Page 59 of Poetry of Flowers

“You okay, Tillie love? You look a bit pale,” Violett asked me, and I nodded rapidly, but I didn’t remember breathing.

Was I breathing?

I couldn’t breathe in here.

“Why don’t we go look at the costumes.” Kayden’s hand slipped into mine, and I was dragged to the other side of the store, right between huge stacks of clothes.

“I can’t breathe,” I whispered, feeling my eyes tear up from holding them open for too long.

“You can breathe, Tillie, it’s scary to be here, I know.” Kayden held both my hands tightly as we sat down on the floor together.

“Can we leave?”

My best friend shakes his head. “No.”

“But I can’t-”

“You can breathe,” he cuts me off. “If you run away now, your fears will continue to haunt you. If you show them you’re not afraid, you can calm the fears in the back of your mind, and they will turn into a memory. Memories are in the past, memories won’t ever repeat. If we turn your fears into memories, they will never hurt you again. Alright?”

I nodded slowly, my chin still trembling.

“Breathe in through your nose like me— yes, you’re doing so good. Now out through your mouth, perfect.”

Lonely tears ran down my cheeks, but as we breathed together, my body calmed a bit with each new breath of fresh air.

“You’re in here with me, we’re in this together, and you’re not alone. Your mom is proud of you that you still visit her favorite place,” Kayden told me while he squeezed my hands in his.

Mom wasn’t sad I came here alone.

My mom is proud of me, and I will never be alone.

“Everything is alright.”

This wasn’t the first time Kayden helped me out of the beginning of a panic attack.

It wasn’t fair how I was pulling him into the pain of my life, but without him, I would have lost myself a long time ago.

“Thank you, Kayden.”

“No, don’t ever thank me for helping you.”

ChapterEighteen

KAYDEN

How I hated the sun.

The sunlight had woken me up this morning while everyone was still sound asleep.

Which idiot placed a bed right next to a French window?!

For ten long minutes, I tried to fall back asleep, almost suffocating myself with a pillow that smelled like smoke. I remember seeing a no smoking sign on the front door of the building, but at least a hundred former guests must have ignored that.

I tried to sit up in bed when I bumped my head on something.

The bed above me was so low it felt like sleeping in a coffin. I suppressed my need to curse to not wake up the entire room and rolled off the bed instead to walk over to the bathroom. When I passed Tillie and Autumn’s bed, I watched Tillie sleep for a minute. Her beautiful features looked softer. She wore a permanent mask of a painted longing expression, but today it had softened. Tillie always reminded me of the lady in the paintingPea Blossomsby Edward John Poynter. Thanks to my mother’s job, I had also come to love old renaissance paintings.Pea Blossomsalways reminded me of my best friend, they even shared the same longing expression. Down to every last detail, the painting just screamed Tillie to me. For a long time, I even had a copy hanging in my room.

The bathroom was so small, and it was hot in here. There was no window I could open.

---