Krista Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

And then she grabs onto my shoulders, and I feel her body before I hear her voice. How she has to clutch onto me, how she has to brace herself to something fucking sturdy. Her scream pierces my ears, the most powerful fucking thing in the universe. The pain and ache rip through her yell.

She jostles me, shaking me like she’s shaking the entire fucking world. And I support both of us on the ledge, careful and attentive so we don’t fall.

For another full minute, she releases everything she’s buried inside, and then she crumbles into my arms. I hold her upright, brushing the hair off her face. And her green eyes meet mine, drained but light. So fucking light.

I don’t say anything.

I just kiss her, breathing more life into her body. On a ledge. A shallow lake below. She responds by clutching the back of my head, her fingers tightening in my hair. Her body curves towards mine, and I inhale, wrapped in the heat of her skin and the beat of her heart, pounding against my chest.

We’re not there for long before a car rolls to a stop in front of us. A concerned stranger opens his door, but I keep kissing her. And her lips rise into a smile, not breaking apart just yet.

“Hey,” the man yells, “the water is too shallow!” He squints and gets a good look at us. “Are you two crazy?” He shakes his head and climbs back in his car.

Daisy’s lips leave mine, and a gorgeous fucking smile overtakes her face. Her light restored. Powered up and fucking charged.

My hothouse flower that I will always keep alive.

“We are pretty crazy,” she whispers to me.

I mess her hair with a rough hand, the blonde strands tangled wildly, and I remember what Sully said awhile back about her being fun and me being fucking moody. “Yeah? Maybe our kids will be crazy like us.”

She gasps playfully. “You want to make babies with me?”

I answer by kissing her with a strong force, and she runs her hands through my thick hair. I lift her in my arms and bring her off the ledge, to safety. And back home.

RYKE MEADOWS

Connor pours coffee into a Styrofoam cup since all the mugs are packed in boxes. I sit on a bar stool next to Lo while the girls talk alone in the living room, an archway from us. Some months ago, there was a drooping banner hanging over it, saying Bon Voyage, Daisy. Now this place is empty, bare, a house full of so many fucking memories that we’re all going to leave behind.

I can’t see the couch from here or Daisy seated on the cushion. I’m nervous for her, but I’m also relieved that she’s finally going to get this shit off her chest. Before we left the bridge, she said, “I don’t want to drag myself down anymore.”

There is no good time to release news that hurts people.

Lily said something like that tonight, and I think Daisy has finally learned that too.

“Is she okay?” Connor asks me.

“She’s better. She just needed to scream,” I say, twirling a fucking salt shaker on the counter.

“That’s not surprising.” Connor hands me a cup of coffee. “I have to force Rose to scream every now and then. Must be a product of being raised by Samantha.”

Lo shakes his head. “Lily doesn’t have that problem.”

We both look at him. He doodles fucking circles and squares on a paper napkin, and his pen stops at our silence.

Connor tells him, flat out, “That would be because Samantha didn’t raise Lily.” Lo’s best friend, his girlfriend, his fiancée—she was pretty much the undesirable daughter, I’ve come to realize over the years. She was the one Samantha let run off to the Hale residence, the ugly fucking duckling, even though she is beautiful, just too shy for Samantha to understand.

Lo doesn’t deny the claim, but he doesn’t say anything either.

“You can’t control the past, Lo,” Connor adds. “And I raised myself too. It’s not such a shameful thing.”

He resumes drawing on the napkin. I nudge Lo’s shoulder. “How you holding up?”

“Ask me again when it fucking sinks in,” he says.

“That you’re going to have a kid?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “And I already feel fucking awful for the thing.”

“He may not have addiction problems, Lo,” I say.

“No, it’s not that.” Lo looks up from his napkin and points the pen at Connor. “Our kid is going to have to compete with theirs . It’s already fucked and it’s not even born yet.”

I can’t help it, I smile. Connor tries hard not to, hiding his grin into the rim of his cup. “Connor’s kid is also going to be a snot, so you can rest assured that yours won’t be totally fucked,” I say.

Connor opens his mouth, about to retort, but sudden sobs come from the living room. I straighten up. Hell, we all do.

“Should we go in there?” Lo asks, gripping the edge of the counter, ready to jump.

Connor’s the only one who seems at ease. “Five more minutes.”

I hope I can wait that long.

DAISY CALLOWAY

Lily has started to cry and I’ve barely begun. I sit on the hardwood floor while they’re bunched together on the couch. They offered me room on the cushion, but I decided to face them directly, head-on. No more breaks.

Rose gestures to me. “Keep going. She’s hormonal.”

“I am,” Lily nods and accepts the tissues that Rose throws on her lap. “I’m sorry, Daisy. I just think I know where this is going. But yeah, keep going. Please.” She nods again and lets out a slow breath.

First I explain how my sleep has been terrible for almost a year. How I’ve had to see a therapist, and how all the doctors and sleep studies concluded that I’m an insomniac. How I was prescribed Ambien with night terrors attached. I skip over the whys and save those for last. They’re the most difficult to even admit.

Rose is quick to fill the silence when words escape me. “You’ve been going through this alone, this whole time?” Her expression transforms into regret and guilt. I try not to focus on the pain in her eyes, or in Lily’s. I’ve only ever wanted to make people smile, not cry. But there’s no avoiding this.

“I had Ryke,” I say. “He’s been there for me.”

“But you didn’t have us, your family,” Rose says, clasping the box of tissues with an iron grip. “You know you can come to us with anything, Daisy, right? We love you.”

Lily nods in agreement. “Whatever it is, we’re here.”

I believe it, but they haven’t heard the whys yet. They just have part of the story, but I know I have to paint a clearer picture. I describe the easiest moments first. The ones that I’ve recounted to my therapist and Ryke a million times over.

The cameraman who broke into my bedroom.

The pissed off pedestrian that attacked my motorcycle and then attacked me.

But the story that hurts the most is after all of those. It’s the one begging to be released, pleading to be shared and let go. It’s just a matter of starting.

Beginnings are the hardest because they’re the parts that pull people in, that make them want the ends. And endings are the most painful, the parts that can leave you bleeding out.

I don’t have any more time. I just have to begin.

I stare at my hands, unable to look them in the face. “I was sixteen when your sex addiction became public, Lily.” I pause and take a deep breath before continuing. “I remember the day I went back to school. My friends asked all these questions.” At first I hesitate on repeating them, but I look up and Lily actually nods at me, encouraging me to continuing.

She says, “It’s okay.”

My sister’s strength floods into me, and it propels me to continue, like a gust of wind blowing me in the right direction.