The Reinvention of the Rose Read online

  I shrugged. “That’s not really a great feat, since I do live in the neighborhood. Also, you know my actual name, so…”

  “I do,” he conceded, his lips spreading into a grin that brought inappropriate things to mind. “But I so enjoy reminding you of that, since you did, indeed, end up quite interested.”

  “In your talent as an artist. Not your dick,” I said bluntly, even though I was, actually, very much interested in that.

  “Fair enough. Although…” he glanced around, then leaned across the table a bit. “You should know… I’m about forty percent sure you’re actually trying to convince yourself of that.”

  I smirked. “Forty? That’s pretty damn confident.”

  “I think it’s pretty solid too. Am I right?”

  “This wouldn’t be much fun if I just told you, now would it?” I asked, lacing my fingers together and propping my elbows on the table as I leaned in a bit myself. “You’ll have to figure it out. And risk me stabbing you in the process, if you’re wrong.”

  One eyebrow shot up. “Stabbing? Damn. I know you’re mysterious and all, but…”

  “You’re the one who sat down to flirt with a stranger,” I reminded him, glancing up as a staff member brought out my food, which I’d luckily ordered to go. “Don’t act scandalized now.”

  He chuckled. “Nah, that’s not it. I’m just not sure what it says about me that the threat of being stabbed has me even more interested in your lack of interest.”

  “You should examine that,” I said, rising with my food tucked in one arm, umbrella tucked in the other. “By yourself.”

  I left him sitting there laughing, knowing he couldn’t follow me without leaving his own food behind – and as good as this place smelled, he wasn’t doing that.

  The endless storm had picked up, so I spent a few moments underneath the awning outside the restaurant getting myself situated – wristlet and food secured, umbrella held high to protect from the elements.

  That didn’t last long.

  I’d barely made it half a block when a sudden, heavy gust flipped my umbrella inside-out, making a complete mockery of the “heavy duty” claim that had been all over the packaging. Foolishly, I struggled with it for a few moments, working to get it flipped back into the right position while huge drops of rain pelted me from what seemed like all sides.

  Finally, after a couple of tries, I managed to flip it back the way it was meant to be.

  Only for it to happen again a few steps later.

  “Goddamn it!” I yelled… at the weather, I guess, only to hear a rumble of laughter start up from behind me. When I turned around, Tristan was sauntering in my direction, food in hand, holding an umbrella that looked a helluva lot more heavy duty than mine.

  “You look like you could use somebody to come to your rescue,” he teased, holding his big ass, tough ass umbrella over both of us. “You’re lucky the hail already passed.”

  I blew out a sigh, dumping the useless combination of metal and cutesy fabric in a nearby trashcan before wiping my face dry with the sleeve of my hoodie. “Thank you,” I told him, peering at my bag to make sure my food was still safely secured in the recyclable containers it all came in. “I’ve never had that happen to me before.”

  “I could tell,” he chuckled. “I’ve got you from here.”

  Immediately, I shook my head. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Going out of your way.”

  He shrugged. “You passing UG?”

  “The coffeehouse? Uh… yeah.”

  “That’s not out of my way at all then. Let me at least get you there.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer.

  He switched the umbrella to the same side where his food was looped over his arm and put a hand at the small of my back, easily steering me like we knew each other.

  Entirely too familiar.

  I wanted to mind it, a lot.

  The fact that I didn’t made me temper my reaction, simply moving away from his touch without mentioning it. I really didn’t want him walking me “home” either, but if he was already going that way I wasn’t about to get soaked for the fun of it.

  I also wasn’t about to argue while my food got cold.

  “How is the tat?” he asked, breaking the silence between us. “You still happy with it? Feeling good about it?”

  I haven’t wanted to carve off a chunk of my skin even once since I got it was the real answer, but since I didn’t think that would go over well, I nodded.

  “I’m happy. Thank you again.”

  “You ain’t gotta thank me, sweetheart. It was a nice challenge,” he explained, stopping to wait for the crosswalk signal before we crossed the next street. “Felt a little bad covering up your other work. Must’ve been an ugly breakup.”

  “Very.” As soon as the walk signal popped up, I moved, with Tristan falling into step right beside me. “Nightmare inducing.”

  “Damn. Was there like… abuse or something?”

  “You’re nosy,” I said, stopping in my tracks to face him directly.

  “My bad. I prefer to think of it as simple curiosity. Power of deduction.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means… shit, if I’d left an abusive relationship I’d be getting new tats and being a mystery person too,” he shrugged.

  I met his gaze, considering his words – the accuracy in his framing of a past he knew nothing about. “Yeah. It’s cool.”

  “It is?”

  “It is,” I nodded, turning to start walking again. “Because I will never, ever be controlled again. By anybody. So I’m good.”

  I had a hard time meeting his gaze after that, knowing he was probably wondering what the hell was wrong with me, and what was happening in my head. So I didn’t even try, opting instead to focus on getting back to the candle shop.

  A mistake I didn’t realize until I was standing in front of it, with my keys out.

  A mistake I never would have made before my abrupt departure from service to the Garden.

  “This is your spot?” Tristan asked, incredulous, as he peered through the dust-coated glass, trying to get a peek inside. The awnings were cared for by the neighborhood as a whole, so they were still intact, giving us the protection needed for him to let down the umbrella.

  I had my keys out like a dummy, so there was no point in lying.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “That some kinda problem?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, not at all. Just… unexpected. Which I… should’ve expected, honestly,” he chuckled. “You gonna revamp it or something? You really like candles?”

  “I don’t give a shit about candles,” I blurted. “But… yeah. I might revamp it.”

  “Why spend the time on something you don’t give a shit about?”

  I shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Because you could spend it on something you do give a shit about it.”

  “But I don’t have anything I give a shit about,” I argued, immediately regretting my candor when I saw the way his expression changed. “I mean… I don’t know what I give a shit about,” I corrected. “I didn’t… I didn’t have a lot of leisure time, before I left my job.”

  “Ohhh.” His face relaxed, and he nodded. “That’s right, you did say you were on sabbatical. That’s a lot of change at once,” he added. “Breakup, leaving your job, starting a new thing, getting tattoos, threatening to stab niggas… I’m no expert, but it seems like you’re beasting this whole woman of mystery thing.”

  I laughed, shaking my head at his assessment of it all. Of course I couldn’t correct him about the breakup and the job being related to the same thing, but I couldn’t front… it felt good to have someone thinking I was getting something right.

  Especially since it didn’t feel that way to me.

  “I’m glad you think so,” I told him. “But… I think our food is getting cold.”

  “It reheats fine,” he countered with a grin, then bit his lip. “But I’ll let you get to it. Ms. Glad You Think So.”

  “Oh, so I’m not Ms. Not Interested anymore?”

  “Nah, you’re way too interested for that.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you think so?”

  “Nah, I know so,” he said, letting his umbrella out again as he backed away. “I’ll see you around.” He stepped from underneath the awning, still looking at me, but then shifting back to the store window. “Candle shop,” he muttered, like he could barely believe it. “What are you gonna call it?”

  I looked at the window, considering the question for a moment before I shrugged.

  “I’ll be sure to let you know, when I know the answer to that.”

  Do you really think you’ll ever be more than an asset?

  A puppet?

  You can’t possibly believe you’ll ever be able to function without someone else pulling your strings.

  Stupid girl.

  Those were the thoughts that woke me from my sleep in the wee hours of the morning, driving me from the warm comfort of my bed. It was frustrating, really, because sleep was already a scarce resource for me – one I refused to augment with artificial means.

  Even if it meant I’d be dragging ass for the rest of the day.

  It wasn’t as if I had any place to be anyway.

  Phone in hand, I went downstairs, to the workroom that was now pretty empty. After a deep dive of research – the one plus side of my insomnia – I’d gotten rid of all the old expired wax, fragrance oils, old candles and everything else that was no longer usable.

  And ordered all new things.

  Fresh soy wax flakes and wood wicks that would crackle like a fireplace when burned. Essential fragrance oils, and thermometers and all kinds of other shit.

  I kinda needed an obses
sion – somewhere to focus my energy and attention that was… healthy. And I’d found one.

  None of the new things had arrived yet, though.

  So, I sat down in the middle of the empty workroom, imagining what it could be, and marveling at the fact that I…. was really about to make fucking candles, of all things.

  Chuckling to myself, I picked up the phone and unlocked the screen, dialing my mentor’s number. It was early – or late, depending on how you looked at it – but before she’d sent me here, she’d insisted on something.

  If you need me… call me.

  So I did.

  “Are you okay? Did something happen?” she asked, picking up after the second ring. She sounded breathless, but not in ran to the phone kinda way – a suspicion furthered by a male voice mumbling in the background, far too close for him to not be intimately near.

  “No. Not really. I’m fine,” I quickly shot off. “Is this a bad time? Because—”

  “No,” she insisted. “Will you get off me?” she hissed, half-annoyed, half-giggling, in a damn-near identical tone to what Charlie had been using with her husband in Pot Liquor last week.

  That in love sound that grated at me.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, not wanting to interrupt, and also not wanting to hear her go back and forth with her lover about whether or not he was going to give her any peace.

  “Yes,” she answered, clearing her throat. “Cree is going to behave himself—”

  “Hey Tempest!” he called in the background, and despite myself, I smiled.

  He was cool.

  And fine.

  “Tell him I said hello,” I told Alicia, and she delivered the message before demanding that he really did leave her alone, this time.

  He promised.

  And then he made her giggle again.

  Giggle.

  As if she wasn’t one of the deadliest Roses the Garden had ever seen, damn near a legend before she left to re-integrate into “normal” society. We were only Roses at the same time for the briefest of periods, but I, like the other girls, idolized her.

  Romanticized her story.

  The truth was ugly though.

  I only barely blamed her for upending my entire life by bringing the Garden down.

  “Assuming you’re still in Blackwood, you’re what, three hours ahead of me? So you should be good and sleep right now, but you claim there’s nothing wrong?”

  Her mention of the time difference made me not feel as bad about calling at this time – it wasn’t as odd of an hour for her as it was for me.

  “There’s not anything wrong,” I insisted. “I can’t sleep.”

  “You called because you can’t sleep?”

  “I called because I’m going to make candles.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, and then a quiet, happy chuckle. “You found your hobby.”

  “I did.”

  “Good. Good,” she repeated. “Does that mean you’re getting settled in pretty well?”

  I shrugged, as if she could see me. “It’s fine. I guess. I got my tattoo covered.”

  “Really?”

  There was a hint of surprise in her voice, but no judgment. We’d talked, at length, about the mental block she’d had for so long about having hers covered or removed – a decision she’d come to realize was for the best.

  And… maybe it was.

  If she hadn’t been able to show it to me when she requested to meet with me, to help me transition as successfully as she had… I wasn’t sure I would have trusted her.

  Hell, I wasn’t sure now that I trusted her.

  But that rose made her the closest thing I had to family.

  “Yeah,” I answered, after a deep sigh. “It was either that, or I was going to end up carving it off.”

  “I’m glad you went with a healthier option. What did you get it covered with? Does it look good?”

  “It looks great,” I admitted. “It’s beautiful. The artist who did it, he… he did a wonderful job.”

  “Hold up – what was that?”

  My eyebrows shot up. “What was what?”

  “Your whole entire tone changed when you mentioned the artist.”

  “Did it?!”

  It was an earnest question.

  Tristan and his beautifully inked biceps had flashed in my mind, but I didn’t think—

  “Yes, it absolutely did,” she laughed. “So… spill the beans. You met somebody?”

  “I’ve met a lot of people,” I lied, and she knew it, because the next thing out of her mouth was a scolding. “Fine,” I admitted. “The guy who did the tat for me… he’s been… not horrible to run into.”

  So not horrible to run into that I’d actively avoided it since the day he and his umbrella had rescued me from the rain.

  “Is it serious?”

  “There’s no it for it to be serious,” I told her. “I’m not… I’m not ready for anything like that. I’m not ready for anything at all.”

  “Are we ever?” Alicia asked. “I mean… listen, I’m no expert, at all, right? But I do know that this – you figuring out how to live your life for yourself – is not a mission. There are no briefings, no run-throughs, no drills, no… instructions. You’ll never be ready. You’re going to have to dive in and make some mistakes.”

  “Mistakes get you killed.”

  “Not so much anymore. That’s Garden mentality seeping through,” Alicia warned. “Obviously, I get it – I mean, I have a whole security firm, so it’s not like I don’t understand the presence of danger, but… again, this isn’t a mission. Your neighbors aren’t enemy combatants. You don’t have any targets except… living a good life.”

  “That shit is so easy to say,” I groaned.

  “You think I don’t know that?” she countered. “Have you forgotten that I was in your exact same shoes?”

  No.

  I hadn’t.

  It also hadn’t escaped my notice that she was being very generous with the “exact same shoes” thing. The truth was that she’d had it harder, having to assimilate into a whole new role without at least the benefit of knowing she wasn’t alone in her… confusion.

  There were women – and men – in the same predicament as me, all over the world right now.

  Without the benefit of a mentor who actually “got” it.

  “You know… maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” she continued, when I hadn’t answered. “When I first left the Garden, the Whitfields sent me to therapy, which was a double-edged sword. It helped me be able to cope, but… I still had to pretend to be something I wasn’t. I couldn’t open up to anyone, even my therapist, about the things I’d done. I had to fake it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying… maybe it would be more productive for you to step into a role. The role of who you want to be. Deep cover.”

  “I don’t want to live a lie.”

  “I know,” Alicia agreed. “And I don’t want you to either – I want you to live. But to get there… you might have to fake it until you make it. What you want is to be a normal young woman, who makes candles and has a crush on a guy. And makes friends, and maybe forms a romantic relationship, and starts a business, and… doesn’t have the urge to kill people. Doesn’t have nightmares about it. Right?”

  I blew out a little sigh, then nodded. “Right. I guess all that would be fine.”

  “Okay, so… you’ve gotta move on that. You’ve gotta step into the role of a woman who does those things, not one who watches others make them happen. Don’t think about – do it. Be that girl until you are that girl.”

  “That feels like cheating.”

  “Who gives a fuck?” Alicia scoffed. “Obviously, you’re going to do whatever you want – I’m just offering my advice. I’m not your handler, Tempest – I’m your friend. It’s been over a year, and yes, you’ve made some strides – I don’t wanna discount that. But if you’re telling me that’s not enough for you, that you want more, that you’re tired of just… existing? You’re going to have to change something.”

  “How?” I asked, shaking my head. “I hear what you’re saying, but… how? Every conversation is so awkward, and stunted, and I know the people around here think I’m some weirdo.”

  “I doubt it,” Alicia laughed. “I’m sure it feels exaggerated to you, but… you were a Rose. Does that have to define you? No, of course not. But you don’t have to act like your past didn’t leave you with a certain skillset – one of them being the ability to improvise, and talk your way through a situation. You can walk into any room and adapt. You can have a conversation with anyone. Don’t be so consumed with becoming someone new that you feel like you have to suppress even the good parts of who you already were.”