Flower(73)

Flashes of our mom dance through my mind, the ring always on her finger. She was so beautiful. But she was so lost. Destined to love men who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, love her in return.

I am more like her than I ever realized.

*

After Mia leaves, I stand and walk down the hall, finding Grandma in her bedroom sitting at the edge of her bed. In her lap is an old photo album, one I’ve only ever seen a few times.

“Can I talk to you?” I say, moving slowly through the doorway.

“Of course.”

I sit next to her, watching her fingers trail over a photo of her and my mom when Mom was just a baby. Grandma was so young then, just a teenager. She looks a lot like me.

“I should have listened to you.” Somehow, impossibly, I’m crying again, the tears never ending.

“No.” She shakes her head and reaches over to hold my hand. “I should have listened. I thought I was protecting you, but I was pushing you away.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

She smiles and raises one eyebrow. “You deserve love as much as anyone, Charlotte. You deserve the best kind of love—the kind that will last forever. Maybe this wasn’t it...with Tate, but I know you’ll find it someday. I just want you to be happy, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

My mind surges back to Tate, the memory of his face hovering over me, his eyes like the darkest part of the sea, just before he lifted me up from the pavement. I thought he loved me—even if he didn’t know how to say it—but like Grandma, that love was bound up in his own fears, in his need to protect me, to control everything.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, looking into her blue-green eyes. “Something I’ve decided to do...”

She squints to focus on me.

“I want to defer college for a year. I thought I was doing it so I could be with Tate, but I’m doing it for myself. I need to take a year off; I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. I know it seems scary to wait a year, but I promise it’s not. I’m not giving up my scholarships, I swear. It’ll all be there waiting for me. I just want to be sure I’m ready.”

“What will you do?” she asks, her smile dropping a little.

“I’m not sure... I haven’t really figured that out yet. Maybe I’ll get another job, maybe I’ll use the money I’ve saved to travel somewhere—finally get out of California for more than just a day. But I want the time to decide, to figure out who I am and what I want.” It’s strange to be so honest with her—to admit to something like this. But it feels like I could tell her anything in this moment.

I wait for her to respond. She’s silent for a moment, and then she squeezes my hand, her eyes glimmering. “I used to dream of going to Europe...before I was pregnant with your mom. But I never had the chance.”

“This is my chance,” I tell her.

The bed squeaks beneath us as she shifts to look at me. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“Take a year—do all the things I couldn’t do.”

“Are you serious?”

She nods and pulls me into a hug. I feel the tears dampening my shirt before I even realize she’s crying. “Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life.





TWENTY-FIVE

Six months later

IT’S LATE SEPTEMBER AND I find myself back in LA. It’s Mia’s birthday, and at my grandma’s urging, I flew home for the party. The roar and heat of the city is both familiar and overwhelming.

After graduation last June, I left. I used the money I had saved from working at the Bloom Room and I bought a one-way plane ticket to Europe. It’s been three months since I’ve been home—three months that have flown by.

Now Carlos is stretched out across my bed in my room at Grandma’s, twisting one of my hair ties around his fingers. “I can’t believe you’ve been hoofing it around Europe all on your own,” he says, watching me as I pull open my suitcase and make a pile of dirty clothes I need to wash while I’m here.

“It wasn’t as daring as you make it sound,” I assure him. “I was on a bus most of the time, usually with other tourist groups.”

“Yeah, but you stayed in hostels and probably ate baguettes with cheese straight out of a paper bag.”

“I did,” I say, tone serious. “You know me. Such a rebel.” We both laugh.

“And you’re going back so soon?” he asks.

I nod and look up from my laundry. “I found a part-time job at a little flower shop, and an adorable, cheap room to rent in Vernazza. It’s right on the coast. It’s so beautiful, Carlos. You should come visit me.”

Carlos sighs. “I’ll try. How long will you be there?”

“Only through the winter, maybe a little longer. Then I’ll be back home to work for Holly and save up more money, and start at Stanford next fall,” I say, looking up at him. “But I definitely want to do a little more traveling to photograph as much as I can.”

It started out like it would for anyone else traveling: just a way to document what I saw, so I could remember everything when I came back. But it’s become more than that. Seeing the world through the camera has made me look at things differently.