Something New Blooms

Chapter 3

Images flash in front of my eyes, figures in the floral swimsuits of the season and faces in glittery spring-themed makeup that looks more garish than fresh. I turn the pages of the magazine too quickly to notice the finer details, too quickly to care. My mind is somewhere else.

It's a beautiful day, but it feels like a mockery. The primroses bloom a deep pink, a splash of colour in the green garden. It's bright like hope, but it gives me nothing of the sort. The sun beams down at me, too radiant to care that it's at odds with the thunderstorm of feelings inside me.

Ellery comes out onto the porch, her arms empty of her son for the first time since I arrived in Colorado.

With her long chestnut hair and round forget-me-not blue eyes, she's nearly identical to me. I suppose our lives should've been identical too.

I should've also married my high school love, maybe had a kid or two by now, but my life is very different from Ellery's, marred by my actions of the past.

I sniffle at the thought.

Ellery takes the sun lounger beside mine, frowning as she studies my face. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." I keep flipping through the magazine, hoping for something to catch my attention and relieve me of my misery for a little while, but there's nothing.

"No, you're not." Ellery grabs the magazine quicker than I can snatch it back. She holds it out of my reach. "I knew you shouldn't have met up with Keanu. You've been down since you saw him yesterday."

I sigh. It's almost a day since I saw Keanu, but I don't feel any better about what he told me, only worse if such a thing was possible.

The pain and anger and sadness I've been carrying around all these years have directed themselves to the person who is to blame for them: myself.

My mind has been a warzone since yesterday. Nothing I do leads to a truce, not watching Netflix with Ellery or introducing Ryan to the flowers in the garden.

Now that Ellery has taken my magazine, my hands have nothing to distract themselves with, so they fidget with the hem of my t-shirt instead.

"Acacia..." Ellery sighs, setting my magazine on the ground beside her. "I know it was hard for you to hear that Keanu is getting married, but he doesn't deserve you after what he did. You know that, right?"

"That's the thing, El." I raise my eyes to hers. "Keanu never cheated on me."

"What?" Her eyes go round. "But you saw him taking Lorraine's dress off!"

I look away from her, beyond my feet lying on the sun lounger to the manicured grass beyond it and the honeysuckle climbing the pergola on the far side of the garden.

"I saw Keanu with his fingers on the zipper. Yesterday, he told me it got stuck, and he was helping Lorraine with it when I came in."

The world goes a little fuzzy as I say that. It seemed like a lie or a prank the first time I heard it, but now it sounds like a dream.

If only there was some way to wake up from this situation I've gotten myself into.

Ellery shakes her head. Her eyes settle on the glittering swimming pool. Streams of water rush down from the little waterfall built beside it, creating ripples that wrinkle the water's surface.

"Keanu must be lying to save face before his wedding."

"He wouldn't lie," I say.

Ellery turns to me, her eyes wide and incredulous. "But why would he bring this up now? It happened almost a decade ago!"