Pink Dandelion Quarterly_Winter 2019

14. | WINTER ROSE 🌹By Mery MB

SHORT STORY

Unemployed. What many people did not want to be in this day and age, that's what Rosalia was.

When in a stressful career some people start to regret their choices, she thought, but when faced with joblessness, they realize they actually prefer a career filled with stress. Rosalia was no different because with unemployment comes a vacant duration of time. In her case, being unoccupied meant her parents swooped in and cherished every hour of her day as they did when she was a child. They loved to baby her because she was their youngest child. They kept her mind off Mister Ego.

Off her ex-boyfriend as well.

Rosalia, who had to stay with her parents for the time being, was not enthusiastic about feeling like an indoor house plant--watered with affection every day and placed in a comfortable pot of couch cushions. She couldn't survive on her own after she quit her job though. Not that she wasn't grateful for all they have given her, but she wasn't completely living in these circumstances, merely surviving.

Nevertheless, it was unlikely she would have the right mindset to stay with the totally egocentric person that was her only other option. Besides having been demoted to his second fiddle at their place of employment--well, now, only his place of employment--why would anyone in their right mind even consider staying the whole winter season with her ex-boyfriend?

She had thought about it for one single second after she arrived home--his home, she reminded herself-- shamefully aware she had doting parents who would give the moon and stars to have her in their bungalow again. But it had only been for that second. She knew she had to leave.

Because she knew going back home had consequences such as explaining the whole ordeal to them, she waited until she was all packed and in her car to call them.