Chapter 13 Hopeful Tulips

Songs for this chapter are:

Good thing - Asa

Get you - Daniel Caesar and Kali Uchis

Murder in the USA - Asa

Someone you loved - Lewis Calpadi

Flowers - Tragic hero, Weathrman

Seven years ago...

"Who brought these flowers to my room?" I asked, staring quizzically at my friend, Zoe who had accompanied me to my house after school hours. I was looking at her as if staring would provide the answers to my question. The first thing I see after stepping into my room is another freaking bouquet. It's questionable and very disturbing.

Zoe and I sometimes walked home together since my family knew her very well. She could walk forever in my room after school and nobody would complain or stop her.

On my bed lay a bouquet of tulips and rose flowers, grouped beautifully with a small box lying next to it. It was very strange because this wasn't the first time I was walking into my house to meet a bouquet and strangely, the flowers have always been a mixture of roses and tulips. I looked at Zoe again with a confused expression on my face, but she shrugged, clearly clueless as to what was going on.

I was used to getting anonymous gifts that I knew were clearly from boys who desperately just wanted to get under the sheets with me but I usually got those gifts at school. I could find them beneath my locker or on my lunch table; places where I could spot them.

But who was this creepy stalker that went all the way to drop gifts at my house? It's never happened. It's so damn strange!

I opened the little, baby pink box that was placed next to the bouquet and saw a pair of silver studs, clad with shiny little rubies. Wow. This person must be bloody rich! My mind immediately went to Mustafa. I speculated that he was most likely the one sending these gifts.

He was the one I suspected the most because ever since Dan and I broke up, he has been super nice to me, seizing the opportunity to see if he can still fire his shots one more time and I have been very much rejecting those shots, making it clear that I was not ready for a relationship with him, even though I was trying to heal from the heartbreak I was going through.

If he's the one who has been dropping those flowers, then that would be the automatic end of our already weird friendship because it is disrespectful of him to disrespect clear boundaries.

But after taking the earrings out, I saw a folded piece of paper lying just beneath instead of a small piece of clothing like it usually is. My heart skipped with intense anxiety and uncertainty. My mind was reeling, thinking of who could be behind all of this aside from Mustafa as I unfolded the piece of paper. Then, I dropped the small box on my bed and opened the letter out to read:

"I should be nowhere close to you at all, Cassie. I know I should be away from your life and I should not be doing this crap but please, would you give me a chance to say a few words to you? Please?

~ Dan."

Oh wow. No wonder the flowers were tulips all along. My slow ass had no damn clue. The idiot must have plucked those hopeless tulips from the garden where we used to meet. The slight tapping of Zoe's palms on my shoulders successfully jolts me out of my reverie as I did not realize that I had been deep in thought.

"I've been asking you who sent those flowers for the past two minutes now but you have been staring into thin air. Who is it from?" She asked, impatient and curious.

"They are from Dan," I replied to her. "Little wonder why I have been getting the same set of flowers for about three weeks now. The garden must be void of tulips and roses now."

"What the heck?! What is he doing this for?"

"I don't know, Zoe," I said, laughing wryly as I shrug my shoulders. "All I want to believe is that he can't possibly be doing this for the sake of wanting to get back together with me. He can't be aiming for that; not after how he humiliated me."

Zoe then gave me a familiar look; a calm one that looked like she was just about to say something that would annoy me. And she did.

"I think you should calm down, Sandra. Maybe you should not be too hard on him and yourself. I think you should just see it as someone trying to get through to you but does not know what the heck to do or how to go about it."

"Why are you talking like you are not aware of what he did to me? For God's sake, you were the same person who sent those gross videos to me on that day! So what the hell does he want from me? Why this?!" I blurted out, pointing at the flowers that still lay on my bed.

"Maybe he just wants forgiveness and nothing more. Would that be hard for you to do? People make bloody mis—"

"No, Zoe. I am not forgiving him if that is what he wants." I interrupted her, with the very last bit of my patience. I had spoken calmly. I was badly trying not to yell at her with the unbelievable and infuriating words she was uttering. I could not believe that she was not taking my side on this one.

"Now if you don't mind, I'm leaving this room to find out who has been helping him deliver those flowers because my parents sure do not know Dan so if you wanna remain here, good luck to you," I said to her while I left the room and slammed the door in her face, leaving her in my room. I don't know why I did that because it seemed very unnecessary a thing to do but I did it anyway because I was very annoyed.

**

I didn't honor Dan's request by meeting up with him at the location he had given me in the note. I went on with my life instead and got super busy. Truthfully, I did cry so much that week. At the slightest opportunity I could get, I expressed my pain when it became too much to bear.

I thought I had moved on with my life but moving on seemed like an impossible thing like it would only require an astonishing miracle for that to ever happen because it seemed like I had exhausted my chances of ever moving on so all that's left for me is to constantly abide and be stuck in the abyss of my pain and to be tormented with the good memories I had with the person who I least expected to betray me.

I remember vividly when he told me to move on from the pain and disappointment I was feeling from what my mother had done to me in the past. I could also remember telling him that I was going to try to move on and that moving on would be a lot easier since I now had him on my side. He smiled and said nothing as though he was taunting me for having no idea because truly, I had no freaking idea.

Little did I know.

I thought he was the only real person I had in my life. I trusted him so much that I even started to rethink my friendship with Mustafa. Yes, I trusted and loved Dan wholeheartedly to Mustafa's detriment which was pretty stupid but I was willing to do anything and act ridiculously all for the love I had for Dan. But all Dan could do in return was to make me learn the hard way that nobody is to be trusted. He stabbed me in the back and twisted the knife in.

I knew that this time around, I could not move on. I had been brutally jilted by two major people in my life who I never thought would betray me. What do I do with my life from here? Really, what do I do?

I had to carry my cross; my pain, agony, hurt, anguish, and burning, red anger all inside my heart and my mind. I had to swallow hard on days when I wanted to cry or probably just take my own life away. I had to clutch on to my clothes on days when my chest burned in excruciatingly painful ways. I had to keep walking on days when I just wanted to fall and wail out.

I had to fight my inner demons by myself and this time around, I knew the battle was going to be tougher, most likely unbearable and tauntingly parasitic; eating, suckling, and sapping away in me everything that still had an atom of life. I had to hope for better days.

So instead of fighting that battle face to face with a force, I would dodge it. Dodge it like I've always been doing yet still feeling the pain of the battle that would not stop waging on days when I was helpless and just could not dodge.

But what was I to even do with my life, when those flowers would not stop coming in? The bastard kept sending more and more flowers with infuriating notes. Damn! Let those tulips breathe and enjoy the priceless, supply of air in their natural habitat. Seeing these tulips clustered together in a damn bouquet infuriates me so much because sadly, they remind me of my pathetic state.

I had long been denied freedom in almost everything; the freedom to be happy, the freedom to be loved, the freedom to trust and the freedom at my own pace. Ever since that day, eight years ago when I was plucked out of my comfort zone-the surrounding of my family, the only place where I could ever be a happy and carefree child, I had been severely denied of my freedom and free will in all forms.

Even on days when it felt like I had perhaps been free, there was surely something constant that was there to remind me of my captivity.

Just like the day I escaped from the tunnel, thinking I was going to be happy again once I got amid the people who loved me, it only marked the beginning of another heightened yet inverse form of captivity.

Those were the times when I desperately begged God to take my life away because what is worse than being entrapped amid the demons that fed on your mind and sap away large chunks of your sanity each passing minute like a meal?

There is nothing more agonizing than that.

Hence, seeing these tulips made me imagine if they could speak like humans. The tulips must have thought it would be a nice idea to step out of the garden for once and explore other places asides from their home and their neighbors; the sunflowers, the plums, the lilies, and the hibiscuses and why they must have collectively agreed to be plucked only for them to land in the house of someone like me who does not want them.

A person like me who would only toss them away into the trash in an intense and burning rage, which automatically meant that I would be denying these tulips of the freedom they initially aimed to feel and experience and leaving them to wither away and die.

It angered me so much because it was exactly what I had been through.

I decided then that I won't toss these tulips into the trash. Instead, I would take them back to where they belong, at least that would make them learn the hard way that there was no place like home. I would also seize the opportunity to reprimand the intruder who has been stupidly plucking them to stop doing so.

Yes. I'm going to meet with Dan to give him the warning of his life! To leave these damn tulips alone; to stop punishing them, to stop giving them the hope of an adventure only for it to be dashed in the snares of an undeserving, brutal death, and to stop going after a lost cause.

I picked the bouquet from the bathroom's wash hand basin where he had stupidly dropped them this time around which made me wonder how he got the access in the first place. I push the thought aside and went to my room, got dressed in my tee-shirt and baggy denim trousers, and slid my feet into my ash-colored Nike slides. I did nothing to my hair and left it as the mess that it was neither did I even bother to wipe the tears that were smeared all over my face. I stepped out of the house like that in full rage, remaining on my heels till I got to the garden before slowing down my fast pace.

True to my speculations and assumptions, the garden was nearly void of tulips and half of the roses had disappeared as well. What vexed me, even more, was the sight of Dan sitting dejectedly on the bench, most definitely waiting for the day I would honor his invitation and would have plucked another hopeless set of tulips again if I had not shown up.

But I am glad I came today, to save the remaining tulips from the icy hands of death.

His eyes met mine and he stood up abruptly, clearly shocked that I had finally, "given him a chance." But I tossed the bouquet of tulips onto the bench where he sat, giving them the luxury of breathing in some air that they nearly would not have gotten the chance to inhale forever. Then, I faced the intruder.

"Why are you being so unbearably pathetic?" I asked him, clenching my fists to stop any more tears from falling down my eyes, to get a hold of myself.

"Cassie, I-I didn't mean to cheat on you, I-"

"No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't care to know what the heck it is. I came here for the sake of these poor tulips. Let them live and stop making them suffer for what they know not of because I keep tossing them away, making them wither away when they were created to rather bloom.

In other words, stop all of these things you are doing now, Dan because you know clearly that you do not deserve a chance in any way. You don't even deserve a chance to be heard. So stop making these beautiful flowers suffer for what they did not do because I promise to keep making these flowers suffer so long as you keep trying and so long as they keep coming from you." I said as a tear shamefully trickled down my cheek now, as though the clenching of my fists initially would have ever stopped it. I turned away from him to leave now since I had done what I came here to do.

But the bastard was questionably quick enough to grip my wrist, stopping me abruptly. His hands were fidgety, relatively loose in fact but somehow, I could not yank my hand away from his hold even when I tried to.

"But these tulips weren't happy where they were because they noticed how distressed I was. Don't ask me how but they sure did notice. They agreed to my request to pluck them irrespective of how much the mission had failed countless times. They were willing to be plucked even if they were eventually going to be tossed away. If they didn't want me to pluck them, they would have withered away even before I could get a chance to pluck them out but it's because that is the purpose of a flower - to love and to give sacrificially, endlessly, and to a fault no matter how much it fails. Flowers give their all and bloom best for love so long as it is someone your soul is genuinely tied to. Flowers carry out their mission no matter how long it takes."

"You are a clown, Dan because it can't possibly be me you are referring to." I scoffed trying to yank my hand away again but his hold was mysteriously firm.

I needed to leave this place because his words were dangerously beginning to have a perverse effect on my soul, my heart, and my brain which was not supposed to be so. He had a way with words and he spoke as though he owned an elixir and understood perfectly how it worked but I could not give way for his words to make me feel the things I was still in the process of trying to bury.

"Believe me when I tell you that I didn't mean to cheat on you, Cassie. I was very dejected that day when I saw those videos and just went to the motel to get high and drink away all of my sorrows. I drank close to ten bottles of alcohol, just to stay drunk and sink deeply into oblivion. I did not want to dwell on the pain I was feeling, not even for a second."

"And those girls? What's your excuse?" I asked wondering after, why I was even demanding an explanation from him instead of walking out on him.

"I...I lost control. I was so high that I couldn't even think straight at all. The alcohol took complete possession of my being at that point. I only spoke as though I wanted purposely get back at you but I did not plan to do that. I still wanted to hear your side of the story, and that's why I came to this garden that day only for me to learn about the illness you were suffering from. I felt very terrible for staying away from you for so long and wallowing in pain and bitterness when I could have just made things better, by coming right over to hear it all from you first. I'm sorry, Cassie."

I didn't know what his actual aim was, but I knew for sure that he was succeeding and for some reason, I could see things clearly from his point of view and I could understand what it felt like to be unable to have any atom of control of yourself, for your brain to fail you when you needed to depend on it the most.

I had been in that position too although, channeled by a different emotion but I had unknowingly cheated on Dan too and I could understand that it was hard for him to take it all in but he understood me and felt guilty for what he had done and kept trying. Maybe he does deserve to be forgiven.

Besides, he was my savior and above all things, it was his help that I was the most thankful for. Though, maybe he does deserve my forgiveness.

In as much as I still hated this and wanted my anger to remain, it had subsided and there was just one thing I needed desperately from him at that moment.

"I want you buried inside of me like those girls. Screw me like you're genuinely sorry for what you did to me." I said before I could even give my desires a second thought...

*****

Psalms 55:12-14 - "For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me; Then I could hide from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together and walked to the house of God in the throng.