Stupidity is also a dish served cold.

She said she would never like flowers. He never brought any, then. They had started out pretty well, but that would change sooner than expected. The flowers he had once bought stayed in his car. He had not been able to gather the courage to take them with him when he went to pay the first formal visit ever. Five minutes later he was glad he hadn’t. Thank God you didn’t show up with flowers.

They had dinner and drank some wine. Had he brought the flowers, it would have been a true cliché. But instead, he had taken a bit of insecurity, a bottle of Château Margaux, and a dose of cold sweat.

They continued to see each other for a year, then got married, then got kids, then suddenly were speaking about divorce papers. (Details are not important now but later.) And one day she said what he would have not expected. You have never given me flowers, Ben; I’d wish you had, and that I could have said you were so stupid.

He said nothing. But then he remembered and felt his stomach hurt a little. A voice in the back of his mind told him he had been stupid indeed.