black roses | The Lost Boys (1987)

viii.

A few weeks passed after that, and soon, fall weather was coming in. It had been two months with the boys, and it seemed that time passed effortlessly when I was around them. They had proven to protect me and annoy me at all costs, and my normal routines had changed drastically.

Marigold had come and apologized a few days after the incident while David was sitting with me in my shop. Though I didn't think I could ever fully forgive her, she had persisted in staying my friend, showing up almost every night to talk to me before leaving. I was surprised none of the boys had threatened her yet, but I ignored it.

My business had a spike in sales, and it seemed that even more people were coming in to buy flowers, but the reasons also seemed a bit happier than usual. I blamed it on one of the other flower shops of the town closing down, though it didn't have much business, to begin with.

It had become the usual for at least one of the boys to sit in the shop with me while I worked, and though I did enjoy the company, they made it a bit harder to work considering they didn't know how to keep their hands to themselves. There had been a few times where I had threatened to go home and uninvite them for the night if they kept things up, and there was an almost immediate response every time. Marko was the worst out of all of them when it came to touching while Paul was a close second. Paul was a nuisance in shop simply because he had taken to making me give him certain flowers so he could put them in his hair. Marko had braided him flower crowns a few times, and though I was happy he seemed to like flowers so much, it sucked when I had to take to planting more and more to keep up with him and my business. Dwayne didn't do much when he came around to sit with me. He would bring a book or two to occupy himself, only messing with me when I was having a slow day. Those days, I wasn't able to leave his arms, and I would walk into the cave with a plethora of new hickeys. When David was in shop, he watched everything with a careful eye, constantly scanning me or the customers that walked in. There had been a few instances where I had to tell him to calm down a bit because he was scaring the customers, but he just rolled his eyes and told me he was trying to keep me safe. I pointed out Rain who always laid down by the door, and he would make a comment of how he was a thousand times better than the dog in protection, but he would try to calm down a bit. He never did.

After shop, I would stop by my house for clothes for the next day, though most had already been moved to the cave, and anything I wanted that night. Slowly, my house was becoming barer and barer as I moved to the boys' cave without even thinking about it. My bed was either the one in the lobby of the cave or the one in the back caverns depending on my mood that night. There were nights where I wanted to sleep alone or with Rain, and those were the nights I slept in the lobby while the boys slept in an elevator shaft, something I had learned about after a month of living with them.

They had taken to making a bathroom in one of the backrooms with working water and everything, though I was thoroughly confused as to how they did it. I was happy, though, and they told me about how they had been needed a shower or bathtub for quite some time, but they had constantly been putting it off.

Everything seemed to be settling down until Max had come to the boys with some news while I was out with Paul. I was riding his back while we looked around the boardwalk for anything to entertain us with, both high off our asses. My shop was closed for the night, and Paul had offered to take me around. We rode the carousel about three times and a random roller coaster once, but nothing else seemed to pique our interest that night, so Paul was taking us to the boys. I messed with the small dandelions placed in his blonde locks and hummed along to a song playing through the speakers. Every so often, I would press a kiss to his neck or cheek to which he smiled at.

I smiled when the boys entered my sight, but it dropped when I noticed their annoyed expressions. "What's wrong," I questioned, jumping off Paul's back and fixing my long gypsy skirt. My bare feet barely touched the ground before I was lifted into another set of arms – Dwayne's. "Hey, warrior," I mumbled against his shoulder, wrapping my legs around his waist as he grabbed my thighs to help me.