Flower

by Shea Olsen

  “Okay,” he says, lifting both eyebrows. “So after college...med school?”

  “Yes,” I say, more assured. “Probably.” Crap. Why do I sound so hesitant—why, sitting here face-to-face with him, do I feel a nagging at the back of my mind that maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about?

  “And you’ve always wanted to be a doctor?” he asks, steering the conversation deeper into waters I’m suddenly not sure I can navigate.

  “Not necessarily,” I answer honestly, and this actually feels like the truth. “But I had to pick something early on, so I could, like...put myself on a track.” It’s not the most glamorous reason to pursue a doctorate. It’s not like I grew up with a passion for medicine or science or wanting to cure some disease. But the one thing I have known my entire life is that I needed to map a course for my future—one that would keep me from repeating the mistakes of every other woman in my family. And becoming a doctor seemed like the most solid plan, the one that wouldn’t allow room for any missteps or time for distractions.

  “But is this what you actually want?” Tate asks, looking at me like he can sense the turmoil roiling around inside my head.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s what I want,” I confess. “It’s what I have to do.”

  He settles back in his seat, studying me, letting his eyes float over each individual feature of my face. And although normally this would cause heat to overtake my cheeks, right now, I actually feel safe under his gaze. “Well,” he begins, “you’re dedicated, and I admire that.”

  I don’t respond. I don’t know what to say. But I give him a soft smile in return, the rest of the restaurant slipping away into the background.

  A second later, the moment is broken when a flash blinks from across the room.

  Someone just snapped a picture. I glance toward the booth next to us, to the couple still sitting there, the man in his suit and tie. Maybe he really is someone famous. I start to lean out from the booth, to get a better look, when Tate abruptly stands.

  “Ready?” he asks. I pause, thinking he might extend a hand as he did when we walked in. But he simply waits, his expression blank.

  “Oh...sure.” I get to my feet and he leads me back through the kitchen, past the cooks and the serving staff, who pause again to watch us leave. Ruben waves a good-bye at Tate, obviously busy prepping several plates of food, and we slip back out through the heavy metal door.

  Outside, he doesn’t steer us back to the street, but walks deeper down the alley until we pop out on the next street over.

  “There’s an ice cream place a few blocks up,” he says. I glance over at him; whatever was troubling him when we left the booth is gone now, the gleam back in those dark eyes.

  I know I should politely say no—tell him I’ve given him his date, and now our deal is done. Return to my car and let this night be only a brief memory; the night when I let myself pretend I was someone else for a little while—but for all the questions I already asked, there’s something about him that makes me want to know more.

  “Only if they have sherbet,” I answer finally.

  “Which flavor?”

  “Lime.”

  “No,” he says, his eyebrows lifting.

  “No, they don’t have it?” I ask, confused.

  “No, you’re joking, nobody likes lime sherbet,” he says. But his voice is more incredulous than accusing.

  “I like lime sherbet,” I retort, defending my love for the sadly overlooked flavor. “And I don’t care who knows it.”

  He smiles and shakes his head, as if in disbelief. “Then you might be the only other person on the planet who does.”

  I raise my eyebrows, unsure if he’s teasing me again.

  “I’m serious,” he says, reading my expression. “It seems we were meant to meet.”

  “Clearly.” I roll my eyes, but I can’t help smiling. Enjoying these last few moments with him—before I need to say good-bye.

  We cross an intersection, the streetlights flicking from red to green, the air warm and sanguine, people strolling down the sidewalk and stepping out of taxicabs at the curb, dressed for a night out. Then just ahead of us, a guy shouts something, his words muffled, followed by the shrill sound of breaking glass. Two men stagger out of a dimly lit bar right as we pass the door, their hands balled around each other’s shirts, shoving and cursing. A girl screams.

  I turn—and it all happens too quickly for me to react. One of the guys slams into my shoulder, propelling me backward. My feet skid beneath me, and I ram into something hard. Pain lances through me. I’m pressed against a car parked at the curb. The men haven’t even noticed me; they’re still wrestling, their bodies crushing me.

  “Hey—” I try to shout, but it comes out as a wheeze. My hands push at them, trying to shove them off me, but their weight is too much. I can’t even squeeze out from under them.

  There are other voices now, a girl shouting from somewhere on the sidewalk, screaming for them to stop. And then a lower voice, familiar—Tate is yelling, too. All the voices mixing together, ringing in my ears. An elbow juts out, thrusting into my chin, and the pain is sudden and white-hot. I turn my head away, trying to block my face from another blow, when their shifting weight is suddenly gone.

  I gulp in air, my fingers instinctively going to my chin, touching skin that already feels swollen and sore.

  “Hey!” one of the guys howls in protest, and I blink. Tate is between them, driving the two guys apart, holding one of them by the bicep and the other by a handful of T-shirt.

  More people emerge from the bar, gathering on the sidewalk to gawk. Tate’s eyes cut over to me briefly, muscles flexing as he hauls the taller of the two men backward. A girl with straight black hair rushes over, her high heels clicking on the sidewalk as she runs to the guy Tate is still holding.

  “Let him go!” she shrieks, as if this were all somehow Tate’s fault.

  Tate stares the guy down, hand still gripping his arm, before he finally releases him. “Asshole,” Tate says.

  The guy shakes his arm, scowling. His right eye is beginning to swell black and purple, a thin line of blood trickling down from his nose. The girl touches his face, trying to wipe away the blood, but he brushes her off.

  “Who do you think you are—” the tall guy says to Tate.

  Music thumps from inside the bar like a drum, shaking the warm night air. More people slip out from the haze of the doorway, holding bottles of beer and unlit cigarettes, probably still hoping to see a fight.

  “Hey, you!” the guy shouts again, but Tate doesn’t turn around. “I know you,” the man adds.

  Tate is elbowing his way toward me, reaching a hand out for mine, when the black-haired girl shouts, “Oh my God!”

  “Are you okay?” he asks, touching my arm gently and scanning my face for injuries.

  “Fine.” Even though my chin already feels like it’s the size of a tennis ball.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he adds urgently, and I nod. A hand grabs at his shoulder and he yanks it away.

  “It is you, man,” says the guy with the bulging eye. The crowd is shuffling toward us, converging like insects, clustering and buzzing and thrumming with words I can’t make out.

  Tate’s eyes are desperate now. “Charlotte,” he says, only loud enough for me to hear.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, disoriented, glancing at the faces closing in on us.

  Someone screams: “It’s him!”

  Lights begin to pop around us, flashbulbs blurring my vision, making it hard to see. And then I hear it, clear as a bell ringing right beside my ear. “Tate Collins!”

  Voices become pitched, frenzied. Bodies begin to throb against us, shoving us from all sides. Tate manages to grab my arm but I am limp, unable to move, to process what’s happening.

 
; “Tate Collins!” someone yells again.

  “Charlotte,” he repeats, but his voice is all but lost in the deluge of other voices. My ears throb, and the air feels suddenly thick and sticky, crowded by hands and eyes and pulsing lights.

  Tate Collins. This boy, this way-too-hot boy who’s haunted the flower shop and brought me eight kinds of coffee and tracked down my phone number and snuck me in through the kitchen of the most exclusive restaurant in town—of course he’s no ordinary boy. He’s Tate Collins.

  My lips move, forming the name that feels sour on my tongue. “Tate?” I whisper, trying to shake away the images cycling through my mind, the stream of photos I’ve seen on TV; in Carlos’s gossip mags and his Instagram feed; on the side of buses and taped to the inside of girls’ lockers at school. Tate Collins—pop star, heartthrob, chart-smashing music sensation, and arguably one of the most famous singers in the entire world—is standing right in front of me, dark eyes boring into mine, pleading.

  I barely feel the pressure of bodies as I’m edged out from the crowd, pushed back in slow motion, away from Tate. But I don’t resist. I watch as hands tear at his clothes, fingers graze his shaved head. His eyes slant down, away from the flashes that burst in an endless pattern of dizzying white.

  I take a step backward, then another, the crowd filling the void where I last stood. I catch one final glimpse of Tate before I turn on the sidewalk and run.

  FIVE

  ON MONDAY, THE AIR IS warm as kids flee the school at the end of the day. It feels like spring even though it’s almost winter—not that winter in LA really counts.

  “The Lone Bean for coffee?” Carlos asks.

  “Let’s do it.” I’ve been quiet today, and Carlos has definitely noticed. I don’t know why I haven’t told him about Tate, except that I’m embarrassed I let myself get carried away, and more embarrassed it was with him.

  I’m not an idiot. I know who Tate Collins is. Everyone knows. Even if you avoid the tabloids like I do, even if you don’t listen to his music or follow any celebrity gossip blogs, you know who Tate Collins is. Everyone knows about his string of model girlfriends; about his mega world tour where he was rumored to party with British royalty and nearly drowned when he fell off a yacht near the coast of France, totally wasted; how he got in a fight in a New York nightclub and was hauled off to jail. Everyone knows the ugly details.

  I know Tate Collins, the legend. So how did I fail to recognize Tate Collins, the boy? The night he walked into the flower shop, I had a nagging sensation that he looked familiar—but I shook it off. Ignored it. Figured it was nothing. And here I’d been bragging to Tate about my stellar detective skills.

  In my defense, he looked different, not how I remember him from the photos I’ve seen. The artfully styled star from the headlines bears no resemblance to the Tate I met. His signature perfect brown hair is gone, shaved down to stubble. And his eyes seem so much bleaker in person. Like he hasn’t slept in far too long.

  “What’s up?” Carlos says, nudging me as we walk. “I can tell something’s going on with you.”

  So much for fooling Carlos. I turn away so he won’t see my eyes, won’t see the hurt just beneath the surface. This morning, before leaving for school, I masterfully applied a layer of makeup to my chin to conceal the bruise that surfaced shortly after I was clocked by one of the guys fighting on the street Friday night. It’s still faintly visible of course, and I shrugged it off as a flower shop mishap, telling Grandma and Mia, and Carlos before first period, that I opened one of the cooler doors too fast at the Bloom Room and it slammed into my chin. They all seemed to believe me. Even though I hated the lie.

  “I didn’t even see you at lunch,” Carlos adds.

  “I know.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry.” I sat in my car the entire lunch period until I heard the bell ring, replaying the events of Friday night: the dinner at Lola’s, how I so stupidly said I had never seen a famous person in my life, while I sat directly across from one of the most famous rock stars in the world. No wonder he was able to track down my phone number—when he said he had resources, he wasn’t kidding. Memories circle in my head, pieces I can’t believe I didn’t put together until now. Like that first night in the flower shop when I asked for his name and he paused, caught off guard, like he couldn’t believe I didn’t know who he was.

  He must have thought I was so stupid. Everything I said, all the comments about how I had good instincts, how I just knew he was a musician. He was probably laughing to himself, thinking how oblivious I was. I cringe at the memory. It was all just some sort of game to him—see how long it takes for me to figure out the truth, and then watch the embarrassment register on my face. Thinking about it now makes me furious. What kind of an asshole does that?

  I remember a time last year—a faint memory—when all the girls at school were abuzz with the latest Tate Collins gossip, when rumors circulated that he was quitting music: no more touring, no more albums released. He was done—but why? No, I scold myself. I don’t care.

  “Charlotte?” Carlos levels his gaze on me, his coffee-brown eyes kind and reassuring.

  “I...I saw that guy Friday night.”

  “The one who sent you flowers—he came to see you at the shop?”

  I flash back to standing in the Bloom Room, looking at Tate through the glass, his phone at his ear and his expression calculating. Then I ruthlessly shake the image away. “He’s come in every day I’ve worked.”

  Carlos blinks. “Seriously? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I hoped he would go away. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of nothing.” This is only a partial lie. I did want him to go away, but every time he stepped through those doors I realized I also craved to see him. “He asked me to go out with him again on Friday.” I pause, taking a breath. “And I said yes.”

  “You did what?” A car rolls by with its windows down. By some cruel coincidence, echoing from the speakers is one of Tate’s songs. I don’t know the name, but the lyrics are familiar—a ballad, a love song about falling for someone who’s in love with someone else, and the cool tenor of his voice now strangely familiar, too—and it makes my stomach turn. How did I not hear it in his voice? Each time he spoke, the truth was right there.

  “You went on a date? Your first-ever date? And I’m just now hearing about it?” Carlos’s voice is rising—part excitement, part accusation.

  I study the gray concrete, the flattened little circles of green and white gum pressed into the sidewalk. “We went to Lola’s,” I say.

  “You went to Lola’s? Why didn’t you text me? I would have come by and stared at you through the window and been completely jealous.”

  For his sake I laugh a little. “Um, yeah, that’s pretty much why I didn’t text you.” The laugh turns to a sigh. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m never seeing him again.” The crosswalk light turns green and I start ahead of Carlos.

  “What—why?” Carlos calls after me, catching up midway across the intersection. “Is this about your crazy no-dating policy? Or did something happen?” He’s focused more on me than on walking, and he nearly bumps into a blonde in a white skintight crop top toting a yoga mat.

  “He’s not who I thought he was.” I shake my head, thumbing the strap of the book bag slung over my left shoulder. I don’t want to admit to Carlos I went on a date with the Tate Collins—he’ll never let me live it down. He’ll want to hash out every detail; he’ll bring it up every chance he gets. And what I need is to forget about the whole thing.

  “Charlotte,” Carlos snaps, and I blink up at him. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, blowing out a breath of air.

  A car rolls quietly to a stop at the curb beside us and I stare at it blankly for a moment, not really focusing. And then my heart leaps: It’s Tate’s car.

  I squint, trying to se
e inside, but the windows are tinted. Maybe it’s not him...but it must be. The car is too unique—shining black and near silent—to be a coincidence. Why is he following me? I just want him to disappear. I start walking again and Carlos falls in step. We’re almost to the coffee shop. Just one more block.

  We stop at the next intersection and Carlos turns so he can look me squarely in the eye. “You don’t seem fine,” he says pointedly. “What exactly happened Friday night?”

  I roll my tongue along my front teeth. “He was just using me, asking me out as a joke.” I keep my eyes averted from the car that has moved back into traffic but is keeping pace with us, inching up Highland Avenue. “I’m just glad I figured it out now. It was a waste of time in the first place.”

  “I’m sorry, Char,” Carlos says, and he hauls me into his long, lanky arms. I press my cheek against the soft flannel of his shirt and the familiar scent of him is soothing: minty and sweet like bubble gum. “But don’t let this ruin you for all guys. There are still some good ones left.”

  “I think you’re the last one,” I say, lifting my head and drumming up my first genuine smile of the day. “And unfortunately I’m not your type.”

  “Sorry about that. If you were, I’d treat you like a goddess.”

  “You already do,” I say, and he kisses the top of my head.

  I pull away but Carlos keeps his arm wrapped over my shoulder, hugging me close to his side so we’re forced to walk in step. We reach the Lone Bean, a small coffee shop decorated with old black-and-white photographs of Hollywood actors from the twenties and thirties hanging from the walls. As usual it’s filled with people hunched over their laptops and a few kids from school who beat us here. We order our usual drinks plus a blueberry scone to split, then find an open table outside. Again, my thoughts stray back to Tate. I can’t help but recall his surprise coffee delivery last week, the casual way he strolled through the door of the flower shop, balancing two trays of steaming drinks, and then left just as nonchalantly. As if it were routine, and I was just the latest girl to fall for it.