Page 29 of Late Bloomer
I back away from her, my heart skipping beats and pounding in my ears.
Kindness? She’s actually trying to convince me this is kindness? The concept is so outlandish, my skin crawls with distrust. I think of Trish, how the woman manipulates every situation until she’s squeezed the very last cent from someone and pocketed it for herself. How she did that to me. If my own mother could pick pennies over me, how could it ever make sense that a virtual stranger would forgo immediate profits to…helpme?
She’s playing me. Or trying to. Or… or…something. People don’t just help other people without something being in it for them.
“No,” I say at last, my throat rough as a serrated knife’s edge.
“But—”
“No,” I repeat, voice rising in volume. “And I’m done talking about it.”
I stalk toward the barn door, shooting a look at Diksha that I hope conveys I’ll contact her later, when I’m ready, then nearly break into a run toward my flowers and my plots and the soil that lets this beauty grow.
The only place that ever feels wholly safe.
Chapter 10PEPPER
Disrupting my usual routine, I set my alarm for an hour earlier this morning, and I’m now making my way into the fields as the sun’s rays curl up the horizon, my pruners tucked in my belt and a large bucket of cool water in tow, head aching with that damn pressure that won’t leave me be.
I tell myself the early start is necessary to beat the day’s sweltering forecast, a sticky early summer heat wave flirting with my flowers, threatening to scorch them to dust. And I wish that was the whole truth. I wish Opal wasn’t part of the reason, her smile popping into my thoughts all night as the pad of her footsteps through the cabin kept time with my insomnia.
But I can’t face her. I don’t want to hear more of her excited words and see that vibrant flush on her full cheeks. I don’t want to slip into the trap of believing in whatever it is she’s ultimatelyselling. Everyone has a hidden motive, and I’d be smart to remember that.
Early morning mist slips like smoke between the mountains on the horizon, the sky a hazy blue as I walk down my rows to the first plot for picking.
May is my favorite month, the earth swollen with new blooms worshiping the sun after a long winter. The heavenly sweet scent of lilacs makes my head swim, daffodils raising their trumpets to the sky while snapdragons and sweet peas sway with the breeze.
But today, not even the explosion of Technicolor, the softness of the blossoms’ sweet start, can hold my attention.
I make my way to the peonies, picking blooms in a mechanical, detached way, my thoughts drifting far from the flowers as I work and move between beds, getting stuck in a vicious loop of financial spreadsheets and scary numbers and memories I don’t want to relive with a return point of a girl with bubblegum-pink hair and a too-earnest smile.
I don’t know why she distracts me so much. She’s a person. Just a person. Historically, I don’t like people. So why does this one have me tangled up like this?
I move to the plot of roses, wiping sweat off my forehead before diving into the thorny thicket.
Why am I wasting my time thinking about her—I mean, the competition? It’s a nonstarter, a silly little fantasy that I have no business entertaining.
With a careless slip of my hand, I nick my finger on a thorn.I whip my arm back, the point snagging my skin in a sharp line with the motion. I drop my shears in the process.
I stare into the knot of thorns dotted with pale pink roses and want to scream at the pressure building through my body. This unknown swirl of feelings and fear and confusion… and… and… It’s all too much. Why can’t things be simple?
Carefully, I weave my arm into a small opening, gritting my teeth at the bite of prickers as I grapple for the tool. Angry pink slashes score my forearm, but I finally grab the shears and pull them out.
Fire swells through me, and I’m tempted to rip the rosebushes out from the earth, toss them in the woods out back, and let them decay into the soil.
While I generally love all flowers, I’ve come to hate roses. I hate their uncomplicated beauty. Their cliché symbolism of love. Their built-in protection. Their delicate scent that becomes pungent and oppressive if enough are shoved into a room.
They’re a challenge,Grandma Lou used to say, gently pinching a stem between her fingers before snipping the flower free.The thorns are what really make a rose beautiful. Their blooms are made all the sweeter for the care and tenderness it takes to reach them.
I hate that they remind me of Lou every time I look at them, making a deep and empty hurt open up in my chest, swallowing me whole like I’m collapsing in on myself.
Roses were her favorite, and everyone who loved Lou—which was pretty much every person she ever met—sent them for her funeral, the parlor stuffed to bursting with a rainbow ofthem. After the memorial was over and trite condolences were offered, it was just me, her casket, and an endless sea of roses and their awful thorns.
I screw my eyes shut, cramming the memory into the smallest box I can find and kicking it to a dark corner of my brain.
Pushing to stand, I fight off a lurch of nausea, then make my way to an anemone plot toward the back of the farm, nearly running to escape the whispers of feelings trying to seep into me. I start harvesting again, the late-morning sun sharp on my neck as I bend over the stems.
These are flowers I adore. Delicate. Complicated. Pale petals hiding a dark center. Just the tiniest bit fussy when it comes to keeping them alive. They’re flowers that need me. My care. My support. My protection from drought and frost and wind.
