One Chapter Ends

Chapter Eleven

memories are plants and wrap their tendrils around us

they can unravel our emotions in a white room

the flowers with black petals touch us deeply

but it's the bright ones that break our hearts

their distinctive natures

each more irreplaceable than the last

Over the weekend, Hazel spent all her time at the bookstore and at home, transcribing Brian's recordings, or out with Theo, at the movies, then clubbing in Surfers. Jonah and his bandmates came along to Surfers – they were awesome people. Hazel hadn't really had many girlfriends before apart from Natasha, but Haley and Ali were becoming two of her favourite people. She'd missed it, she realised. With Natasha in Melbourne for uni, emails weren't exactly the same as hanging out in real life.

Even her parents had stopped picking fights with her. Since she and her mum had talked – really talked – on the night of her date with Theo, they'd stopped nagging her about selling the store. There had been no mention of the engineering course. It was as though she'd finally convinced them she was capable of making her own decisions.

~

On Tuesday afternoon, she sat behind the front desk of the bookstore, waiting anxiously for Theo to finish reading the first five chapters of Brian's memories. He'd offered to be her 'beta reader', which had seemed like a good idea at the time. Of everyone available to beta read for her, he was the one who would know whether she was doing Brian's life justice.

But now she was left to twiddle her thumbs, praying that he didn't hate her writing.

He flipped over the last page and she blurted, "Well? What did you think?"

He pursed his lips and she winced. "You hate it, don't you? It's horrible, I should just give up on becoming a writer. You're right, it's awful. I don't even know what I–"

"Hazel, would you shut up for a minute?" he asked. She shut up. "I don't hate it. Not even a little bit."

"You don't?"

"I don't." Theo flipped through the pages in his hands, nodding to himself. "You're a really good writer."

She bit her lip. "Are you sure?"

"If you weren't, I would probably tell you," he pointed out. "Maybe."

She laughed. "You really like it?"

"God, girls are high-maintenance, aren't they?" he teased, rolling his eyes. Leaning forward, he kissed her gently on the lips. She closed her eyes. "I love it. You need to study writing. You'll be great." She opened her eyes and her mouth simultaneously, but he put a finger to her lips. "Now just say thank you, Hazel."

She tried to speak, but he pressed his finger against her lips insistently. "Say thank you, Hazel."

"Thank you," she said, her voice muffled.

"You're welcome." He dropped his finger and pressed another kiss to her lips. She reached up and twined her fingers in his hair, enjoying the warmth of his mouth against hers. Pulling away, he groaned, "I have to go to work."

"Yeah, stop grossing me out," Charlotte muttered from her corner.

Both of them laughed.

"I wasn't kidding," the teen added. "I'm an innocent, impressionable child and you're making out right in front of me." She covered her eyes. "My eyes! O, my eyes!"