Bren:No woman hates flowers.
Me:Except for me. I. Hate. Flowers.
Bren:Bah, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Me:Yes I do.Flowers! I hate them.
Bren:(Shrugging and smirking) Smell them, you’ll love them.
Me:Odio las flores!
Bren:Excuse me?
Me:(Shrugging and smirking) Well, you’re not listening to anything I say in plain English.
Bren:Stop being a bitch.
Me:(Seriously looking around the room for something to throw) Bren, trust me, you haven’t met the bitch side of me yet, and I seriously hate flowers. 1.) They die overnight. 2.) They smell like funeral homes. 3.) They make me sneeze, make my eyes watery and itchy, and make my throat tickle and swell.
Bren:You’re adorable, but all women love to get flowers. Just enjoy them.
If that crap wasn’t bad enough, the afternoons were worse. Deliveries of more chocolate-covered guilty gifts inundated my shop. They were delivered directly to the shop, so I just shared them with the other girls and our clients. I didn’t want to touch any of it, and Bren knew this about me. He knew I had a vice for sweets. I didn’t understand what he was trying to do. I dunno, drive me insane with sneezing or maybe kill me sweetly?
However, with all that said, Bren was on his best behavior. He became attentive, loving, and here’s the important part:sober.
We’re talking aboutweekshere, too. Although, we didn’t spend too much time together, every time I saw him he was sober, dressed to the nines, andperfect.
And, while all the girls in the shop fawned over his gifts to me and swooned over his visits, I knew bullshit when I saw it. I guess I’d been jaded by a lot in my life, but I knew this honeymooning Bren persona was just a fleeting phase. It wouldn’t be long until I’d find him drunk in the back of a club somewhere getting a lap dance from some high profile celebrity.
I was impressed he kept it up well into autumn, and he showed no signs of stopping. He pleaded with me to hang out with him more. He had a few new guys he wanted to show me off to. Bren even begged me to move in with him and give up my little apartment, but something felt off. Really off. Maybe I was just too fed up with the way things had been. Maybe I was wasting too much of my hopes on imaginary characters and fictional plots, but I just felt like there had to be more. So much more. Was the grass greener someplace else, or was it fertilized with loads of bullshit like it was on my side?
I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was being indecisive and annoying myself to all Hell. Did I even love Bren at all? I didn't think so. I knew very well what real love felt like, and this wasn't it. Not even close.
Time by myself was the best thing I could think of—time away from Bren and his stupid, stinky flowers.
I needed to clear my head.
I needed to stop stalling and being wishy-washy.
I needed my best friend.
Throwing myself in my Wrangler, I started the engine, filled the small cab with my special playlist, and pulled into the New York City traffic, making my way uptown to the Queens Midtown Tunnel and through the East River into Queens.
For the next seventy-five miles I screamed and sang and danced in my seat all along the Long Island Expressway toward Riverhead to Calverton. Songs we sung together filled me with nostalgia. Visions of us sharing my old Walkman, one ear bud for him and one ear bud for me, holding on to each other’s pinkies, warmed my heart and watered my eyes.
One hour and thirty-three minutes later, I drove through a stone entrance, pulled over, and parked amongst the other cars that aligned the drive. Stepping out, I took a deep breath and tilted my head to gaze at the sky. The colorful autumn trees that reached far above my head were boasting their brilliant, fiery colors. Impressions of red, orange, and yellow flames licked the bright blue sky and feebly shook in the brisk, autumn winds. A few of the brightest ones twisted and tumbled, scattering onto the ground, leaving the trees bare, just to be trampled over or swept aside. The deep moaning of the branches overhead echoed the ache in my heart. The sadness of it all left me feeling a little broken inside.
Okay, maybe a lot more than a little.
With a heavy heart, I walked over the freshly mowed grass to find my oldest and dearest friend.
∞
By the end of May in my junior year of high school, I’d kissed a lot of frogs, hoping they’d magically turn into my prince charming. No such luck; they stayed as nasty, pimply, green frogs with major hand problems.
But I had bigger problems to worry about my sixteenth year of life. Stupidly, somehow, sometime along the way, I fell in love with one of my best friends. I had always known that I feltdifferentlyabout Jase Delaney than any other boy. He was the first boy I ever kissed. He was the first boy I ever caught staring at me. He was the first boy I ever gave my heart to. As a matter of fact, that little thief stole it and never gave it back. Ever.
So I spent my sixteenth year of life secretly in love with a boy who wanted nothing to do with me—other than be hisbuddy, or as he so eloquently put it—his sister. I realized it the minute I went to that stupid spring fling dance with that jerk MasonLa Doucheas I was getting into his car. Before I got in, I chanced a small peek at Jase’s house, just wishing he would run out and tell me thathe’dtake me to the dance, or fight for me, or I don’t know,something. But all I saw was Jase kissing Rachel Jenson up against the side of his house. I knew without a doubt how trapped my heart was in his hands, the minute his lips left hers to call out, “Have fun Charlotte Stone! And, hey! Mason, make sure you kiss her real good,I double dog dare you!”
