In the Language of the Flowers

| 16 |

✾ Peony ✾

Thinking of Beau made my heart lighter; if I closed my eyes and imagined the bounce of his curls and his shy little smile, my insides felt like puffy white clouds drifting by. And I'd been in such a stormy mood lately. Beau was spending more time away from home than he used to. It felt like he was slipping away. I wondered if I would ever feel like I was ready to paint him. I almost had that night when I'd felt my heart full to the brim with him. He'd come to me crying and my heart broke for him. I'd never met anyone as lonely as I was until Beau.

I'd felt his warmth in my arms like a fever, like a humming furnace. Then fear rose in my chest, clutching my throat tightly. I loved the feeling of him in my arms, his delicate body, his skin dark again mine, his steady pulse. And mine had been anything but. I was afraid he would notice it, that that hand of his, resting between us, would out my secret to its owner.

My body wanted his. Badly. Each time I was reminded of this inky black desire—when I felt a little stir at his biting his lip, his stretching, his cascading coppery hair—I was hit with a fresh pang of longing and crippling guilt.

But it had been a month since the kid had started classes, and he had very little attention left for me. Any time he had at home he spent studying, hidden away in his room. He'd made new friends, which wasn't surprising considering how amazing he was. But I still remembered him saying that I was all he needed and a little piece of me wished that were true. Beyond his social life, he'd gotten a job at a bakery, which made me happy because he was doing something he loved and staying busy, but also made me sad because it meant even less time at home.

He still hadn't baked with me, though. Maybe I didn't want to paint him because once I did, our promise, what bound us together in the first place, would become a thing of the past.

I wandered into my bedroom aimlessly. I felt like a shadow, like a flower without any water. I thought about calling Liam again. Was it just sex that I wanted? It had worked for a bit last time. I'd been satisfied for a while. And then Beau's paradoxical beauty hit me like a freight train one morning, and I was a useless mess again.

I rapped my knuckles against my doorframe for no reason. My room was depressing. I hadn't realized it until Beau had arrived, but it looked like no one lived in it. I wondered in passing if it looked this way because a person's room is a reflection of who they are.

Drifting sheets were strewn carelessly about the space over old works, haunting me. All the paintings—paintings of a shame I didn't recognize as such until long after the paint had dried—made me feel that guilt all over again, a fresh, roiling ache. I wanted to get rid of the paintings, but felt like I couldn't. They were still a part of me, important despite how greatly I now detested them. But I had no clue what to do with them. The emptiness didn't used to bother me, but Beau made me feel inadequate in a peculiarly good way, aware of who I was and what I could be.

Beau didn't know about any of this. It had felt so good to tell Beau about my parents, too. I wanted to tell him the entire truth, let him really know who I was. But...he would think I was depraved. Cruel, even.

I couldn't bear the thought of Beau hating me. I was clinging onto him for dear life, watching him grow and mature into the inspiring, incredibly strong young man he was. He would become who he was meant to be, but what would happen to me in the process? I wasn't sure I could keep up.

I was afraid of how badly I needed him. How terribly terminal my loneliness would feel, seeping the life from my eyes, if he were to leave me.

I was glad that he'd come to me when he wanted someone to mend his cracked heart. It meant that he still needed me. But what would become of our relationship as time eroded the pain of his loss, when he no longer came to knock on my door in the middle of the night with swollen eyes?