It's Not All Roses

Chapter 12

My fingers continue to trace the petals on the sunflowers that I've gotten from whomever it was. I really have never gotten flowers from anyone, minus my grandmother for my birthday a few years back. I'm sitting on the barstool while Kiya and Grace are sitting on the counter.

"Who do you think sent them to you?" Grace asks while taking a bite out of a left over crab ragoon.

"Honestly I'm not sure. I've talked about how sunflowers are better than roses to a few people, including Christian," I tell Grace and Kiya.

I watch Kiya's smile fade away when I mention his name. I'm seriously getting some bad feelings from my group of friends about Cody. I just hope I'm not in some kind of danger when it comes to him. I really don't want to go through what I did with Nick. I don't want to be scared of anyone within this friend group and get bit in the ass like I did with my old group.

After a while we all are laying on the floor or the couch and singing along to a lot of different songs that come on Kiya's spotify playlist. Her range in music is beyond her years and that is what makes it so amazing. We are singing up until the music is paused by Kiya's phone. She put's it on speaker phone. "Hey Hero, what's up?" She gets up and grabs the manuscript that she is working on and puts it away in her office.

"Hey love, not much, just wondering if you were busy?" Hero asks.

"Nah, I'm done for the afternoon with work. You can swing by if you want. Its just Mae and I. Grace is getting ready to go."

There is a slight pause for a second before hero speaks again, "Ummm, no it's okay. I'll just catch you later."

"No you wont. I need you to bring Niall, Allie and Tom over. You need to be here as well."

"What the fuck? Why?"

She laughs and gives Grace a hug before she has to leave. "Because I said so. We are going to celebrate homecoming week the best way I know how."

I laugh because I know what she's going to say.

"And what's that?" Hero asks, annoyed.

"Smoking weed."

Hero actually laughs at this. It's a really cute laugh. All I can think is he really needs to laugh a lot more, it would do him some good, along with the people around him. "Okay," he says. "I'll swing by the house and grab them. I love you," hero says.

It's still kind of weird to hear him say that, but I know he means it more in a family way. He loves her like he would love a little sister. I think one of his goals in life is to make sure that Kiya is okay with everything, and that she is okay in general, which I know right now she's really not.

"You're the best! I love you too!" she says.

He hangs up and she turns her attention back to me. She is picking things up around the apartment. "Are you sure he wants to come over? He sounded like he didn't want to," I tell her.

"Of course he didn't want to, but he's going to cheer the fuck up and get over whatever the hell is bothering him. I'm going to make him get high, and celebrate with us. Because," she pauses and crosses her arms with a smile. "That's what best friends do."

"He's really lucky to have you in his life Kiya."

She smiles. "I know. I'm lucky to have him in mine."

I'm helping her clean up the mess from the past couple days. I've noticed with her, she can't really sit in a messy situation and stay calm, it really bothers her, whom I don't blame her, and messes suck. I look at my flowers on the counter when I realize that all my friends have a date to homecoming, minus me. I don't have a date yet. I mean I really don't need a date, but here I am, wondering if anyone will bother to ask me.