Dead Flowers

My hopes to have more of a connection and show affection to Ben are thrashed, at least for the moment. Things are not looking up.

            I’d been asking Ben to go to the beach with me nearly all week, and he was busy with schoolwork. I wanted to swim. Last summer I only went a few times, and swam the once. I longed for a great day at the beach with him, a great night. I wanted summer adventure, I wanted to go skinny dipping with him in the dark with no one else around. I wanted one of those nights you never forget. It was one of those things I’d always wanted to do, and I could think of no one better to do it with. At last we were going, but it was a bit late in the day and not too warm. But that was alright, it could still be a nice time, regardless of what happened. The drive there was quiet. He was tired, I could tell. When we got to the state park, there was a girl there in the ranger station. To our disappointment, this time we had to pay to park. All the other times we’d gone there, it was free and open. “Do you take cards?” I asked. “No, I’m really sorry, the card machine is broken right now.” We shuffled around in our wallets for any cash. No such luck. “Hey, where could we park for free, like the nearest place?” Ben asked her. “Uh, yeah, if you make a turn out of here and keep driving, you should come to a place about a half mile down.”

            Either we were stupid, or the girl didn’t know what she was talking about. First we turned right, and kept going and going, searching for a space. There were private lots and community neighborhoods. There seemed to be nothing direction, so I turned the other way. We went by more neighborhoods, and campgrounds, and private buildings. The stress piled up more and more as we went further from the park entrance. “Just keep driving.” Eventually we came to a parking lot of some sort of youth group campground in the process of construction. “I don’t know if that’s allowed,” I said. Ben sighed. “Just go, otherwise we’ll be driving for forever. It’ll be fine.” I found a space surrounded by other cars, to be inconspicuous, and parked in the spot that was probably unauthorized. Workers were outside a shed, I didn’t want them confront us. Ben looked at the GPS on his phone. “We’re two and a half miles away… that’s not too bad, I guess.” I groaned. “That’s pretty bad.”

            “It’s whatever.”

            I opened my trunk and looked in my car and loomed over what I’d want to carry. I didn’t need my board. The food in my cooler, we could have when we got back to the car. I brought my beachbag and the blanket. He had his bag with his speakers and everything inside, and his pillow. We started walking. This wasn’t going to be fun. His earbuds were in. Alright, no conversation. Maybe there were times where I was comfortable with silence, but walking to the beach for over two miles that way seemed quite boring. After about five minutes of walking, he suggested we jog. “Uh. No.” I looked down at my flipflops. “You know I’m clumsy. I’m gonna trip and die.”

            “You’d be fine, but okay.” He looked down at his phone. “We should be there about 4, 4:30.”

            Walking felt so dreadfully slow, I gave in shortly after. “Fine, we can jog for a bit, but you have to take my blanket.” I wanted to get there quickly. I had rays to soak up, and the sun wouldn’t wait for us. It might start getting chilly. He put on the sneakers he had tied to his backpack. I crossed the straps of my beachbag and wore it across my back like a backpack. We jogged and I immediately struggled not with my shoes, but with my swimsuit top. It kept slipping down, down to my waist when I ran. I periodically pulled it back up, and eventually found a need to continuously support it while I jogged. I had bought the top just two months ago, and it fit fine. Messing with my top became an exhausting practice. I unlatched the back and slipped it out from under my black crop top tank. A few minutes later, he looked at me. “What’d you do, put your bra back on.”

            “Why? It keeps falling down, it’s so uncomfortable.”

            “Running around out here without a bra or anything...”

            “I mean, it’s not like I have big b***s and it’s super noticeable.”

            “It’s just weird.”

            I sighed. Just what every girl wants to hear. No, don’t go jogging without a bra. Please, put on more clothes. I resentfully put my swimsuit top back on. A ways down the road, I came across some flowers and picked them. Well, they were weeds. But they were pretty. Who decides that? What makes a weed a weed? Ben looked at my collection of white and yellow and magenta and smiled. We were over halfway there, and were about to cross a bridge overlooking a pond. “Come on, let’s start jogging again,” he urged.

“My flowers will get ruined.”

“You can pick some more on the way back.” Reluctantly, I leaned over the bridge overlooking the water full of lillypads and plants and life. I dropped the flowers one by one into the water and watched them float with the current. Ben laughed. “A beautiful ending.” I smiled. It was like something you’d see in a movie.

We jogged on and off the rest of the way until we reached the park entrance, arriving a lot later than we’d predicted. I laid out my big Aquinas blanket for us to lay on. He put down his pillow and set up his speakers for me. “I’ll be back, I’m gonna go for a run along the beach.” I connected to the speakers through Bluetooth, laid down, and took my shirt off. Song, after song, after song played. Where the hell was he? I was getting cold. I debated whether or not to go to sleep. Finally he returned and sat down next to me. “Hey.”

“About time. I wanted to go to the beach with you today but spent like half of it alone.”

He immediately went on the defense. “Oh, I’M SORRY.” I adjusted myself on the pillow. “I’m sorry I wanted to go running on the beach.”

I switched the song. White Flag by Dido. Old but good. Ben sarcastically sang along. Not to mock it, but because he never sang songs seriously, possibly because he knew it might be bad. I watched the couple next to us. They were in the water, being disgustingly sweet to each other. She tried to give him a ride on her back. And they were close to each other, looking at each other like they had this connection only they could understand. I wondered how long they were together. They were maybe 25. Were they always like that? Could you have that, and have it stay? It was hard for me to imagine people looking at each other like that, without knowing each other like the back of their hand. What a wonderful concept, to have someone know every detail and corner of you and everything you’ve ever been, and to have them want you close every moment, year after year. They went back onto the shore and cuddled in a blanket. In this weird, sun reflecting blanket sheet. It looked a bit ridiculous, but they surely didn’t care. They had each other and that seemed to be the only thing worth living for. I felt this ache inside me, the romantic equivalent of hunger. I glanced over at Ben. He would hardly share the pillow with me, and whenever I moved my head a little closer to his, he’d scoot away. The only thing worse than feeling lonely watching a couple alone, I thought, is being made to feel lonely with someone lying right next to you.

The walk back to the car felt terribly long, probably because we didn’t jog. My feet ached. I realized I had hardly eaten that day. When I knew I was going to wear a swimsuit or a croptop, I tried to refrain from eating very much. For some reason, my stomach was the kind that bloated after a decent sized meal.

“Carry me,” I whined. He laughed, “I can’t.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, I can’t.”

“You were a firefighter.”

“There’s no fire here.”

“I think I’ve burned more calories than I’ve consumed today, and that’s why I’m so burnt out,” I told him. “Yeah, I think I have too. Which is a good thing, I need to lose some weight. I’m getting some chub,” he said, grabbing his stomach. “You’re fine,” I insisted. “I like your body.”

“I just wanna get rid of this little gut and harden up.”

“You don’t need to be any harder! If anything you need to be squishier. I like a little squish.”

“Girls always say that, but you don’t mean it. They don’t actually want that.”

“Girls say that to you?”

“I just meant in general.”

“Well I do mean it. Laying with you, it kinda feels like… like spooning with a statue.”

He laughed. “Whatever you say.” An eternity later, we were at the car. I put my new flowers I’d picked in the back by where my speakers were, so they could be seen through the back window. We ate the apples I’d brought in the cooler. I was still starving. On the way back, we passed by a gas station that doubled as an ice cream shop. An older and younger woman were working it, they were closing but let us in. I gave them a tip after buying a malt. To both our surprise, I devoured the entire thing as soon as we got in the car. I practically inhaled it. Calorie deficit will do that to you.

We went back to his place after stopping by Meijer, buying wine for him, and watermelon and strawberry flavored hard lemonades for me. We watched a movie I couldn’t recall. It was an action movie, I know that much. I was a little bit buzzed. His couch was so uncomfortable, and hurt my butt to sit on. I kept adjusting myself. Putting my legs over his lap wasn’t even comfortable. I flipped myself around so that my back was kind of against him. It felt better that way, to put my weigh on my left side. Maybe it was my slight drunkenness, or the couple at the beach, or the fact that I thought it would be comfortable, but I wanted to lay my head on his lap and lie down on the couch that way. It took me an eternity to work up the courage to do it, then finally, I thought, what’s the worst that could happen? I got on my side and put my head on his lap. “Can I do this?”

“NO!”

I shriveled up in shame, and slowly resumed to sitting and keeping to myself on the couch. That. That was the worst that could happen. Humiliation and disappointment coiled inside me. It’s impossible to describe the level of hurt that is brought when you put yourself in such a vulnerable position, and then not only rejected, but yelled at for it.  I was thinking, what kind of person could do that? Yell at someone for that? He made a comment about the movie. I nodded. “What’s your deal? Oh, great, now you’re gonna be all pissy.” Tears were pooling in my eyes. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t add to the pile of humiliation that was already there. He groaned and stood up. “Ugh, God, you are being SUCH a buzzkill right now. Why do you gotta do this, ruin a good time?! I’m just trying to watch the movie and you’re trying to get all buddy buddy with me.” I wondered why, if we could have sex with each other, hang out with each other, we couldn’t do something as basic as friends would do. I wondered why sometimes he would let me show affection and now it was a ridiculous notion. But I said nothing, just focused on holding in my tears. Tears angered him, that would make this so much worse. He got a yogurt from his fridge and sat back down. A tear escaped. I tried to discreetly wipe it from my face. My eyes were still wet. Go back in, tears. I angled myself so my face was shielded from his view.

Being uncomfortable still, and at risk of losing my composure, I moved over to the bed. Movies with too much action had a tendency to put me right to sleep. I had alcohol in me, and this was one of those times. I was fading. Periodically, he would say something to ensure I wasn’t asleep. Shortly after I recalled him asking me if I was asleep and answering no, I was out. I remember waking to his disappointment in me, and as I sat up on the bed, I felt warm wetness running down my leg. I panicked, seeing the red streak of blood down my thighs, and sprinted to the bathroom. “What’s wrong?” Ben asked from outside the bathroom door, concerned. “I’m fine, I just got my period and started bleeding through… Can you get my underwear from my bag?” I was still wearing my swimsuit bottoms and thankfully had a change of underclothing available. “Do you think you have a pair of pants I can borrow? My shorts have blood on them.” He handed me a pair of black sweatpants. After I put them on, I walked out and examined the sheets and blanket. “Wow, I didn’t even get any of it on your bed. Weird.” I gathered my stuff into my beach bag. “Get home safe, okay?”

“I will.”

I walked out in his far too big pants into the perfect summer night, with crisp air and crickets chirping. As I approached my car, I saw my flowers in the back were all sun dried and dead. What a metaphor. I drove home, settled into bed, then cried for a while until I fell asleep.

Author's Note

You probably don't know what's going on, because I'm not writing the chapters in order. That's alright, I simply want my writing critiqued for what it is.

Reviews

[dmartin06]

Hey, so, I quite liked it.
It's got a great angst, which is reassuringly relateable. I'm not sure if i've missed a chapter with a little more characterisation, but that would certainly enhance the reading for me personally. I'd read more.