But she was in there, right? I didn’t just hallucinate the whole thing.
We had a conversation. Sort of.
Roses. She was buying roses.
My best friend, Dylan, was standing on the sidewalk, not far from me. Matt and Janner were next to him, passing a joint back and forth. Janner looked about as lit as I felt. Summer was there in her short shorts and furry jacket, looking cold, laughing about something with Seth, who was sober as shit and probably wondering why he was still here.
The rest of us, besides Con and Haz, who were on security, werewasted.
What the fuck was I doing again?
FANTASY. FUCK.
Focus, asshole.
I pushed past Dylan and stumbled into the store. The horrendous lighting, which seemed dull outside, was fucking painful. I wandered up and down the aisles, tripping on the uneven floor, several times—just managing to catch myself before falling. Knocked over a few things, though.
No sign of her.
I finally found the cashier at the far side of the store on my second stumble-through.
Nothing.
By the time I’d made it all the way around again and back outside… it was too late. She was gone.
Vanished.
Though giving a drunk guy the slip wasn’t exactly magic.
“Where’d you go?” Dylan asked, and Janner offered me a joint.
I just blinked at them. Couldn’t they see there were more important things at work here than getting high?
I started to try to explain it to them, but no words came out.
I went back inside. When I asked the cashier which way the girl with the roses went, she didn’t seem to understand me. English wasn’t very strong, and I probably wasn’t making much sense anyway. I tried to describe the pretty girl with the ponytail with hand gestures, and the cashier cringed away from me like I was some wino stalker.
I dug through my leather jacket about five times before I finally realized my wallet was in my jeans. Then I went back and grabbed the best/worst bouquet of roses and bought them, trying to impart upon the cashier, as I did, how important it was that I find the girl who’d just bought roses here two seconds ago.
No love on that either.
I walked outside and stood in the rain, looking up and down the sidewalk, the roses that were gonna die tomorrow dangling from my hand.
Shit.
“You see the girl come out of here?” I asked the drunk assholes on the sidewalk. I was sobering up, sort of. “Yellow rain boots? Ponytail…”
Blank stares.
“What girl?” Dylan said.
Even Con and Haz just shrugged.
So much for security.
Matt bent forward to take a good look down the sidewalk. “She hot?”
Yeah, she was hot. Motherfuckingsmokinghot.
