“Rosie? Rosie, are you okay?”
Lori’s voice grounded her, and she came back into the room, unsettled and uneasy.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.” She shifted and realized she was sitting on a couch, then she peered around Lori’s shoulders to see the front door of a store forty or so feet away.
“You’re in the back of the Flower Loft,” Lori said. “You fainted, and we caught you before you hit the ground.”
“We?” Rosie switched her gaze to the other shape in front of her, and Alyssa came back into focus along with the past twenty minutes.Great. My college crush saved me from a concussion.
“Has this happened before?” Lori sat beside her and brushed Rosie’s hair over her ear.
She shook her head. “No. I’m confused.”
“It’s okay. Let’s just sit for a while.”
“No.” Rosie stood. “I mean, I’m confused as to what just happened and why. What you’re describing is like a dissociative incident.” She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “I’ll talk to my therapist about it. I’m sure it’s nothing.” She hadn’t drunk much water or eaten anything since Shay had left the photoshoot abruptly yesterday afternoon. “It’s probably low blood sugar. We should get lunch after this.”
Alyssa put her hand on Rosie’s shoulder. “Wait right there. I’ve got a blueberry cheesecake donut with your name on it.”
After Alyssa had left, Lori got up and took Rosie’s hands in hers. “Are you sure that’s what it is?”
“I am. I haven’t eaten anything since I had a Cubano at the shoot yesterday. I’ve been too worried about Shay and her father.”
“You haven’t heard anything?” Lori’s eyes widened, and she nibbled her top lip.
“But youhave?” Rosie threw her hands up. “Of course you have. Because if Shay was going to call anyone, it’d be her best friend, not me.” The stab of jealousy went deeper than it should have, and she tried to rein in her irrational emotion.
“I’m sorry. I thought she’d called you. I was so focused on this stuff with your mom that Shay and her dad didn’t figure into my thought process. He’s still unconscious, and Shay stayed overnight by his bedside. Have you called her?”
Rosie shook her head. “I texted last night and this morning, but I don’t want to crowd her. She knows where I am if she needs me.” She shrugged. “She’s so used to handling her family stuff alone, it probably hasn’t occurred to her to call anyone but her friend of twenty years. I’m being silly.”
Alyssa returned with a plate laden with the biggest donut Rosie had ever seen.
“I’ve cut it into smaller pieces.” Alyssa handed her the carb-killer and a wet wipe. “And this is because you don’t like getting stickyfingers.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Lori’s eyebrows raise almost high enough to touch her hairline. Lori would have a hundred and one questions about their time in college when they left. “You remembered?”
“Of course.” She touched Rosie’s hand gently. “What kind of an old best friend would I be if I forgot something like that?” Alyssa laughed and winked at Lori. “Not to step on your toes, obviously.”
Rosie smiled, touched by the gesture and the sentiment behind it. She’d been so focused on Alyssa not being her girlfriend in college that she’d missed out on the possibility of a best friend. After she’d managed a quarter of the donut, she nodded back toward the shop. “I’m refueled, thank you.” She hooked her hand through Lori’s arm and went back to the front counter.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Alyssa said when she took her spot on the other side of the desk. “I know your relationship was difficult, but that doesn’t necessarily make all of this any easier.”
Rosie waved off Alyssa’s concerns. “I’m doing okay, actually. All the stunts she pulled about her health were good practice for when the day finally arrived, I guess.” She’d had small pockets of tear-filled episodes, but they passed relatively quickly. Her overriding emotion was still a strange kind of relief coupled with a soft sadness at not having the loss of a positive relationship to grieve. “Anyway, Mom wanted black roses at her funeral. That ship’s sailed, but we’re having a memorial instead. Are black roses a real thing?”
“They are, in a way,” Alyssa said. “They don’t occur naturally, but people do create them in a variety of ways.” She pulled out a large folder from under the counter and opened it for Rosie to see. “These are black baccara, and they can grow to nearly three feet. They’re not a true black though. If that’s what you want, we can dye them with a special pigment.”
“We?” Rosie asked. Could it be that someone had finally snagged Alyssa?
She looked up from the folder and arched her eyebrow as if she knew exactly why Rosie was asking. “Harry and me.”
That was inconclusive, but it served her right for snooping.
“Do you think your mom wanted roses because of your name?”
Rosie snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past her. That’s probably why she went with black and not those lovely rainbow roses you can get, or something at least a little bit colorful.”
“There’s a beautiful song called ‘Black Roses’ about a mother and daughter relationship… I mean, it’s beautiful, but it’s haunting too. Maybe your mom was trying to tell you something?”
