Life before Flo was bland. You'd go through life knowing there was something more, but never being able to find it. You'd always hope and dream and yearn that maybe today would be the day that you would get lucky and see the entire night sky, but knowing deep down inside you either needed to be extremely lucky, or have a huge telescope.
Life after Flo was terrifying. You'd stumble around blindly, knowing everything that was out there, but unable to see it. You'd never be able to go back to the way you were before. The only way to go was forward. Forward with Flo. But where Flo goes, can anybody follow?
I remember that first day perfectly. I had just left a small local jewellery shop with a small silver locket in my hands. It was for my girlfriend, in honour of our three-month anniversery. The slim silver chain threaded through a small hoop on a beautiful heart. Or maybe it was beautiful. I couldn't tell. I wasn't good at predicting what the other gender would like. As I was studying this necklace, my thoughts were broken by very loud, very off-key singing. It took me a moment to figure out what song it was supposed to be.
"Lookin' so crazy your love's got me lookin', got me lookin' so crazy your love!" I winced slightly as the singer tried to hit a higher note and missed. Missed by a lot. It wasn't until I head the infamous "Uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh oh nono!" that I realized it was meant to be Beyonce's Crazy In Love. I laughed out loud and scanned the busy street for the singer. If they could be called that. I caught sight of her as she turned the corner. Rather, I caught sight of her hair as she turned the corner. It was the brightest pink I'd ever seen on somebody's head. It was almost incandescent in the bright spring sun. She skipped down the street surprisingly swiftly. A slight breeze caught her astonishing hair and swept it behind her face. And I was mesmerized. Not so much by her features, she would never be called gorgeous, but by her expression. Hers was the happiest face I'd ever set my eyes on. Completely relaxed and joyful, she had her eyes closed as she merrily skipped down the busy Toronto sidewalk.
And then I saw why she was skipping so quickly. The two police cops were stopped on the same corner that the blissful girl had come from a moment earlier. They paused and were searching with their eyes, straining to see above the sea of people hustling down Queens Street. The female cop seemed to be more interested in the search, and was--- Ouch! The little pink-haired fiend crashed into me with surprising force. She opened her eyes and looked up at me. She had the biggest bluest eyes I'd ever seen. The eyes led down to a small pert button nose. Her narrow face ended with small but full lips and a stubborn chin. I glanced back over her head and saw that the cops had located her and were moving as fast as they could through the throngs of people. I looked back down at her and saw that she too was peeking behind her to watch the police's progress through the crowds.
When she turned her gaze back to me I raised my eyebrows and murmured with a teasing smile, "Uh-oh." She grinned up at me with a blinding smile. It was one of those smiles you rarely see on somebody older than five, and never on somebody older than twelve. Without a second thought I grabbed her thin arm and pulled her into the small jewellery shop. I took a sweep of the store and couldn't find the lone clerk so I shoved the young girl behind a plant and stepped back outside. Right into the male cop.
"Oh shoot. Sorry Officer." I stammered. He nodded absently in response and checked his watch with a bored expression. I could see the female officer peering into the large windows of the jewellery store. "Looking for something?" I asked, trying to be casual and probably failing.
"Actually yeah. Have you seen a young pink-haired girl?" The guy asked me with a scratch on his large belly.
"A pink-haired girl? Yeah, she--" I trailed off as the female cop turned her piercing blue eyes on me. I swallowed and continued, hardly believing what I was about to do, "Yeah she ran right over me. Just mowed me down and kept running." Lying to the police. What an odd effect this young girl had on me. All I knew that somebody with such large innocent blue eyes like her should never have the police hunting her.
"She kept going this way?" The female cop turned a suspicious eye towards me and pointed ominously down the sidewalk, in the direction that the girl had not kept running.
"Uh, yeah. Right down that way." I felt my face turn slightly red. I was a horrible liar, and everybody knew it.
The male cop obviously wanted to get this over and done with, and he clapped a large hairy hand on my shoulder and said warmly, "Thank you son. You did a great thing today." As if I had just saved the president. I saw his partner roll her eyes and I had to hide a grin. He nodded once at me and the pair headed off down the sidewalk once more. I watched them get swallowed up by the crowd of people and turned back to the small store.
"Oops!" The slim pink-haired girl giggled as she tripped over my foot. I reached out and caught her automatically. As I pulled her upright I looked over her outfit, suprised I had missed her outstanding ensemble. But then I remembered her astonishing hair. She was wearing a tight blue tube-top dress, which flared out sharply just below her waist. Or rather it puffed out. The skirt part of the dress looked more like a large tutu than anything else. It was multi-coloured as well, you could almost call it tie-die.
"And what am I to call my knight in shining armor?" She asked me, a mischevious twinkle in her amazing eyes.
I stammered for a moment, having found myself lost in the incredible colour. "Just call me Robby." I said lamely. It had sounded a lot more manly in my mind. "And what's your name?"
She giggled and replied with a cute little wink, "Just call me Flo."
There's a lot more to come! Please tell me what you think!
