Flower

by Shea Olsen

  I pull in my lower lip, hiding a smile, then take another bite of sundried-tomato pizza. We spend the rest of dinner catching up on each other’s week in between doughy, greasy, heavenly bites of the best pizza I’ve ever tasted. I tell him about the man who called the Bloom Room to order two bouquets—one for his wife, the other for his girlfriend. Both cards the same: I love you forever. Tate fills me in on the album’s progress—I don’t understand the more technical terms, but I can tell from his face that it’s going well. And he seems happy.

  When we’re finished eating, I feel an urgency sparking between us, threatening to ignite us both. The street is bustling with activity and Tate holds me close as we weave around taxicabs. There are no paparazzi waiting for us, no fans screeching his name. We could be anyone. And I really do feel like someone else, like this is our city and we belong here...together.

  Back in the hotel elevator, Tate doesn’t touch me. But his eyes bear down on me, like he’s holding himself back. My abdomen tightens and swirls with heat.

  When the elevator doors slide open onto the penthouse, Tate grabs me and pulls me through the door after him, wrapping me up in his arms and leading me into the living room. He holds me for a moment, his lips hovering over mine. “I’m incapable of thinking clearly when I’m with you,” he says. And my insides flutter, about to burst.

  The sliding glass doors overlooking the balcony are still cracked open slightly from when I walked outside earlier, and a crisp breeze rolls in, dampening my suddenly scorching-hot skin.

  I hear a familiar chime, the whistling of my phone. I slip from between Tate’s arms. It might be my grandma checking up on me. But when I open it, it’s from Carlos. I totally forgot to text him that I landed safely.

  You alive? It reads.

  I type back quickly. Yes. City is amazing. Might never come home.

  You better come home. And remember what I said about V-card. Be good. Text me in the morning xo, he replies.

  Night. Xo. I can’t give him any guarantees that I’ll be good, and I can’t make any promises that I won’t come back to LA a different person.

  I’m about to drop my phone back onto the table when I see an unopened e-mail. It’s from Stanford. I never checked my phone after I landed, and my heart nearly stops. With trembling fingers, I slide open the message. My eyes scan the words rapidly.

  Congratulations! On behalf of the Office of Undergraduate Admission, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to Stanford University.

  For a second I can’t move. I reread the first paragraph several times before it sets in.

  “Everything okay?” Tate asks me from the bedroom doorway.

  “I—I’m going to Stanford,” I say. I can’t believe it.

  He crosses the room, his eyes lighting up. “Charlotte. That’s amazing.”

  “I wasn’t sure I would get in.” I look back down at the phone to make sure I didn’t misread it. “My guidance counselor wasn’t either. I mean, nobody’s sure they will. It’s a really tough school. You know that. I’m rambling.” I blink up at him: stunned, elated, my mind clattering with a million thoughts all at once.

  Tate grins. “I knew you’d get in—I’m so happy for you. We need to celebrate, this is a big deal. I’ll call down for champagne—I know the concierge, he won’t have an issue serving us. Or we can go out? Whatever you want, this is your night.”

  I set my phone on the table, focusing back on him. I take a step closer, breathing in the sight of him here, in front of me, and I realize there’s no one else I’d rather be with when the news about Stanford came in. I want to share this with him.

  I run my hands up his chest and his eyes reignite under my gaze. His fingers go to my chin. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” I say. His mouth finds mine, and he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me easily. I shiver in his embrace, my arms going around his neck as he carries me back to the bedroom.

  Tate sets me carefully on the edge of the bed and I tilt my head up to look at him. I touch his stomach, his abs hard beneath his T-shirt, and he sucks in a breath. I want to see him. I want to touch his bare skin, and I push my fingers underneath the hem of his shirt. He pauses for a moment, watching me, and then he lifts the shirt over his head, his biceps flexing with the motion.

  “I’ve missed you,” he whispers. “So damn much.”

  My heart is a butterfly, fast and light, beating inside my chest. I have everything I’ve dreamed of and something I never even dared to dream of. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I know what I want.

  Tate.

  * * *

  The night flutters and spins out around us. We strip from our clothes and slide beneath the silky white sheet. His lips make a map along my skin, charting a course where only he has ever been. We kiss, we tangle ourselves together, we go slow. And even though we don’t go all the way, it feels like we’ve branded ourselves together. Each tender kiss, each suspended moment looking into each other’s eyes, we discover something beyond desire.

  It feels like trust. And I realize I would do anything for him, go anywhere, risk everything, just to be with him.

  It’s close to midnight when our hands settle, our lips place our last kiss, sleep tugging at us, and I rest my head on his shoulder, his fingers in my hair. I’m tired, sated, overwhelmed. I never thought it could be like this with someone. I always imagined the worst: seeing how easily my mom’s heart could be broken, how easily she deluded herself. My sister abandoned with Leo, her dreams forgotten.

  But it’s not like that with Tate. Here, in his arms in the middle of Manhattan, an acceptance letter in my inbox from Stanford, all of my dreams have come true. Nothing could be better than this one, single moment.

  “I love you,” I whisper, the words tumbling from my tongue like I have no control over them.

  Tate stills for a moment, eyes flicking over mine. In them I catch a flash of emotion, a hint of what almost looks like fear. Then they darken and he rolls onto his back, staring out the window at the ocean of city lights.

  I bring my palms to my stomach, feeling suddenly hollow. Why did I just say that? Because it’s true, I realize—because in this moment, it’s the only thing I feel. I am desperately, turned-inside-out in love with him. And nothing else could ever make me feel like I do when I’m with him.

  My lips part but I don’t know what to say—how to explain.

  But then he turns to face me, reaching an arm out and pulling me to him. I rest my head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat, and he kisses my temple but doesn’t speak.

  The silence feels heavy and unbreakable. He’s not going to say it back—because he doesn’t feel the same way. He doesn’t love me. Maybe he never could. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how. I torture myself with every variation, every reason why he couldn’t answer me. But eventually, exhaustion wraps its cool fingers around my thoughts and I slip into a sleep so deep that I don’t move again until the sound of a police siren outside wakes me so abruptly I sit straight upright.

  But Tate is gone.

  * * *

  I climb to my feet and press my lips together, remembering the taste of him against my mouth only a couple hours before.

  The black dress is tangled on the floor and I pull it on for lack of a better option, walking in my bare feet out into the living room.

  The doors are still open wide and Tate is out on the balcony, leaning against the railing, wearing only his jeans despite the temperature. The air is freezing, and I stop in the doorway, arms wrapped around my waist.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  But he doesn’t turn. Maybe he hasn’t heard me. I step out onto the balcony, the air cutting across the exposed skin of my arms and legs. I reach him but still he doesn’t react, his gaze intent on the darkened city.

  “You must be cold,” I sa
y.

  I want to touch him, but he’s like stone. He hasn’t even acknowledged me yet. I’m about to ask him to come inside when he finally speaks.

  “I was thinking about the last time a girl told me she loved me.”

  I tilt toward him, leaning my hip against the railing. I shiver. Suddenly, I am cold from more than the breeze.

  “Her name was Ella.”

  I brush my palms up my arms, wishing he would turn and face me, but he’s lost out there in the cityscape, looking for something only he can see.

  “Did you tell her you loved her back?” I can’t help it; I have to know.

  He releases a long, slow exhale. “No. It wasn’t like that.”

  “What was it like, then?” I want to know who she was—this girl he’s never mentioned until now—and why it seems to hurt him to speak her name. There’s a heaviness in the air, a tension, and I can tell this is it, this is important.

  His hands clench together in front of him as he leans out over the railing, twenty floors up. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he says, his voice caught in the air and carried away.

  “Like what?”

  “I was someone else then—a brand, a plastic wind-up rock star, singing when they told me to sing, dancing when they told me to dance. But after my parents went back to Colorado, things just sort of fell apart. I started partying—a lot. Just to escape the pressure. There were nights on tour, after a show, when I wouldn’t even sleep.” He swallows and looks down at the street far below. “And the fans were everywhere. They would do anything to get backstage—just to be close to me, just to touch me. It was crazy. You can’t even imagine what that feels like, that type of fame. You start to feel like you’re a god. Like you can get away with anything.”

  The muscles of his shoulders and arms, bared in the icy night air, are like a fortress I can’t touch. And while I shiver, he seems unaffected.

  “That’s when I met her—Ella St. John.” He takes in a breath, then releases it slowly. “She was seventeen when we first met, and she came to nearly every show I did on tour that year. I met her a few times backstage, the bouncers got used to seeing her, so they’d let her come back. We partied in a few different cities and then one night...” His mouth flattens, as if he’s chewing over the words before he lets them leave his lips. “One night...she came back to my tour bus.” He stops, gaze still locked in the distance.

  “And you slept with her?” I finish for him.

  He doesn’t nod—he doesn’t need to. “The night we were together—the only night,” he says, “she told me that she was in love with me. I was so wasted that I thought she was joking. We didn’t even know each other.”

  This is the secret he has kept from me. This is the thing that has weighed on him from the first day we met.

  “The next night the tour went to Chicago. She was there, too, backstage after the show. She tried to see me. I remember her face when I came offstage, smiling as she pushed through the crowd. She thought...she thought there was something between us. That I would want to see her—that we would, I don’t know, be together. But it wasn’t like that for me. It was just one night.”

  “Did you see her again after that?” I ask when he falls quiet.

  “A couple more tour stops—she got backstage, tried to talk to me, but I ignored her. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she didn’t understand. It’s like she thought she was my girlfriend. She even told a couple of my bodyguards that she was. But they knew to keep her away from me by then. She was getting obsessed.” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to get warm. Obsessed. Isn’t that how I’ve been feeling? He’s all I can think about when we’re apart, but this is different. It has to be. Tate’s eyes lift, searching for the memory maybe, trying to recall it in the darkness. “I didn’t realize what would happen. If I had known...” His voice trails into nothing, swallowed by the silence.

  “What happened?”

  He shakes his head. “A week after the Seattle show, my manager told me the police found her. She jumped from a bridge...” He doesn’t finish, but I understand what he means. “She left a note. Said she thought we were in love; that we were supposed to be together.”

  “She killed herself?” I shiver at the words, the idea that this girl could give up her entire life because of a boy, because of love...

  “I ended the tour early after that. I stopped performing completely. I walked away from everything, all the parties, the late nights. I couldn’t do it anymore. I realized that fame is a responsibility and I took it for granted. If one night could ruin a girl’s life—because of me—I didn’t want to risk hurting anyone else.”

  He turns away from the railing, away from me, his entire body a rigid length of muscle, rain sliding over his shoulders.

  “Is that why you backed away? That first night at your house, when I told you I’d never kissed anyone?” I move closer to him, touching his arm for the first time. His shoulders flex but he doesn’t pull away. “And again in Colorado? That’s why you thought you needed control?”

  “I didn’t think I deserved you. You were perfect—you are perfect. I didn’t want to destroy you, too. Take away everything you’ve worked for.”

  I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “I’m stronger than that, Tate.”

  “Before I met you,” he says, his voice low, “I thought I had fucked up my entire life, that there was no going back. But with you...with you I keep thinking maybe there’s still a chance.”

  “For what?”

  Slowly, he turns to face me, his dark eyes on mine. “To have someone in my life that I don’t destroy.”

  I shake my head, rain falling between us. “What happened to Ella was not your fault,” I say, my lips trembling from the cold. “You couldn’t have known what she was going to do. You need to forgive yourself for that, otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life afraid it’ll happen again.” I slide my hands around him so my palms are pressed against his bare back, his heart beating beside my ear. His skin is warm, much warmer than I expected with the cold rain cascading over both of us. “You need to let go of what happened.” I feel his chest draw in a breath of air. “You need to trust that you’re not going to hurt anyone.”

  He touches my chin and tilts it up, staring down at me, a storm inside his eyes. He kisses me, slow and fluid, and it feels like all the words he wants to say but can’t. “Thank you,” he whispers against my lips.

  A moment passes, the rain and the city filling the silence. And then I say, “Let’s go inside.”

  He nods, and winds his fingers through mine.

  He closes the sliding glass doors behind us and we walk back into the bedroom, dripping water from our feet and fingertips, leaving a trail behind us.

  My dress is now wet from the rain, so I unzip the back and let it slip down my legs to the floor. Tate watches me from the other side of the bed. I crawl beneath the sheets and Tate climbs in after, tucking his arms around me. My body is damp and chilled, but Tate’s hands roam across my skin, down my spine, then up again, warming me with his touch. I think for a moment that his fingers might inch to other places, reignite the heat inside me to the point of breaking again—finally take us all the way there—but then he whispers against my brow, “Get some sleep.”

  I peek one last time at the windows overlooking the city, now streaked with rain, before I close my eyes. I want it to be like this forever.

  TWENTY

  THE MORNING SUN MAKES ELONGATED shapes against the white bedsheet. I wake, blinking, and stare at my outstretched arm. The triangle shape on my wrist has faded. I haven’t been tracing it as often. I’ve been thinking of other things.

  Tate is still beside me, lying on top of the comforter while I’m tangled in the sheets. I think he’s asleep, but when I turn onto my side to face him, I see his eyes are open, staring out
the massive windows.

  “Good morning,” I say, and my voice sounds slight and sweet.

  “Morning.” He reaches out for me, pulling me to him, and I slide my hand over his stomach. “You’re gorgeous when you sleep,” he says. The tension of last night has lifted, but he still seems somber.

  “Did you sleep at all?” I ask.

  “A little.”

  I breathe him in and his fingertips trace lines down my arm. “Do you have to work today?” I ask.

  “No—I’m all yours.”

  I smile and press my lips to his bare chest.

  “What would you like to do?” Tate asks, brushing his fingers through my hair. “See the city?”

  “I would...” I respond hesitantly. “But this is nice, too.”

  His gaze slants deviously and I shift closer, crawling from his chest to kiss him on the lips. His fingertips drift along my rib cage and our kiss turns heated fast, his mouth more insistent, and he slides on top of me. The weight of him is enough to make my breath come fast and uneven. He kisses my throat and then my earlobe, and I shudder as his lips press against mine, sinking deeper, the heat swelling between us.

  My body arches into his, my knees drawing upward—looping around him—and my toes curl against his legs. His heart thumps against my chest as he lies fully on top of me, and I know he aches for me, too, his body tired of waiting.

  I close my eyes, raking my fingernails up the back of his neck. He moans against my throat, dipping lower as his tongue makes easy circles on my skin. I press my head into the pillow as my body tingles in anticipation.

  This is it, I think. This is the moment. No more secrets between us. No more reason to wait.

  Tate moves his torso higher, his hips resting against mine. A new coiling ache unwinds in the lowest part of my abdomen, a need like I’ve never felt before.

  “Charlotte,” he murmurs, his lips just beneath my chin now. “Is this what you want?”

  “Yes.” My voice is breathy and quick, without hesitation.