Open mouth, insert foot

Since I work from home most of the time, I accept packages for the neighbors on my floor. Having to take the 15 minute walk to the post office package distribution office is just a hassle if you miss your delivery. We're only three total flats and with very limited shared walls, so things are quiet up here, and both sets of neighbors are very nice. One is from Italy, a beautiful doctor who speaks fluent English, the other a young couple who work in London so are almost never around.

Usually I just slip a note under the door, 'Hi, I have a package for you, stop by before 10 or tomorrow after 8 AM.'

The Italian was lamenting a few weeks back that she doesn't have a boyfriend. As she is educated, gorgeous and has only been in the UK for six months, I was telling her that it's only a matter of time. She is, however, interviewing for the position, but most only last one or two dates before being dismissed. There is one who seems to be on a trial period, so I see him repeated in the parade of men...

So the flower guy drops off a huge vase of lovely flowers and a box of chocolates for her on Tuesday. She didn't drop by that night though, but sometime she works some unsocial hours at the hospital so she's coming in at 6 AM or some ridiculous time before I'm awake. Although strangely, I didn't catch her later in the day either. Finally at 9 PM, I hear the fine Italian leather boots clomping up the stairs and into her flat.

She pops over an hour later, I hear the telltale incessant knocking...apparently in Italy you knock low, but repeatedly until the person answers. Couple that with the shouting from the hall "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet -er' It seems the Italians are like the Germans, my name loses the 'TH' in the middle. Slocombe always heads under the bed when A comes around. With most visitors Slocombe will stand in the bedroom doorway to evaluate them, with the noise of A, she isn't taking that chance!

A is always very sweet, however.
'Ah, het-er! Do you have a package for me?'
-Ah yes A, someone must really like you! (I point to the vase of flowers on the floor)

She just blinks and looks at me.

I pause for a minute, thinking: maybe I should not have put them on the floor? It's the safest place as the table is covered with books due to painting....and they were delivered in a cardboard box, so it's the box that's on the floor, not the vase...and I always leave the cardboard boxes by the door on the floor, it's not usually an issue.

Or maybe she's just appalled that I have masking tape and paint cans and paintbrushes in a 'in progress' state here. Although it is an 'in progress' job this week....so to further along this interaction, I slide the flowers out from my flat from inside the door to just outside the door at her feet.

She now has a deer in the headlights look. I'm racking my brain to try and figure out where the problem is...is is the language? Was I too forward in what I said? Did she mistake it for something else, but what?

I realize as I hear a footstep from her flat, that the boy toy must have been in the bathroom freshening up as they're on their way out, and she was probably popping round for the package in a spare two minutes, not realizing that it was going to be flowers, and I'm further now connecting the dots--that the flowers and chocolates were from a different boy that is now poking his head out the doorway into the hall.

Oops. Fortunately he was a good sport about it.