Page 30 of Late Bloomer
My vision blurs as I look at them and, with a whip’s quickness, emotions slam into me. I plop to the ground, grinding the heels of my hands against my eye sockets, pushing the tears back in. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to feel sadness and confusion and this scary, overwhelming loneliness that always sits like a lion at my doorstep, ready to rip me apart.
I take two deep breaths. Then two more.
I finally push the feelings down until they poke and prod at my gut but can’t do any significant damage. I stare at the anemones in front of me, their moon-colored petals and midnight-purple centers all fragile anticipation and hope. A small universe in this plot of dirt.
They don’t actually need me, these blooms. They grew long before I was here, and will grow long after I’m gone. But it’snice to pretend something needs me. That somethingwantsmy attention. Wants the care I’m capable of giving.
I try to pull myself together, getting to my knees to start clipping stems, but something isn’t right.
I’ve been feeling off since yesterday, words heavy and hard to form, a bone-deep type of exhaustion making every movement leaden. But the sensation ofwrongstrikes me like a slap. Jolts of electricity bloom across my brain, sending a wave like a fun-house mirror across my vision and making the world distort and bend as I struggle to get to my feet. It makes me sway, and I’ve endured enough migraines to know I need to get inside before the oncoming storm lays me out on the ground, but invisible hands reach from the soil and clamp around my ankles, tripping my every step.
The wrongness is familiar, but pumps panic through me nonetheless. It’s like the flip of a switch, and I go from human to animal, desperate to escape the pain that always comes close on the heels of the aura.
The tingling comes next, the right sides of my lips feeling like they’re swelling. The pinpricks travel from my mouth up the bridge of my nose to cluster at the corner of one eye—a swarm of hornets searching for a nest—before shooting down my neck.
I have five minutes, maybe ten, and then I’ll be out for hours, if not a few days. The only thing I can think about as I stumble home is my flowers. All the beds I didn’t get to. All the ways I’ve failed them like I fail everything else.
The nausea almost takes me to my knees, but I keep pushingtoward the cabin in the distance. If I stop, I’ll have to endure the slicing of pain through my brain under the heat of the sun, and nothing sounds worse than that.
By some miracle, I make it to the porch, wincing at the whine of the screen door as I push it open, every squeak of the staircase like a stab to the temple as I desperately climb the steps to my room.
I collapse onto my bed as another white-hot prod of pain traces across my brain. My teeth grind together so hard I’m scared they might shatter, but at least that would be a distraction from my skull.
I burrow under the covers and get ready for the long, painful hours ahead.
Chapter 11PEPPER
Shh. It’s okay. I’m right here.
The dream is blurry but the pain is sharp, my bones aching as I shiver from the hurt. I’ll never feel good again.
I dip in and out, whipping between reality and nightmare land—a place of darkness and panic and never, ever being enough.
Sharp.
It hurts.
So sharp.
It…
If my entire body weren’t locked up with pain, I’d cry out at the sudden comfort curling around my back.
I’m here.
And she is. With the smell of outside and paint and coffee, lovely, soft Opal has me. Soothes my sharp aches and bone-deep chills
cool hand on my forehead
warm words in the shell of my ear
soft thighs, tangled legs, arm wrapped tight
around my middle
The darkness of nightmare land clears with a gentle glow of sunlight breaking over the horizon.
And I sleep.
