Flower Girl

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

    You know how people say that they can feel a migraine coming on? I could feel a bad day coming on, and this was one of them. I felt like I was drowning, my head barely breaking the surface of rushing water. 

       Standing up on trembling legs, I reached to flush the toilet for the ninth time this morning. I stared at the contents swirling around inside mocking me, laughing at me almost, before they disappeared from my life to never been seen again. It seemed like my life was one giant metaphor at this point. The gloomy reality I was living ridiculing me in any way, shape or form. My phone sitting on the bathroom counter buzzed insistently, multiple times in a row. Once it stopped buzzing, it would pick up right where it left off seconds later. I made sure to wash my hands eight times, counting to twenty each time, before the buzzing finally ceased and I felt like I could breathe again. I wasn't sure if my phone had died, or if he just gave up. Either way, I was thankful for the peace and silence that enveloped me.

      I grabbed my phone, shut the lights off in the bathroom and scooped up Finely who had a concerned purring going on as he wove himself between my feet in the bathroom. He meowed softly, nuzzled my chin as I took him to the bedroom to settle him back into his cat bed before I headed to work. 

     Me? I wouldn't be sleeping any time soon, especially not tonight. I was running on a solid three hours of sleep from the night before, and I could already sense the dread of coming home tonight to a lonely, dark apartment. I debated calling and canceling all of my bridal appointments tomorrow, telling them I came down with something short of the Bubonic plague, but the thought of waking up the screen on my phone alone made me nauseous.  

      Leaving Finely in his cat bed, I quietly tried to make my escape, but failed when I heard the ticking of his claws scratching at the carpet as he followed behind me. Peaking over my shoulder I laughed at the tuxedo cat who made it his life mission to follow me anywhere and everywhere. I learned pretty quickly where his loyalty lays. He was only about a year old, but he had the energy of an old man most days. One more step closer to me and I swear I could hear him quietly wheezing to himself. 

      Putting him out of his misery, I picked him up and plopped him on the couch next to me with a smile. His stark green eyes stared blankly at me, but his prickly tongue did run itself over my arm twice in what I assumed was as close to a thank you that I was going to get from a cat.

      "Come here." I told him, settling in on the couch beside him in our living room. The couch creaked under my weight, barely anything, and I made a mental note to add a slightly repurposed couch to something that I needed to budget for. 

      My apartment wasn't anywhere near glamorous, and I had more hand-me-downs and borrowed items in here than I owned. I got this apartment as a favor, so it technically wasn't even mine. I really had no room to complain. Melanie's step-brother worked as a part-time house flipper and  had rented this apartment for a couple months because it was close to a project house he was working on. After his lease was up, he negotiated with the landlord to let a desperate and homeless woman rent the apartment out if he co-signed on the lease. Needless to say, I sent Melanie's step brother a birthday card and a Christmas card with a hundred dollar bill in it as a silent thank you. If it wasn't for him, I would be back at my father's house at twenty-four and that just didn't sit well with me. I wouldn't intrude on his new life, I couldn't stoop that low. Especially after my family had made bets as to when and how I would fail in my life -- not even if, it was when. 

       Although the apartment didn't seem like anything to write home about, it was mine in this moment. The living room and kitchen clashed as one, and I could almost touch the refrigerator if I reached my arm out while I was sitting on the couch. The front door had at least three reinforcements on the bolts to make sure that it would stay shut and locked, and every night I would usually add a stack of books in front of it just to be on the extra cautious side. And to top it all off, my bedroom didn't even have a light on the ceiling. Over the last year, I had gotten several bruises and scars on my shin to prove that maneuvering in my bedroom at night is not the easiest task. But, it was a home, and it was my home.