Rhode Island
Senior Year
I spotted Ryan hovering at my locker as the bathroom door closed behind me. A smile spread across my face, and I reached back to slow the door so he wouldn’t hear it shut. His brow scrunched in concentration as he spun the combination lock with one hand. His other hand clutched a red rose.
Grinning from ear to ear and tiptoeing as lightly as I could, I scurried over to him and grabbed him around the waist.
“Whoa!” he said, practically jumping into the locker. His startled expression melted into a grin when he saw me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Guess I know who my secret Valentine’s Day admirer is.”
“Yeah, yeah, you caught me,” he fake-groused, kissing my nose.
“You don’t have to do this. The cookies were enough.”
“I’d buy out their whole supply of roses if you wanted them.”
Valentine’s Day was pretty much legendary at Clayton. It was sort of sad, because it was also a blatant popularity contest. The cheerleaders always sold roses and made cookie-grams, heart-shaped sugar cookies that could be sent to the person of your choice with a message of love, or secret admirer-ship, or insert sentiment here.
Two cookies had been delivered to me before lunch, courtesy of Ryan. One with the message I LOVE YOU and the other with HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY. Simple and sweet. Just like the single red roses he’d left in my locker before each period.
I kissed him, drawing it out with a long smacking sound. “You don’t have to buy me any more. I’m letting you off the hook.”
He shrugged. “What if I want to? Think of it as supporting Candle Wax and her rah-rahs. You’re always telling me to be nicer to her.”
I kissed his cheek and shook my head as if to say, What am I going to do with you? “Speaking of Candy, I have to get back to the cafeteria. I’m helping her man the rose table until the end of lunch.”
“All right. But remember, you never saw me here.” He kissed me again and started down the hall, watching me over his shoulder. We smiled at each other until I rounded the corner to the cafeteria entrance.
I wasn’t a cheerleader, but Candy and Violet were, and I was with them so often that I’d sort of become an honorary member of the squad. It was only natural that I spent my lunch helping Candy sell flowers.
“How many roses did Chester the Molester give you this year?” Candy asked with a devilish gleam in her eye as the lunch crowd finally started to clear. “What was it last year? Thirty? Forty?”
“No.” I waved off her exaggeration. “Seven. He left one in my locker before each period. Same thing this year, so far.”
“How romantic.” She batted her lashes, pretending to swoon before pointing her finger at the back of her throat.
“Kiss my ass! I saw you with a bunch before. Don’t act like you don’t love it when Crowley falls at your feet!”
“Hmm. I do love it, don’t I?” We both snickered until something caught Candy’s eye.
“Uh-oh,” she said with a smirk. “Here comes your lover boy.”
I followed her stare toward the cafeteria doors, expecting to see Ryan. Instead, my smile faded as David hesitantly approached the table. He had on red and white, not only the theme colors for the day but also the school colors. It was strange to see him in the same red Clayton High Baseball cap that Ryan wore so often. He had it flipped backward on his head, and his raglan shirt had red sleeves and a white trunk.
I had to admit, the way he filled it out was rather impressive.
Candy stood up with a flourish. “I think I need to hit the ladies’ room,” she announced.
I grabbed her arm. “I think your bladder can wait a minute. You have a customer coming.”
“Now he’s my customer? You’ve been handling sales all period; I think you can manage this one too.”
It was too late to protest, seeing as David had come within earshot. I let go of Candy’s sleeve with a small whimper of defeat, and she took off.
“Hey,” David said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. “I guess I’ll take a couple of those.”
I had to smile. “This is Violet we’re talking about here. You’re going to need more than a couple.”
David laughed. “Good call.” He surveyed the two plastic buckets in front of me, one filled with white roses and one with a dwindling supply of red. “What’s the matter, no one likes the white ones?”
I ran my fingers over the silky tops of the white roses. “Well, I like the white. I always have. I still have the—” I cut off, not wanting to finish what I’d started but realizing it was too late. “The, um, corsage you gave me. The white rose.” I glanced up at him. “Do you remember? The night of the Winter Swirl?”
“Of course I remember. I’m surprised you kept it, though. There’s sort of some bad memories associated with it.”
I stared at the roses, watching my red-and-white-painted nails graze over the petals. “No sense in taking it out on the corsage.” An awkward silence followed. “So,” I said a little too brightly, “you’ll take pity on a few of these white ones?”
“Sure. Give me three of each.”
As I gathered the flowers, I felt him staring at me. When I looked up and caught him, his eyes dropped to the floor.
“Why were you looking at me like that?”
“It— Nothing. You just never talk about the past. It’s like you try to act like it didn’t happen.”
“Some of it,” I conceded.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped the ends of the roses, trying to ignore the way he continued to stare.
“What?” I finally said.
“Your hair like that. It’s cute.”
My hand flew to my hair, which I’d put up in a high ponytail and wrapped with curly red and white ribbons. I almost never wore my hair up anymore.
“I thought you didn’t like my new hair,” I said, only half teasing.
“I never said that. I always liked your hair.” He handed me his money in exchange for the roses, concentrating a little harder than necessary on putting his change in his wallet. “So, um, speaking of the Swirl. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I managed a small nod and a forced laugh. “Taking my vitamins religiously. Healthy as a horse.”
Ugh. Did I really say that?
David nodded, and mercifully did not call me out for avoiding his real question, the one that had nothing to do with my physical health. “Good. See you later, Kelse.”
“David?” He stopped and turned back toward me. “I know I said this already, but no one here knows about that night. No one knows about any of it. I’d really like to keep it that way.”
He nodded again, and when our eyes met, I knew from the honesty and warmth in his that I could trust him. The same way I used to, before the literal and figurative distance between us.
David’s fingers drummed against the stems of the flowers. “You know, the night before you left.” He paused. “I didn’t do it to upset you. The point wasn’t to hurt you.”
But you did. More than you know.
David’s gaze held steady. “You believe me, right?”
Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. My throat felt thick and tight and I had a sudden urge to throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in his shirt.
Almost as if he’d read my mind, he took a step closer to the table. Instead of hugging me, though, he pulled his wallet out again. “On second thought, I’ll take one more white one. I can’t let them sit there all pathetic like that.”
I handed him another white flower. Our fingertips brushed when he took it from me, and for a second neither of us let go.
“Here,” I said, needing an excuse to take my hand away. On impulse, I grabbed a red one, too. “Violet will appreciate symmetry. The red’s on me.”
We smiled at each other, the first real smile in ages.
Later that day, when the hallways were littered with rose petals and message tags from cookie-grams, I made my way over to my locker feeling exhausted but happy.
I gave a start as my locker door swung open and I caught sight of a stem poking out of the cubby. Ryan had already left me seven red roses, one before each period, the way he’d done the year before. He must have been trying to outdo himself this year because I’d caught him during one drop-off.
I’d placed the rest of my bouquet on the floor next to me until I could gather my books, and I pulled the rose out, intending to add it to the pile. I froze when the flower that emerged from the shadow of the cubby was not red but white.
The first thing to flash through my mind was the extra white rose David had asked for. But why would he . . . ?
I looked down the hall, hoping Ryan would be at his locker wearing a huge grin that would tell me this was all his doing. He was nowhere to be found. When I looked in the other direction, my heart stuttered. David stood at his locker, watching me through the corner of his eye. When he saw me looking at him, a dumbfounded expression on my face and a white rose clutched between my fingers, the corner of his mouth pulled up ever so slightly. He held my gaze for only a second before shutting his locker and walking away.
“Hey.”
I jumped as a voice sounded next to me and turned to find Violet at my side.
“Hey.” My eyes dropped to her hands. “Where are your flowers?”
Violet looked confused. “In Candy’s car, why?”
“How many did David give you?”
“Six.” She tittered. “He’s so sweet.”
“Six? Not eight?”
“I do know how to count, Kelsey. Three red plus three white equals six. Why?”
“Oh. No reason.”
Violet held out two heart-shaped cookies wrapped in plastic. “Anyway, Candy told me to give you her cookie-grams. She says she’s watching her figure. Gotta run, I’m late for practice.”
I bent down and put the cookies in my bag, gingerly placing the lone white rose in my pile of red ones.
So David had bought eight roses but given only six of them to Violet. No—scratch that. He’d bought seven roses and given one to me.
Technically, I’d given the eighth rose to him.