise on the streets aside from their joint breathing was the sounds of crickets chirping in the distance. Michael took a hesitant step forward and said softly, “You wanna walk with me?”

“Yeah I do,” she said softly. Then she reached out and took his arm as the two of them set off towards their duplex, hoping that maybe she would find out just what made his emerald eyes clouded with such sadness on that evening and on many others.



Chapter 6

For almost two blocks, Sydney and Michael walked in silence. Every couple of steps, Sydney would glance over to Michael only to find he had the same confused and unnerved facial expression. It was obvious he was deeply contemplating something, most likely whether or not he should reveal something personal to her. To hopefully encourage him, Sydney rubbed his arm gently. He glanced over to her, giving her a half smile, then he turned his focus back towards the direction they were heading.

“When I was eleven, my father opened his own hardware store,” he began softly. “Up until then, he worked at a larger hardware store chain, but he had always wanted to open a store of his own. When he finally did, I remember…he was so proud of it. ‘One day this will all be yours,’ he would always tell me.

“He worked for hours in that store… taking inventory, doing the bookkeeping. As I got older I helped him in the store…socking shelves and writing up order forms for the kind of nails we were running out of or whatever. I never… I never wanted to be in the hardware business; it didn’t interest me. Of course, I had no idea what else I wanted to be at that point, but I knew hardware was not in my future.”

With these comments, Sydney was immediately confused. If he was so adamantly against working in a hardware store, why had he been running one in Button for over a year? Granted, he did not wish to work in hardware while he was sixteen and his mind could have changed in fourteen years…right?

“I took a year off from high school after I graduated to sort of find myself,” he continued. “My father kept telling me to go to business school so I could help him run the hardware store. ‘You need to know accounting, finance, and small business management,’ he would tell me. Then he’d teach me the rest. I just couldn’t stand it, though. I didn’t want to work in an office or run his store; it was his love, not mine.

“So after a year of thinking I decided to become certified to be an EMT, figuring as long as I was finding myself I might as well be helping others along the way. That’s when it hit me; that’s what I wanted to do. I decided to become a nurse.”

“A nurse? Really?” Sydney couldn’t help but chime in at this unexpected conclusion.

Michael nodded. “I know what you’re thinking – girly.”

“No, no that’s not what I was thinking at all,” she promised, shaking her head. “I was just…surprised. I didn’t really expect that from you.”

“I know; I’m kinda shy and not dynamic, right? Well I wasn’t always this shy… and I really liked the idea of being a nurse and helping people that way. Anyway, when I told my father about it he was not thrilled to say the least. At first he thought I was joking, but when he realized I was serious he still laughed. In his mind, nursing was for women. If I wanted to be in the medical field I needed to be a doctor, but I didn’t have the smarts, discipline or money for that. Before I could go through with it, though, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.”

“Oh Michael,” Sydney exhaled sympathetically.

Michael continued without looking for her. “By the time she was diagnosed, it had already spread; they gave her a few months. We spend a great amount of that time in and out of the hospital with her and, in doing that, I realized that I really did want to be a nurse. The nurses were always there, being helpful and I wanted to be one of them. The day after my mother passed I signed up for nursing school.

“My father,” he exhaled and shook his head. “I’ve never seen him so disappointed. I think he may have even hated me for what I did…”

“Oh Michael I’m sure that isn’t true,” Sydney said.

“It was though!” he insisted. “In his mind I betrayed him by not joining him in the hardware business. He didn’t want me to be happy doing what I wanted; he wanted met to be happy doing what he wanted, even if that really didn’t make me happy…”

“Did nursing make you happy?” Sydney questioned.

“Yeah it did; I really enjoyed it.”

“Then what are you doing here, in Button, with a hardware store?!” Sydney asked almost with a laugh.

Michael let out a long exhale and was silent for almost a full minute before he spoke again. “A year ago, almost to the day, my father passed away suddenly – a heart attack.”

Sydney’s heart sank all the way down to the pit of her stomach and she could not stop herself from letting out a deep, “Oh God, Michael…”

“I was working a double shift at the ER when he came in. He collapsed at his store and someone called 911… I was there when he died,” he said in a tone that was, shockingly, emotionless.

“Oh Michael,” Sydney sighed again, giving his arm a stronger squeeze.

“A few days later, when everything was sorted out, I found his will and realized he left the store and all its contents to me. We rarely spoke in those years after my mother’s death. Just the cursory visits on Christmas, my birthday and his, but even when we were together we didn’t say anything. I knew he wanted me to work in the store and he didn’t want me to be a nurse; he knew I wouldn’t change my mind about being a nurse and that’s the way it was.

“But when he left me the store I realized… I realized that maybe I was being selfish. My father loved that store and I knew he wanted me to run it because he wanted someone he loved to run it just like he did… so that’s how I ended up here, in Button, with a hardware store. I took all my dad’s inventory and brought it here.”

“But,” Sydney began with mild confusion, “that doesn’t explain how you ended up here… why wouldn’t you have just stayed there with your dad’s existing store?”

A soft smile crossed his face. “I did…for a while. But all those people there knew my dad; they would come into the store and give me these sympathetic looks and apologize that he was gone. After a few weeks I just couldn’t take it anymore… I needed to find a new place to start over; a place without painful memories. That’s all my home town had – memories of my parents… I didn’t have any other family so there really was no other reason to stay.”

By that point in their stroll, they had arrived at their duplex. Michael slowly climbed up the back stairs and rested his forearms along the railing, leaning over slightly in the dim porch light.

“Oh Michael,” Sydney sighed, walking over and putting a comforting hand on his back. “I’m so, so sorry. I just... I’m sorry,” she told him. That was the only thing she could think of to say. The amount of heartbreak in his life certainly did explain a lot. More than anything, she wished she could make it better. Sadly, that was impossible.

“Thanks,” he managed with a forced smile. “So that’s…it, I guess.”

“I really appreciate you telling me this, Michael – really…but I just… well, if you’re not happy running this business, then you shouldn’t be. If you really want to be a nurse; be a nurse. You should be happy.”

“I am happy,” he told her. She gave him a skeptical look. “Alright I’m… content. I’m really not as unhappy as I thought I would be running this business. Plus this town’s kinda… unique in a cool sort of way.”

“Yeah that’s us,” Sydney laughed softly. “And if its worth anything I’m really glad you’re here.”

“Thanks Sydney,” he smiled that time, genuinely. “Anyway I think I’m gonna go crash… it’s been a long day.”

“Sure – oh hey wait! You, uh, never got to see what I was going to put on your memories table,” she told him. He turned to her and gave her a curious look. Quickly, she walked over to him and, resting her hands gently on his arm, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. When she pulled back, she saw that he was blushing slightly. “You wanna get some brunch tomorrow?” she offered.

“Sure,” he said softly, “my treat.”



Part 3



Chapter 7

One Year Later

“Syd? Syd?! Are you back there?” Michael Vaughn called out as he hovered in the doorway to his friend’s flower shop.

“Here!” came Sydney’s muffled call. Michael noticed a stray hand popping out from behind a giant bunch of flowers and he walked towards it.

“Gee, Syd, did you get a flower delivery recently?” he asked with obvious sarcasm since there clearly was a greater amount of colors in the store than usual.

“Ha, ha,” she said dryly.

“Seriously how can you stand this?! It reeks in here,” he emphasized before holding his nose closed with his thumb and index finger.

“It smells like flowers,” Sydney said in a factual yet ‘Duh! You moron!’ tone.

“I know and its gross. Seriously, I think this is toxic for your health,” he told her.

“Did you come in here to tell me that?” she retorted, mildly annoyed.

“No. I came in to ask what time we were leaving for your sister’s engagement party thing tonight.”

“Quarter to seven,” she told him.

“Okay…and what should I wear? Is this okay?” he asked.

Sydney glanced around the flowers and looked her nasal sounding friend up and down. “Michael,” she began flatly, hoping he was kidding. “You’re wearing like… pajama pants and a plaid shirt.”

“So that’s a ‘no’ then?” he asked sounding shockingly serious.

“That’s a ‘no’. Seriously, Michael, I know you work in a hardware store and not The Plaza, but don’t you think you should dress up a bit more than that? Like to say… jeans and a clean shirt?”

“This shirt is clean!” he insisted. “Or at least it was yesterday…”

Sydney threw a wilted rose at him. “God, you’re so disgusting. I mean, you’d think you’d want to dress up just incase.”

“Just incase?” he raised an eyebrow at her.

“Yes just incase some busty blonde stops by your store in desperate need for a screwdriver to fix her… vibrator. And then say this lonely blonde happens to choke on her chewing gum while in your store. Then, you would have no choice but to put your nursing skills to work and save her life. Naturally, out of gratitude Bambi would give you her thong with her number written on it, go home and promptly throw out her broken vibrator in favor of the real thing.”

At the conclusion of her sordid and insane tale, Michael looked at her as though she had just sprouted a foot out of her forehead. “Seriously, Syd, I think the fumes are beginning to affect your brain cells. On what planet would that ever happen?!?!!?”

She merely shrugged. “You never know; it could.”

“No, it couldn’t for many, many reasons least of which I’m fairly sure you can’t actually repair a vibrator with a screwdriver,” he said factually.

“Oh? Really? So you’re running Vaughn’s Hardware-slash-Vibrator Repair Shop now?”

Michael rolled his eyes, immediately ignoring what she said. “I’ll see you at quarter to seven,” he said before walking towards the store exit.

“Dress nice!” Sydney called after him in more of a scolding tone than anything else.

That evening at her parent’s home, her younger sister was having her engagement party, celebrating her union with her boyfriend, Neil. Sydney had to admit that she was less than thrilled about the prospect of this joyous occasion. Frankly, she was not Neil’s biggest fan. While she did not dislike Neil as a person, she felt as though her sister was going after him for the wrong reasons, namely financial ones. Despite this, it was Nadia’s life and she was free to marry whomever she chose.

Nadia and Neil began their courtship approximately fourteen months prior when Neil was in town visiting his cousins, who happened to be lifetime residents of Button. Neil was an investment banker from a larger city about a two hour drive from Button. Though he and Nadia had a long-distance relationship at first, eight months earlier Nadia had made the move to the big city like she always wanted to be with him. This, of course, left Sydney high and dry when it came to help with the flower shop, which ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Nadia’s help with the shop had been intermittent at best. Basically she only assisted when she wanted to. With her permanently gone, Sydney could hire someone from the town who she knew would do steady work without having to worry about hurting the feelings of Princess Nadia, who she knew would have thrown a hissy-fit otherwise.

When Neil proposed to Nadia a month earlier, the two of them decided to have two engagement parties – one for Button and their acquaintances there and one in their new home so as to separate the two as much as possible. Sydney realized Nadia was simply doing this to receive more gifts, but this did not surprise her at all; it was quintessentially her sister to make sure everything was focused on her at all times, especially since she was now a bride-to-be.

In addition to those differences at Sydney’s Flowers, things between Sydney and Michael had changed as well. Well, not so much changed as deepened. Ever since his personal admissions the year before, the two of them had been best friends and growing ever closer. They ate lunch together practically every day, shared secrets between them, and often favored spending time with each other over spending time alone or with others.

As they grew closer, Sydney found out more and more about Michael’s turbulent past, his relationship with his father in particular. He revealed to her that she was the only and probably would continue to be the only person in Button who he revealed his secrets too. It was difficult for him to talk about such topics and he did not want to share them just anyone; only those who he thought would care enough to listen, those who he felt closest too.

These sentiments touched Sydney deeply. Never had someone confided in her and only her (at least not to her knowledge). To prove to Michael that his trust had not been a waste, she shared some private facts of her own. Of course, nothing she could tell him was as heart-wrenching as his life story, but she did manage to tell him a few secrets she was rather nervous to let out.

By the end of Michael’s second year in Button, Sydney had never been happier that the storefront beside hers had been empty for so many years. If Michael had moved into another storefront in Button or perhaps one not even in the town at all, she probably never would have grown as close to him as she was then and that truly would have been a shame.



Chapter 8

At six forty-five sharp, Sydney stepped out the back door of her house-slash-shop only to find Michael waiting for her on the porch. He was dressed in a crisp blue button-down shirt and khaki pants with a brown belt and matching brown shoes. He was looking perfect for the occasion, especially since he had shaved off his few day stubble of a beard, which seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face, never growing longer or being removed with a razor.

“Well aren’t you looking handsome this evening?” Sydney smiled as she reached over to adjust the collar on his shirt, which was protruding at an odd angle on one side.

“Well you know I tried,” he said as he ran his hair through his ever messy locks. Even though they were never combed properly or even sticking up the same way twice, the look worked for him; it simply added to his manly aura. “I didn’t want to look too much like the vibrator repair man…”

Sydney laughed loudly. “Short of purposely making yourself look like the creepy guy who hasn’t left his parents basement in ten years, that would be virtually impossible,” she told him.

“Good to know,” he smiled. The two of them walked down the porch steps to the street and then began the hike to Sydney’s parent’s house. It was a fifteen minute walk away, yet they did not opt to drive. Almost everyone in Button walked to their destinations if the weather was not inclement. It was encouraged ever since her father had chosen adult obesity as his issue to target a few years earlier. Ever since his walk-everywhere decree, there were very few overweight individuals in button, something he prided himself on.

“You’re looking pretty cute yourself this evening,” Michael commented as they walked.

“Thanks,” she laughed softly. “I actually had to think up my outfit very methodically. You know, I wouldn’t want to upstage Nadia at her engagement party – or be accused of trying to, anyway.”

“Right,” Michael laughed in agreement. In the two years since he had met the Bristow sisters, he had seen Nadia’s insanity enough to know not to mess with her if possible. “You know what you should do? You should buy a really white fancy dress to wear to her wedding.”

Sydney let out a loud bark of laughter. “Oh yeah that would be just wonderful. She’d probably kill me or something – like actually kill me. Either that or she’d just lock me out of the church and refuse to let me be within a five mile radius of her.”

“Probably,” Michael nodded.

For the rest of their walk, Sydney and Michael stayed relatively silent. Though it was beginning to get rather dark outside, their path was well lit by all the mandatory streetlights lit along the way. The only shadowed portion of their path was a small bridge that crossed over a small lake that went across the front of Sydney’s parent’s house and the few other houses clustered around it. There was, of course, a larger bridge for cars that was well lit, but Sydney always chose the footbridge over that one; she wasn’t sure why. Most likely it was because she had spent many childhood times on that bridge with her friends and something about it was like walking across the past, memories of her childhood mirrored back to her from the water below.

A significant number of people were already gathered inside Sydney’s parent’s home when they arrived. Since nearly the whole town had been invited, this did not surprise Sydney at all; however, it did make her slightly concerned for Michael’s wellbeing. Though he was not as shy as he was even six months earlier, he still had claustrophobic feelings in large, crowded areas. Sydney always assured him that if he needed to he could step outside and she would follow if he wanted, but he usually managed to tough it out.

“Sydddddddd!” Nadia smiled broadly at the sight of her elder sister. “You made it! That’s so, so, so great!”

“Nadia, you’re drunk,” Sydney laughed, patting her sister’s back rather roughly as they embraced.

“Noo, not drunk, just happy,” she said with an overdramatic wink. Sydney glanced back over her shoulder and exchanged eye rolls with Michael. “Michael! Mikey! You made it!”

“Um yea…,” he said slowly, cautiously hugging the sloppier Bristow sister. “You invited me…”

“Yeah but you’re always… you know,” Nadia waved her hand casually. Then, upon spotting more guests arriving, she hurried off to the front door.

Michael shook his head in her general direction, having no idea what she meant. Then again, she was not exactly herself, so that didn’t surprise him. “The funniest part is that she’s just going to get more intoxicated as the night goes on,” he said softly to Sydney.

“Oh I know right?” Sydney smiled. Then the two of them made their way back to the Bristow’s kitchen to find drinks for themselves. There, they ran into Sydney’s parents and greeted them.

Forty minutes later, after mingling together and separately, Sydney and Michael met up again in a cluster of partygoers surrounding Nadia and her fiancé. They entered the group in the middle of the conversation, but clearly it was just in time for the most interesting part.

“So was it love at first sight?” one of Nadia’s former schoolmates asked happily.

“Oh I don’t know… what do you think?” Nadia giggled up to her fiancé.

“Sure I guess,” Neil said with a casual shrug.

At this, Sydney made a notable gagging noise as her left eye twitched slightly. Noticing this, Nadia chirped, “Sister dear? Was there something you’d like to share with us?”

“Not really… I just find the whole ‘love at first sight’ concept ridiculous,” she said matter-of-factly.

“You would,” Nadia muttered while a few other partygoers looked rather surprised.

“I’m serious – it’s ridiculous! How could you possibly fall in love with someone without even knowing their name or anything else about them? Any judgments you make based on sight would be shallow and superficial only thus you could not possibly fall in love with someone at first sight because you don’t know them from the inside out, which is the only way you could love them,” she rationalized.

“I disagree,” Michael said. Everyone’s eyes immediately shifted from Sydney too Michael. Sydney looked over to him as well, her eyes very wide. She expected opposition to her decree, but not from Michael.

“You do?!” she asked with shock.

“Well yeah. I think you’re taking ‘love at first sight’ a bit too literally. If you take it literally as you did I agree; you can’t fall in love with someone by simply spotting them from across the room. However, if you take a broader definition of the phrase, I absolutely believe that you can feel a connection to someone just minutes after meeting them. You may not be head over heels in love with them, but if you listen to your gut you’ll be able to figure out if they’re a special person to you or not and if they are that simply opens up the door to love,” he said.

Upon hearing his side of things, Sydney gave Michael a conceding nod. She fully understood what he was trying to explain, yet could not say she had ever felt that gut feeling of a connection so quickly after meeting someone. To her, love came over time as layers and layers of personal information were chipped away until that person was completely open with her as she was with him. “Yeah I guess I can see that,” she said finally.

“Oh come onnnnnn,” Nadia groaned loudly. At this outburst, Sydney and Michael’s heads snapped towards her. “Would you two freakin’ kiss already and get it over with?! Jesus could you be more perfect for one another.”

“Nadia!” Sydney exhaled with embarrassment while her cheeks turned bright red. She knew Nadia was intoxicated and it was one thing if she did something to embarrass herself, but she did not want to be taken along for the ride.

“Don’t Nadia me! He basically just told you that he loves you which, by the way, is sooooo obvious,” she said in Michael’s general direction. This only succeeded in making him turn pink all the way back to his ears.

Without even glancing over at Michael, Sydney stepped forward and yanked her out-of-hand sister aside. “Nadia, what the hell!?” she hissed. “I know you’re wasted but could you at least try to keep me out of this!”

“Why? You love him too,” Nadia said far too loudly for their private conversation.

“I do not!” Sydney squeaked. “You’re drunk and you’re seeing things that aren’t even there.”

“Nuh-uh,” Nadia retorted.

“Yes you are,” Sydney informed her sharply. Then she briefly glanced back towards Michael only to see he wasn’t there at all. She turned and quickly scanned the crowd, but was having difficulty seeing him through the sea of people. Finally she spotted him just as he slipped out the front door. “There! See what you did!” she scolded her sister. “You made him leave!”

“Nah,” Nadia said with a sloppy hand wave. “He probably just went outside to jerk off because, you know, he’s so turned on by you and all…”

Sydney gave her sister a, ‘What are you on crack?!’ look before quickly turning and following Michael out the door, hoping to do some damage control.



Chapter 9

Stepping out onto the porch, Sydney did not immediately spot Michael and feared he was already on his way home. Her heart sinking into her stomach, she was just about to rush inside and tell her parents she was leaving before hurrying to catch up with Michael when she heard footsteps shuffling. Looking to her left, around the other side of the house, she saw Michael leaning over the railing.

“I’m sorry my sister is such a deformed maniac,” Sydney said softly.

Startled, Michael stood up quickly. He glanced back over his shoulder and cracked a soft smile at the sight of Sydney. “It’s okay; everyone knew she was drunk.”

“I know but that’s not an excuse. She’s just… insane and I’m sorry she had to embarrass you – us,” Sydney corrected quickly. After all, both of them were crimson at her comments.

“It’s fine, really. She’s just… Nadia.”

“What she said though…,” Sydney began rather nervously. Should they talk about it or just chalk it up to Nadia’s intoxication? She really wasn’t sure. Part of her wanted to discuss it so she could get a feel for his feelings on the subject yet, at the same time, the other part of her never wanted to discuss it at all.

“Oh yeah,” Michael laughed softly, “how crazy was that?”

Sydney swallowed hard. Okay, definitely not the direction she was hoping… “Crazy, yea…,” she said weakly.

“I mean, we’re best friends…right?” he continued with slight uncertainty. Sydney gave a definite nod and a smile crossed his face. “Right we’re friends. We’re not in love we’re… friends.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, a knife twisting in her heart with each and every one of his words. She then looked down at her feet, unable to meet his eyes, as the two stood idly on the porch.

“Well I guess I’ll go back inside… you never know, Nadia might be hanging from the chandelier by now,” Michael said with soft amusement after a few minute long silence.

Sydney managed to crack a small smile at this mental image. “You go ahead,” she told him. “I’m just gonna stay out here another minute.”

“Okay…,” Michael said with notable hesitation. He didn’t move for a minute, almost as if he was waiting for her to ask him to stay, but then finally he walked past her and went back inside.

Sydney stood on the porch alone for a minute before all the noise of the party inside became too much; she wanted to be alone. Without even bothering to say goodbye to her parents, drunken sister, or future brother-in-law, she jumped off the porch, completely ignoring the two wooden steps leading down to the grass, and hurried off in the direction of Main Street.

Walking across her parent’s yard, her arms tucked tightly around her body, Sydney could not help but curse herself for being so stupid. She was stupid – so stupid. After all, why would Michael ever think of her as more than a friend; she had already lost that chance. In her mind, guys could not go from being long time friends with a female to suddenly being romantic with them; such a decision had to be made shortly after meeting. They would either be friends or be romantic; those lines could never be crossed. Right off the bat she was friends with Michael, thus ending any possibility for a romantic relationship between them.

At first, she was perfectly fine with this arrangement. At that point, she had no feelings whatsoever for him. Okay, well, there was a superficial attraction to his sparkling green eyes and “smokin’” features, as Nadia so eloquently dubbed them. That was all that she felt though; simply a crush. Until one fateful night a few months prior when it all slammed into her like falling head first onto a cement walkway.

It was just a boring December day, a rather gloomy one, actually. The flower shop had very few orders and no one stopping in off the street since it was freezing cold. Bored, Sydney wandered over to Michael’s hardware store as she often did, looking for some conversation. They spoke for a few minutes before Sydney brought up the subject of a newly released movie she wished to go and see. She invited Michael along with her that weekend, but, surprisingly, he refused, stating simply that he had a date. Then, he walked away to assist a customer.

When Michael told her that he had a date, her first reaction was an immediately sick stomach. What did he mean he had a date? He couldn’t possibly mean a date could he? Why would he go on a date when he was her… And that was when she realized it. Michael was absolutely nothing to her; he was nothing more than her friend and therefore he was perfectly free and clear to go on dates with whomever he wished. She had not been thinking of him this way, though; she had been thinking of him as hers – her boyfriend.

At first, Sydney was confused by her own thoughts. She did not consciously think of Michael as her boyfriend, yet she subconsciously received feelings of extreme jealousy when hearing about a date of his. It took her a while to think out the situation, but when she did she realized that she had actual feelings for him.

Having feelings for someone who obviously did not reciprocate them was the worst possible thing in the world in Sydney’s mind, so she decided then and there to suppress those feelings and ignore them to save herself the heartbreak. It worked, too, until Nadia’s party when her sister’s observation (which she begrudgingly admitted was accurate) came to her attention. Michael’s “we’re just friends” comment made everything even worse.

Due to her thoughts, Sydney’s walking had slowed to practically a shuffle. By the time she reached the footbridge she wasn’t moving at all. Feeling too sad to continue home at that moment, she leaned over the bridge and stared down into the black tinted water, reflecting the streetlights from a few feet away. Sighing, she rested her hand on her fist and wondered if it was even possible for she and Michael to escape the awkwardness Nadia’s comments had created.

After just a few minutes of standing there, Sydney was pulled from her thoughts by the wooden slats of the bridge creaking beside her, causing her to gasp from being startled. Of course, in Button, she was not concerned about someone dangerous approaching her; heck, they did not even need to lock their doors at night. She was merely surprised by the sudden noise in the otherwise quiet evening.

Turning her head toward the sound, she was rather surprised to see Michael standing there at the edge of the footbridge. He had gone back inside to the party; why had he followed her? Had he come after her after she did not go inside like she had promised? Before she could pose any of these questions, though, Michael took two long strides forward. He put his hands at her waist and lowered his head to hers, immediately entwining their lips.

Sydney was so stunned at this sudden gesture she did not move an inch for a solid thirty seconds. Then, quickly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back fully, hardly able to breathe from the tingles shooting up and down her spine at their perfect connection. When Michael broke their kiss after a few minutes, she could not have spoken if her life depended on it; she was having enough difficulty with that whole standing up on her own two feet thing.

“You, uh, wanna go for a walk?” he asked deeply.

“Uh huh,” she managed to squeak out. Then, in the darkness she saw him smile ever so slightly before he put a strong arm around her back and led the way towards Main Street.



Chapter 10

Walking down the street hand in hand with Michael, Sydney continually had to remind herself that just a few minutes earlier his lips had actually been on hers. It wasn’t a dream; it was real. He really had kissed her and their kiss had been more perfect than every other kiss she had in her entire life combined, or so she thought at that moment while she was still floating on cloud nine.

Every few steps, she would glance over to her right and look at Michael, just to make sure the whole thing had really happened. He was wearing a dorky grin on his face, one that she was sure matched the one plastered across her face at that moment. A few times, when she did these sideways glances, she caught Michael’s eye and then quickly looked away, laughing softly to herself. After the fourth time this happened, Michael finally said, “Stop that!” with a nervous laugh.

“You’re doing it too!” she defended.

“I’m only doing it because you’re doing it,” he defended weakly.

“Uh huh,” she said skeptically, glancing over to him. A smile broke out across his face and she mirrored this action, laughing as well.

“Okay you got me,” he sighed, moving his arm to around her waist, pulling her body up against his. Then he leaned down so that his lips were practically touching the tip of her ear and whispered, “I can’t stop looking at you because all I’m thinking about is how much I want to kiss you again.”

Tingles flowed through Sydney’s body at both his words and the feeling of his hot breath so agonizingly close to her skin. “So what’s stopping you?” she retorted softly.

“I fear that if I kiss you in the middle of Main Street your father will pop up somewhere with a search light focused on us shouting, ‘Extra! Extra! Read all about it!’” he told her seriously.

Sydney burst out laughing so loud and so hard that she almost fell over. After recovering from her stumble, she grabbed a hold of Michael’s hand once more. “That is a very valid point,” she told him as her laughter died down.

After just a few more minutes of walking they reached their duplex and stared at each other intently as they ascended the stairs. “So, um,” Sydney cleared her throat. “I mean this in the most G-rated way possible but – your place or mine?”

Michael laughed deeply. “Well…yours is closer…”

“By like three feet!” Sydney exclaimed. Michael shrugged with indifference. Shaking her head slightly, Sydney pulled out her keys and unlocked the back door to the flower shop. Once inside, she bolted it shut once more before leading the way up to her apartment. This was by far the first time Michael had been within the walls of her home, yet for some reason she was slightly nervous about leading him in there, mostly because she was hoping he was following her as…well, more than a friend.

The door to her apartment was not locked so the two of them went right inside. Sydney had hardly put her keys and purse down on the table beside the door when Michael had her in his arms, kissing her fully. She leaned back against the door for support as he pressed his body into hers, making her wish they had discovered how amazing kissing each other was two years earlier.

“Oh my god,” she exhaled when they broke, leaning their foreheads against one another.

“I know,” he said breathily before kissing her once more. That time the two of them stumbled their way away from the front door, down the hall, and into the small sitting area slash dining room slash office in Sydney’s house. When Sydney backed into the lamp resting on the table beside the couch and nearly knocked it over, she burst out laughing and quickly righted herself and the lamp.

“Okay, we need to, um, think rationally for a second,” she said. Then she cleared her throat as she sat down on one end of the couch, trying to rid all thoughts of Michael’s various body parts from her mind.

“Right okay,” Michael agreed as he sat on the couch cushion beside her.

“So we’re, like, making out here and about half an hour ago we agreed that we were just friends so…,” she let her voice drift off, hoping Michael would jump in with some explanation as to why he had kissed her on the footbridge. Not that she was complaining in any capacity, of course.

“Well, I kinda lied about that…,” he cringed slightly. “See, the thing is in the past I’ve… well, I’ve been really bad at relationships – really bad. I just… I don’t know what happens… one minute I’m really happy with a girl and the next the whole thing is blowing up in my face. Even if I really liked someone it never seemed to work out so… so when I started getting feelings for you, I ignored them. I didn’t want to ruin a relationship between us and take our friendship down with it. When Nadia said all those things though… I kinda freaked out because I thought that everyone saw how in love with out I was and thought I was… deformed or something…”

“Deformed?” Sydney asked with a soft laugh. She shrugged with obvious confusion. “Oh Michael,” she sighed, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “You’re not deformed and… and I kinda love you too – okay, more than just kinda. I just didn’t think you had romantic feelings for me and I didn’t want to be the idiot that told you I loved you when you just thought of me as you’re silly flower obsessed neighbor,” she said in a rather defeated way, glancing down to her lap.

“And then when you said we were just friends out on the porch… it was like a knife twisting in me. Stupid, I know, because its not like I had voiced my feelings or anything… it was like high school when that guy who you’ve loved since forever calls you a fat loser and dumps his Coke on you…”

Michael grimaced. “That didn’t actually happen, did it?”

“To Nadia,” she smiled. They shared a laugh.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Syd – I’d never want to do that. I just wasn’t sure if you had feelings for me so I was kinda…testing the waters, so to speak. I definitely do not think you’re my silly flower obsessed neighbor though,” he promised.

She smiled at him. “So this was just… a misunderstanding of sorts.”

“Sounds like it to me, but now that its all sorted out I think we should… you know, give us a try or something. At least, I’d really like to do that,” he said with mild uncertainty as to her feelings on the subject.

Sydney grinned. “I’d really like that too.” She then leaned over and gave him a long kiss. Michael kissed her back and soon the two of them were tumbling back onto the sofa. After a few minute long adjustment, they were laying side by side, still kissing. They continued to kiss and explore each other’s cheeks, chins, and necks with their lips for a significant period of time until they had practically exhausted themselves, at least for the time being.

“So um,” Sydney began softly, “did you want to stay here tonight and be my…cuddle buddy?”

Michael laughed a bit louder than he should have due to his close proximity to her face. “Cuddle buddy? Boy oh boy doesn’t that sound manly…”

Sydney frowned slightly. “Well you don’t have to I mean-” Michael cut her off by covering his lips with hers.

“I’d love to, but I have to go check on Snickers first, okay? I’ll be back in like…fifteen, twenty minutes,” he told her. Sydney nodded with agreement and then, with another quick kiss, Michael climbed off the couch and exited Sydney’s apartment.

Sydney lay on her couch for another minute, sappy grin across her face until she realized that her room was an utter pigsty and within a matter of minutes Michael would be seeing it. She bolted from the couch and into her room, where she began tossing laundry frantically into the laundry basket she never used. Then, she crammed that into the floor of her closet so that Michael would not see her dirty clothes and underwear. After that, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and straightened up that space as she did so, just incase Michael needed to use it as well.

Sydney was just changing into her pajamas consisting of a tank top that had seen better days and a pair of plaid girl’s boxer shorts from Wal-Mart when she heard Michael returning to her apartment. Pulling off her socks on the way, she stumbled out into the main room of her apartment. “Hi,” she smiled softly at him.

“Hi,” he echoed.

“So, um, I guess it’s a tad early to go to bed but…we could watch TV or somethin’ for a while,” she suggested before taking two steps back towards her bedroom.

“Sure,” he smiled. He followed her but hovered in the doorway, waiting to see which side of the bed she preferred. When she climbed into the side closest to the door, he walked around to the other side of the bed and slipped beneath the sheets.

Once they were sitting side-by-side they smiled nervously at each other. “Is this going to be weird?” Sydney asked.

“Maybe a little at first, but the good kind of weird,” he promised her.

“Definitely.”

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Chapters 11 - 20 + Epilogue