by Lilly Purdon
“You care? Never thought you did.”
“Why do you think I never cared?”
She started talking in third person, “Because the first time you actually talked to Rosaline, was when she was in the nurse’s office because of an ‘accident’ in P.E... and you said something really inappropriate.” She said the last part quietly.
I frowned at the first part, but then I smiled that she remembered… even though it was something perverted. “I’m glad you remembered that day.”
She huffed. “Why wouldn't I remember that day? One of my best friends got expelled that day.”
“Oh yeah…” I was pretty disappointed, “sorry.”
She shrugged it off. “I’m tired again, I want to go to bed,” she said, climbing up the stairs. She made it a few steps before she tripped and almost tumbled down, but luckily I caught her by the waist in time.
“I'll help you up there.” I offered, bending down so she could get on my back.
“Um, what are you doing?” she asked, sounding slightly confused.
“Get on.”
“Piggy back ride?”
I nodded in reply.
“Jaxon used to give me those.”
“Quit talking about Jaxon.”
“Why?”
“Because it pisses me off.”
“Why?”
“Just does.”
“But… why?”
“Get on my back, Flower.”
“Answer me first.”
“Flower-”
“Don’t ‘Flower’ me, answer me!”
I sighed, “I just don’t like him.”
“Why? There must be a reason.”
“He’s doing something behind your back.”
“Like planning a surprise?”
“You could say so.”
She clapped her hands, “I love surprises.”
“It’s a bad one.”
She gasped, “what is it?!”
“I think you should hear it from him rather than from me.”
Thankfully, she didn't push further, “alright…”
She got on my back and hooked her legs around my back. I easily lifted her up and carried her up the stairs. Damn, how much did this girl weigh? 60 pounds?
She giggled, “Dustin let me ride on his back too.”
Jesus, how many guys did I have to compete with?
I carried her up to her bedroom and laid her down on her bed gently.
“How did you know which room is my bedroom?” she asked.
Another awkward question I didn't know how to answer. “A little birdy told me,” I used to lie from before.
“Tweety again?” She yawned. “I'll have to get him later.” Her eyes started to close and she curled up into a ball on her bed. “Hey, can you please grab me and extra blanket? It's cold in here.”
I did what she asked, except I placed the blanket on her. I handed the blanket to her and noticed she was shivering. I put my hand to her forehead and flinched from the heat.
She was hot, both ways. “You have a fever.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, let me go get a towel and an aspirin for you.” I went out of the room and into the bathroom. I soaked a towel in water and came back and put it to her forehead. She stayed there silently, not complaining at all.
After that I found her an aspirin from the nearly-empty kitchen and gave it to her. I held a cup of water to her lips and helped her through the process of her swallowing the aspirin. “I've always had trouble swallowing stuff.” She said right after she swallowed the aspirin.
I laughed at her silliness and shook my head. She was acting like she was high. When I turned around to put the cup away, she grabbed my hand. Was it just me or were there electric currents flowing from her hand to my arm?
“Don't go,” she pleaded.
“Don't worry. I'm just going to put the cup down,” I reassured.
She sighed in relief. “Can you please tell me a bed time story?”
I hesitated.
“Please?” she pleaded, pulling puppy eyes on me.
Of course with her adorable face I had to give in. “Fine.” She scooted over so I had space to sit on her bed. “So do you want me to read a specific story?” I looked at her shelf filled with romance novels.
Was she the type who would be wooed with roses?
Because if that were the case, I was not the person for her.
She shook her head like a little kid, “tell me one you know.”
I really didn't know what story to tell her, so I just took a deep breath. I wasn’t creative, so I was going to have to improvise.
~*~
Chapter 32 THE TALE OF PRINCESS FLOWER & THE BAD ASS PRINCE
I was under pressure, but I was also enjoying every minute I spent with Rosaline. I took a deep breath and started improvising. “Once upon a time there was a princess named Flower. She was really hot but she didn't know it-”
I paused to look at Rosaline's wide crystal blue eyes. “Keep going!” she chirped excitedly.
“So like I said she was really hot but didn't know it. All the jerks in the high school- I mean in the kingdom would always stare at her ass swaying from left to right every time she walked down the hallway. Her father was never in town and from my opinion was an asshole. She lived with her evil step mom named… Hoe.”
I was terrible at this.
“Her step mom was a real slut and slept around with almost every single guy in the town-I mean the kingdom. Flower’s stepmother caused lots of people to hate Flower, and blame Flower for her mistakes.
Flower was clueless though, and blamed herself for everything. There was a masquerade ball in the shit hole called palace, and Flower decided to attend it. She didn’t want anyone to recognize her, because she felt everyone hated her, so she put on a mask and fixed herself up to go to the ball. She assumed no one could see through her mask.
Everyone who was mean to her before then thought she was a complete stranger and treated her with respect because they didn't know who she was. Flower had a lot of fun at the dance and lots of guys wanted to dance with her. But then an evil guy- I mean ogre named mango tried to get Flower. He saw how innocent she was and wanted to destroy her in his sick ways. He made her squirm under his touch, and made her feel uncomfortable because he was a fucking pervert.
Flower wandered around, and dropped her phone- I mean shoe- no, I mean diary. Yeah, she dropped her diary when trying to escape Mango. Later that night, Prince Bad Ass found her diary and decided to go through it. He figured out the pattern used to open the lock of the diary, because he had recognized it from somewhere.
He saw some of the photos and drawings Princess Flower did. They were breathtakingly beautiful….” I had to calm my beating heart. I hoped I was doing a good job. “He went through her photos, and found that she was lonely… very lonely indeed. Some of the photos showed her backstabbing best companion holding her very close.”
Princes Bad Ass knew about the secret that her best friend was keeping from her. Her companion was doing bad things that Flower did not know of behind her back. Her best friend also wanted to keep Flower under his control. He never wanted to tell her about how she was royalty, so he could keep her all to himself.
Anyways, back to the dance- fuck- ball. Princess Flower met Prince Bad Ass on a hidden balcony. They shared their feelings, and Prince Bad Ass was moved as fuck by her. He went back home and teared up like a little bitch thinking about how perfect she was. Let’s not talk about that in detail.
After the ball a bunch of crap happened that I don't want to go into about girls slapping each other. Flower was really angry, but she was powerless and couldn't do anything about it. She got pissed off at the judge so the judge put her in prison, where Prince Bad Ass was kept. Prince Bad Ass pretended to be sleeping with his crown covering half his face and watched her interact with the other prisoners.
One prisoner went too far with her, so Prince Bad Ass kicked his ass for h
er. But Flower hated violence. She despised it so much that she couldn't stand to look at it. The look in her face when she saw violence was heartbreaking. But of course, Prince Bad Ass didn’t know how to act. His life was violent.
Princess Flower looked was like she was about to break down or melt down and cry. Prince Bad Ass liked violence sometimes, but hated the look on Flower's face whenever that happened. Prince Bad Ass then told Flower that she looked cute when she smiled, then Flower fainted. But he’d like to think it was from all the violence she witnessed so she fainted.
Her evil best friend thought it was all Prince Bad Ass's fault, which it probably was, and decided to go beat up Prince Bad Ass, but Prince Bad Ass was the best fighter in the whole kingdom and won the battle.
Near the end of the fight, Flower showed up to protect her evil best friend and slapped Prince Bad Ass across the face. Prince Bad Ass yelled at her but felt bad after. He felt as if he got stabbed in the chest with the sharpest blade ever.
But that night Flower came back to Prince Bad Ass. She attended a ball he threw and met a few people on the way. Then she drank too much wine and got dizzy and didn't know what she was doing.
Prince Bad Ass of course came to the rescue and carried Flower up to his bedroom to protect her. Flower was wasted and needed some medicine so Prince Bad Ass left Flower for a moment to go get some medicine for her.
But then Mango showed up and tried forcing himself upon Flower, but Prince Bad Ass showed up and beat the living shit out of Mango. Then Flower started acting all weird and started touching,"” I made quotations in the air with my fingers, “Prince Bad Ass inappropriately.”
Talking about it made me really excited. I bit my lip and tried to hide it by crossing my legs but it kept poking out more. Rose rubbed her eyes sleepily. “Why'd you stop?” she asked.
“Um, I forgot how the story went,” I lied lamely.
“How could you forget how the story went when you made it up yourself?”
“I didn’t make it up.”
“Yes you did, out of all the fairytales I’ve read, I’ve never come across this one before.”
“Think harder, Princess. I need to use the bathroom,” I excused myself, getting up slowly. “I… uh… need to pee.”
“You can bee with a boner?”
I looked down and my eyes widened. I seriously fucked up. How could she be so observant with a high fever and meds to make her dizzy and not think straight? Well, she never failed to surprise me. “How’d you-”
“Just shut up and finish the story,” she cut me off.
If she were someone else, I would've come up with a smart ass reply. But with her, I held my tongue. I sat back down, “where was I?”
“Where the prince got touched inappropriately,” she replied.
“So after that some stuff happened… Prince Bad Ass wanted Flower to think he fell for her disguise like everyone else, so he played dumb. In the morning she snuck out of his room and left him lonely. He truly felt alive when he was with her. He had never felt that way with anyone before.”
I was genius. I thought about being a children’s author as a possible career choice. “Then the next day all the people who came to the ball in the kingdom had really bad hangovers and shit. Pretty sure a few got pregnant too. Flower didn't get to go to… uh… the library, and started freaking out that she had skipped the library for the first time and ruined her clean record. Then-” I stopped when I saw Rosie sleeping silently in her bed.
The only word I could process in my head was 'adorable'. I never described any other girl that way before. I smiled at her little self curled up in a ball on her bed.
I shook my head and got up from my chair. My little buddy was calm now and there was no need to go fix him up in the bathroom anymore so that left me free. As I was about to leave her room, she snored loudly making me jump.
I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing and slipped out of the room. I left her house and jogged over to my baby. I lifted up the compartment in my baby and grabbed my laptop.
“She's not the one to blame!” a guy's voice yelled.
“She's one of the people to blame!” a high pitched girl's voice yelled back.
Fuck. Two cunts in the same neighborhood…
“No she isn't!” he yelled.
“Don't you dare yell at me Jaxon Kent Smith!” Layla threatened.
I turned to where the voices were from and sure enough I saw them both standing there arguing with each other. I shook my head at them, what a couple. I just couldn't imagine what would happen if those two drama queens got married.
“Chill out drama queens!” I yelled at them.
Both their heads snapped in my direction.
“Mind your own fucking business Spencer!” Jaxon growled at me.
I smirked before flipping him off. “My middle finger salutes you too, Smith.”
Layla rolled her eyes at the both of us. “Mind your own business if you value your testicles, ass.”
“Just because my initials spell ass doesn't mean you have to call me that.”
“You beat the living shit out of my boyfriend, don't make me do the same to you,” she glared at me.
“Oh I'm terrified!” I said sarcastically.
“Motherfucker!” Jaxon growled.
“At least I don't masturbate to Shakespeare.”
Jaxon balled up his fists. Oops! I guess I pissed him off. Layla stepped in front of him and put her hands on his chest as she whispered something in his ear to calm him down. Ha! What a loser. Jaxon said something back quietly, but he didn't look happy.
“Just let me fight him,” Jaxon groaned throwing his head back.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Look what he did to you last time! And you had multiple guys jumping him Jaxy!” Jaxy? I cringed.
“This is the first and last I'm going to tell you to listen to your girlfriend,” I said sincerely.
Layla turned around and sent me a death glare before turning back to calm down her boyfriend. I had no idea they were official now though, guess I was slow on gossip.
“What are you doing at Rose's house?” Jaxon asked.
I didn't feel like telling that asshole anything so I just shrugged.
“What are you doing at my best friend's house?” Jaxon asked in a lower tone of voice.
“Why do you fucking care?” She snapped at her redhead boyfriend, before turning to me, “Why do you have a handkerchief wrapped around your eye?”
I shrugged in reply at both of their questions. I really didn't feel like talking to both of them. Those two drama queens were made for each other. To be honest, Layla wasn't that bad except for the fact she picked on Layla like her dinner plate.
Layla was rotten on the outside and Rose could see that, but with Jaxon it was different. Jaxon was rotten on the inside and was sweet to her on the outside. Even though those two just started having their flings not long ago, Jaxon wasn't that good of a friend to Rose.