Exquisite ~ Book One

Four~

"So what are your hobbies?" Kiara asks once we've settled into a small room. "What do you enjoy doing?"

"Tending to roses is something I enjoy greatly, I also enjoy writing letters."

"Letter about what?" Kiara presses.

"Love but of course," I say as if that weren't the obvious. "I even wrote to a gentleman back home-"

"Dennis?" She asks. That caught my mere attention.

"How did you know?" I ask, eerie of what comes next. She simply laughs and pulls a folded envelope from her back pocket handing it to me.

"He wrote to you not to long ago. Must have been when you were still on that boat of yours." She laughs some more and hands the envelope to me.

"Dear Rose..." From start to finish I read the letter aloud to the two of us, and once I was finished, I pulled out my own and handed it to her. "Would you be able to get this to him?" I ask shyly, holding it close to me yet far. She takes it and marvels over the writing sunken into the page.

"Your handwriting is amazing!" She exclaims. I feel my face warm as I hold my hands firmly at my side.

"Why thank you, that was very gracious of you to say." I truly meant it though my handwriting wasn't new to those at home, it was actually similar if I might add. She wouldn't know so I didn't bother telling it to her. "Would you be able to manage it to him?" I ask again, hopeful this time around.

"Of course. I mean, why not?" She says and stuffs that one in her back pocket. I swallow down and look over the room. "So tell me more." She says. If I was to be very opinionated, I'd say she really is persistent in knowing things.

"More of what? Dennis?" She nods her head, her body sprawling along the bed as she rests her head down on her hands palm. "What of him would you like to know?" I ask with a warm smile, the thought of him exhilarating me.

"Well, how did the two of you meet?" She asks.

"If you hadn't guessed by now, I travel the world for a living. 'Tis why I am here. Anyway, by the time I got home and left the shop, I settled into a room slightly bigger than this one here. I'd been informed of a rose garden and quickly went to find it, explore it. I guess I hadn't been thinking when it happened, but I touched a rose, pricking my finger in a thorn when he came around to wrap it up, wiping the blood away and introducing himself. He was the first person I made acquaintances with."

"What did he do when he found out you were leaving?" She asks next. I sigh and lay back as my mind wanders back to the day he'd found out.

"I'd been packing things over the days, things in small handfuls at a time, and he'd come in to surprise me with a bundle of roses. Once he saw me packing his face instantly hardened and he'd let the roses drop.

"'You can't be leaving, can you?' He'd said. Of course it made me feel upset with myself and I'd known it was time for me to tell him the truth, I just wish it had played out differently than it had.

"'I must go and you knew at one point me going would be more than a simple possibility.' I'd went on as he stood in shock near the end of my bed, suitcase laying along the bed itself. After that it went quite and he'd planted the rose buds in a vase, coming to me and taking my arm. This is where he'd said:

"'Rose, I couldn't imaging living a life without you and to know you're actually leaving, how will I manage myself in the end?' I told him he was to reliant, that if he was going to rely on my presence than I'd leave him sooner than planned. He needed to fend for himself some and I didn't mean to be blunt, but he needed to know."

"Who's Rose? I thought your name was Annabella?" Kiara asks now confused. I began to wonder how much of the story she'd managed to withhold the time I was telling my short tale.

"You remember how I'd said I tended to roses? That's were he'd nicknamed me from." Something clicks into play within her and she makes an O-ing noise.

"How'd he take the fact that you were actually leaving?" I sigh and tell her the story of my journey from home to here, telling her it start to finish until she leaves me alone to the night.

-

Waking up there was a small knock upon my door, I slid from underneath the sheets and toed my rope around my waist, opening the door a crack to see Kiara.

"Good morning sleepy head," she says in a to-cheery voice. I yawn and let her in, recognizing the fact that she was already fully dressed. "If you plan on getting yourself a job, I suggest you get dressed and come with me. Meet me in the lobby in ten." With that she disappeared from the room, leaving me confused with only myself. I stood around for a few minutes before I pulled on one of my nicest dresses.

"Come on Annabella!" Her voice alarms me and I trot down the stairs after it.

"Pardon me." I say in a small voice as I make my way through a narrow strip of crowding bodies. They seemed gruff and unwelcoming of me, eyeing me as if I were some poisonous snake. I shy away, finding Kiara as she gasps.

"You simply can not wear that!" She says as if what I was wearing was horrendous to the eye. "Don't you have dress pants?" She waits for me to come up with some sort of retort.

"No." I finally say.

"Good grief lady, I need to take you shopping..."