4 Miles to Paradise

Chapter 2: A Rose Tattoo

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Chapter 2: A Rose Tattoo

Fiery, red-orange hair conceals one of Rose's stormy gray eyes from wandering eyes. Rose sits unaccompanied in her father's crowded coffee shop, Alice's Cups of Paradise, named after her deceased grandmother, and best café in the city. She listens to music while scribbling in a new journal.

Strangers have already stolen the rest of the chairs from her table; this didn't bother her. Rose hides in here to escape from everyone. Rose comes alone and prefers the solidarity. Anyways, the only person she may need to see is on the other side of the freaking planet by now. Probably sitting on a plane, staring out the window.

A white laptop sits on the surface of the coffee colored table, and Rose types hurriedly on the hot pink keys. She skips to another song in her playlist and a tune by the band Twenty One Pilots blasts through the black & yellow Batman headphones that rest over her small leprechaun ears.

Feeling satisfied, as she practically worships Tyler and Josh, Rose gently pushes the laptop back away from her, to return her focus to the notebook - perched on her abnormally lofty, bent legs, being contained in black ripped denim jeans.

Despite the fact that the fabric practically cuts off her circulation, Rose refuses to wear anything looser than skinny. And though, the frazzled rips in the knees send chills throughout her body each time the door opens, due to the whistling winds of October, she loves the style too much to care.

Her soft, cinnamon lotioned hands, grip precious, and she scribbles upon the coffee stained pages. The writing is neat, however impossible to read, due to the miniscule size of it. She has written in a dark violet pen, her favorite color. On the pages, Rose is letting out the unvoiced: deep, dark, or ordinary thoughts.

The notebook is half the size of the laptop, and twice as thick. A large majority of the pages are still unmarked, except for the coffee stains. Those are on nearly every page.

The book's cover is completely black, with the kind of binding that doesn't have spirals. Rose prefers this binding, as she is sinistral when it comes to dominant hands, and spirals can be highly frustrating and problematic for her.

On the cover, the words my plans for world domination had been painted in white.

Rose released a hysterical laugh upon first noticing this, when she saw the book perched alone on the top shelf. Rose had snatched it up immediately, but the words she writes are not of "world domination." She keeps the notebook as a sort of diary, and while she bought it months ago, her writings began only recently.

Her hand keeps scribbling, until Rose liberates the thunderous thoughts locked in the cage of her mind, so they can now wander in the lush field that is her pages. The writing is a great form of therapy, better than any therapist she has talked to, and nearly as good as her canvas paintings and music. Alas, Rose cannot paint in the coffee shop while sipping a pumpkin latte, so sometimes she must make do with the journal.

Rose looks down, reading over some of  her writing:

Have you ever made the biggest mistake of your life? One so grand it has the capability to change the course of the entire remainder of your life?

One that launches you from the safe lane you walk on — paved sidewalks — to a place thousands of miles away — in dense woods — with no path, and you have to make your own? And, the walk starts out mysterious, and even sort of fun; an adventure! .  .  .

But then something changes. Fear replaces the fun, and the greater the distance you wander through these dark woods, the more lost you become, until you realize your mistake has thrown you wandering into an everlasting path leading to nowhere?