Knox Mulligan softened himself for me—a man who came from broken bonds and barbed wire. A man who wore his callouses with pride until I mentioned in passing something about their toughness. Not a complaint, just an observation.
From there, he revered me with a sense of quiet devotion. I never asked him to change—he just did. We brought out thebest in each other. Now, even in my blinding misery, I worry that he’ll fall back into his old ways. Possessed by resentment, cowering from the outside world, cutting off any loose ends that threaten to return him to a life of solitude.
“What am I supposed to do, Hassie? I can’t—none of this feels real,” I bawl, vigorously wiping the cascades of tears from my cheeks.
Grief doesn’t step lightly. It takes hold of you and turns you into something animalistic. I’m right there on the cusp, and I don’t know how much more suffering I can take. The breakup was a bloodless crime, but the phantom pain it left behind wants to be heard,felt.
“Just breathe with me. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Hassie looks so strange with a frown tucked into her cheeks. She’s always been the cheerleader of the group—blissfully ignorant, reckless in an endearing sort of way. Now she’s serious with her tone a shade darker, boarding a vindictiveness that I can’t quite prove.
Even as I steel my jaw to steady my lower lip, my efforts are in vain. “I can’t live without him,” I blubber, needing to fix the red thread still tethering us together.
“Oh, Staten. Please don’t say that. I know it hurts?—”
“You could never know what this feels like,” I lash out, unaware of the hostility dripping down my throat. The sleep-deprived and dehydrated part of me views Hassie’s support as pity, and deep down, I know that my outburst is unjustified. Everything is still so raw. I want to be left alone. And with the way that I’m treating my best friend, I’ll get that wish sooner than later.
She flinches but doesn’t say anything.
I thought I was enough for Knox. I-I imagined a future together. Me, working right across from his hockey rink, pulling him away for a lunch date each day, then coming home to a sizable apartmentwhere we go to sleep and wake up beside each other. We’d probably move out of Minnesota to get the bona fide city experience. He’d get signed to the NHL team of his dreams; I’d get employed by some large corporation. Our lives would be elevated—more important than Lit grades or the juvenile troubles of college. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere down the road, there’s a light pattering of feet running down the hall of our bigger home, fit for the American dream.
That dreamer part of me died with him the moment he uttered those words. Everything about that night is a sweat-drenched nightmare that will never go away.
Headlights glare off my window, but I don’t pay much mind to it.
A terrible sickness smolders in my belly, immune to breakup etiquette and set to replay a track of Knox’s and my greatest hits. Sorrow uses my loving hand as an ashtray, embossing tender flesh with a cigarette burn. I curl up into a ball.
A loud, discordant ruckus sounds from outside the house—perhaps a neighbor wheeling their trash cans to the curb. It can be heard over the batting down of rain, though I’m free-falling too fast down a rabbit hole of self-blame to pinpoint the noise.
Eventually, Hassie curses and propels herself toward the window, her silhouette bathed in an angelic, golden glow. The silence proliferates like algae, only to be interspersed with murmurs of shock from the wide-eyed girl hypnotized by some greater being.
I unravel from my fetal position, appreciating the lull in my tears and the distraction I didn’t know I needed. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“There’s about a hundred flowers outside your house right now,” Hassie relays.
What the hell is she talking about?
I spring to my feet to join her by the glass, and sureenough, she isn’t delirious. Parked by the curb, a goddamn hauling truck is unloading bushels of roses onto the lip of my lawn, tripling in quantity each time I blink. It’s a never-ending sea of pink, and a shrunken version of my mother is already fast walking toward the scene of the crime, probably outraged that a delivery is being made this late into the night.
There’s only one person I ever spoke to about floral preferences, and one person stupid enough to blow a year’s salary on flowers. I race down the stairs without telling Hassie where I’m going, stumbling so quickly that I miss one of the steps and almost go flying.
Hope—something I thought I’d been sapped of—pops beneath the surface, pumping the iron in my legs. The door is already wide open, allowing me unobstructed access to the comically gigantic gesture taking place on Fifth Avenue. I don’t even need my mystery admirer to turn around before a spool of cries bubble in my throat. Lachrymose.
“Knox?”
Knox turns to face me instantly, a ripple effect of relief passing through his body, unintentionally highlighting the plumage of tears in his eyes and the deepened stress lines that run through his face like crags through a rocky, salt-licked shore.
“Ace,” he sighs, running to me despite the soupy mush of the ground, sweeping me into his arms and holding me tightly against his chest.
It’s all muscle memory for me. My feet lift off the ground before I can even register what’s happening. I never thought I would see him again. My heart sings for his, and tears loft in my eyes for a completely different reason.
Fuck, he smells likehim. Likehome.
We stay entangled for what feels like hours, and we only pull away to properly breathe. My eyes swerve up to his, myfunctional vocabulary limited thanks to the feeling of wire in my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, stoking the little flame of love still wavering deep in my gut. Through everything, it only took one ember to stay lit—to remind myself that Staten Renault doesn’t justgive upwhen things get hard.
Before Knox can answer me, I notice a bouquet of roses headed our way, but even through rain-impaired vision, there’s something different about them. The dew doesn’t cling to their soft, fresh petals, and the moon reflects oddly over some invisible surface. They don’t look right, nor do they emit a sweet, fragrant smell like they’re supposed to.
