Rosethorn

by Ava Zavora

  Sera shook her head at the stranger facing her with her features.

  “I don’t want to listen to you anymore. It was all a lie. Everything. All I've done since I found your diary was try to make up for something that didn't even happen. I’ve made a mess of my life, hurt myself, those I love because of a lie.” Horror struck her. “Oh, my god, I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  Sera whirled around, stumbling over the chaise in her hurry to run to the door. The woman behind her called out her name, but she didn’t stop to listen.

  Despite the traumatic revelations she had brought about, her significance rapidly receded into the past, like a shadow dissolving into the darkness of an empty stage.

  Sera ran several blocks to catch the train back to her apartment, her heart ready to burst in agony. Mind working feverishly, she tried to figure out when she could take the next plane out and if a phone call would be enough to save what she had surrendered.

  “Please,” she repeated over and over again during what seemed like the train ride of eternity.

  She pushed her way out the subway doors, knocking into people as she did so, but she didn’t care anymore. Time would not wait for her, so she ran up the stairs of the subway station, weaving in and around the slow-moving crowd.

  She felt like Eurydice escaping the underworld as she surfaced into sunshine, hurtling down the pavement lighter than ever before because with each step she was dropping everything that had ever held her back in darkness. Whatever happens now, whomever she hurt and despite the chaos that would ensue from the mistakes that she might make, her choices would be her own, with no other voices of guilt and regret to influence her.

  She would travel the thousands of miles, she would beg for forgiveness, she would leap into the uncertainty of only air above and air below because this was the only true thing worth the risk.

  She was flying down the streets of New York City as if she was already aloft into the future, so fast that it took longer than it should have to recognize the figure sitting on her front stoop.

  Appearing not a moment sooner than he should have, she realized, but at the exact right time when she needed him the most. Even when seen from a distance, she was astounded by how blue his eyes were.

  Andrew stood up, his hands in his pockets, wary and uncertain.

  She stopped a foot from where he stood, afraid to find out that he might just be another mirage she had concocted in her head.

  "I couldn't stay away, Sera. Not even if I tried. I’m here because this is what I should have done years ago. But if it’s too late, I’ll accept it, I guess. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what if.”

  It was always meant to happen like this, so she pulled him to her and kissed him as if she had been drowning and just now had finally found the air to breathe.

  “It’s not too late.”

  As if in answer to that question posed ages ago, she knew that if she were to choose, it would be this hour that she would keep with her for till the end of her days, when what she thought had been forever lost to her was finally returned.

  The Beginning

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  Coming Attractions:

  Belle Noir: Tales of Love and Magic – Summer 2013

  Dear Adam – Fall 2013

  www.avazavora.com

  Turn the page for an exclusive excerpt from Dear Adam, a contemporary romance novel.

  Dear Adam

  Tuesday, November 12 7:39 PM

  From: Eden Espinoza

  To: Eden Espinoza

  Dear Adam,

  I'm going to keep this alive here. Where it started. In e-mails, in the ether, in my head.

  I will continue writing to you as if you will read this.

  Maybe it will help me. I don't know.

  Here, you're real. Just as I believed you to be for three months. Here, I can pretend that you did love me, and love me still.

  It's difficult for me to stop writing to you. There are still so many things I want to say, despite the fact that I wrote to you every day, spoke to you every day.

  I gutted myself this time, didn't I? No one did it but me. I am flayed, my insides out.

  The heart - my heart - is resilient. I've had enough proof of that. But I do wish more than anything that it breaks for good this time.

  I don't want it to heal.

  I don't want it put back together.

  I don't think I can take this pain again.

  Eden

  Chapter 1

  BOOK BOHEMIAN BLOG

  POST TITLE: Why I Don’t Have a Boyfriend

  DATE OF POST: July 30

  STATUS: Draft

  After a long period of being single, I finally find The One. He’s romantic and adventurous, and we spend all our time together. However, I start to panic when I realize that during the entirety of our relationship, I’ve only read two books. “You’ll have to give up some of that,” he says/vaguely threatens. Life is full of romance but I am suddenly dissatisfied.

  Single again (See above. Just kidding. No, not really.), I cautiously start dating. The men are intelligent, well-read, and funny, yet for some reason, there will come the time, when I look across the table during a nice dinner at a restaurant and think inevitably, self-defeatingly, “I could be home reading a book right now.”

  When asked out, I am hesitant, my glance straying to the beefy, 400-page mystery thriller lounging seductively on the nightstand next to my bed, with come hither eyes that promise an unforgettable evening of one climax after another. Never had a chance. Staying in Saturday night.

  The longest relationship I've ever been in was with a man who was all sorts of wrong for me and even worse. But dude let me read as long as I want and gave me a leather bound limited edition of The Hobbit for my birthday. Farewell, Mr. So Wrong for Me - we'll always have Middle Earth.

  Instead of marrying myself (that's so 2012), I think I’ll marry a library instead. In sickness and in health. Till death us do part. I do.

  Eden kept her index finger poised on her mouse, the cursor hovering right on top of the "Publish" button. She'd written semi-personal posts on her blog before, but they were always about books or bookish topics. Although this particular post was loosely connected to her abiding love for books, its tone was decidedly snarkier than usual. Bitter. Contemptuous even. It was so sharp she could cut herself by posting it on the web for the entire world to see, her love life disemboweled for public consumption.

  Readers would probably get a laugh out of it, but its honesty would make them uncomfortable. It made her uncomfortable reading it now.

  She was supposed to be writing a book review for tomorrow but the confessional had poured out of her instead, like blood from a gaping wound. Once she got going, she couldn’t stop.

  And for what? So she could lobby a not-so-veiled parting shot at Troy – who may or may not be reading her blog weeks after their breakup? If she really wanted to tell him off, she should have just returned his phone calls and e-mails rather than throw up an impenetrable wall of silence.

  She looked around her study, where teetering piles of books covered most of the floor. And still more piles in her bedroom. Often, she would wake up in the middle of the night, having fallen asleep reading, a book splayed open on her chest or on the empty space next to her in bed.

  Was she truly still wounded by the breakup or by something else entirely?

  Book Bohemian might be her own creation but it didn’t, shouldn’t, double as her diary as well. She was a blogger, not the second coming of Sylvia Plath.

  Eden hit "Save as Draft" and finished writing her review of the new Arturo Valiente novel, The Angel’s Shadow. Purged of her anger and derision, she could now concentrate on one of her favorite authors and spent an hour or so crafting a thoughtful analy
sis.

  Each of Valiente’s stories were set in dark, seductive cities, such as 1930s Barcelona or Madrid, and peopled with mysterious characters full of secrets. There might be moments of happiness, but the endings were uneasy and left her haunted for days. Yet she eagerly anticipated each one, pre-ordering months in advance. And as soon as she received a copy, Eden would devour Valiente’s books until late into the night.

  This time, however, she didn’t have to pay for The Angel’s Shadow, as the publisher had sent her a finished hardcover for review. After regularly writing reviews for three years on Book Bohemian, she no longer had to beg publishers for advance copies of upcoming books - now they were asking her if they could give her one to review on her blog.

  Angel was beautifully made, with deckle edge pages and a splendid deep blue and burnished gold jacket. Its embossed spine stood proudly with Valiente’s other books on her special shelf, the one she reserved for signed first editions.

  She had finally met Valiente three days ago during his book tour and had taken with her all his novels, even the ones in the original Spanish she had ordered from abroad, to sign. Valiente was a compact Spaniard who spoke eloquent English with a soft accent. He had sharp eyes that seemed to miss nothing, probably seeing the stories lurking beneath the surface. His colorful wit made the book signing one of the liveliest she had ever attended, prompting the moderator to declare, “How I wish I could explore the labyrinth of your strange mind.”

  She was a bit more wistful than usual in her review, noting how in The Angel’s Shadow, as well as The Palace of Forgotten Memories and The Midnight Garden, the hero becomes obsessed with an unattainable, angelic girl who turns out to be his downfall.

  “In Valiente’s world,” Eden wrote, “Love is never consummated, but remains a figment of the hero’s own imagination. In preferring dreams to reality, the hero dooms himself. He would rather risk a physical death than the death of his beloved illusion.”

  This review, like all her reviews, was not personal. Nothing at all like the post she had spewed out in a tempest of emotion. But still, something of her soul resided in them.

  Eden yawned. Dante had gone to bed long ago, dutifully pecking her cheek good night before turning in. Knowing how she got lost in writing and forgot the time, he had cleaned up downstairs, turned off the lights and locked the doors.

  It was late and she had spent too much time on something that was supposed to be just a hobby.

  She quickly scanned the review for any typos, added a high res image of the book cover, as well as a picture of her standing next to Valiente at the signing, and then scheduled it to publish the next morning.

  *****

  @bookbohemian Excellent review. Though I immediately dislike you for having seen Valiente in the flesh.

  Eden smiled when the e-mail had come in that someone had replied to her tweet linking to the review that morning. It was from an “@agelastadam” – no one she recalled ever having had a Twitter conversation with. She logged onto Twitter covertly, for she was at work and supposed to be typing up 50 subpoenas for a case going to trial in a few weeks.

  “@agelastadam” was apparently one of her 176 Twitter followers. Hmm. His avatar showed a comic book drawing of a bald man with a big nose and double chin. Figures that the only person who would find her review interesting would be a fat old man. But she liked his mixture of flattery and irreverence.

  @agelastadam Thank you! I will not apologize; I drove almost 20 minutes just to get to the signing.

  He replied right back.

  @bookbohemian 20 minutes? That must have been exhausting. What is your preferred of the 3 so far?

  @agelastadam The lengths I go through...My fave is The Midnight Garden - an unforgettable introduction to Grimondo. Yours?

  @bookbohemian Without doubt Midnight as well. Though the 4th is supposed to be operatic & eclipse the former.

  @agelastadam Eclipse Midnight? That would be a feat. Nevertheless, my imagination is wild with how everything will be tied together.

  @bookbohemian And now I want to visit Barcelona. The power of literature.

  @agelastadam When I went to Barcelona, I tried to envision Valiente's world but it was hard as some of the areas are so touristy.

  @bookbohemian I heard that. I have passed through but this time I'll be hunting, book in hand, comme un geek.

  Not only did @agelastadam read, but travelled as well. Eden tried to squelch the tiny stirring of excitement.

  She was about to reply, but paused. This was the most she had ever “talked” with anyone on Twitter. There were other book bloggers with whom she would say hi in passing every once in awhile or comment on one of their tweets. She was only on Twitter very minimally as an accompaniment to her blog. She did most of her online socializing by visiting other book reviewers on their blogs.

  Her hesitation lasted briefly for @agelastadam soon tweeted her again, not waiting for her reply. As though he were prompting her. It dawned on her that this was an actual conversation.

  @bookbohemian I listened to the audio book of Angel last week after reading. Grimondo was voiced in a British accent. Quite bizarre.

  @agelastadam Oh, no, that will not do. For some reason, I imagine him looking and sounding like Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful.

  @bookbohemian That’s imaginable. Were you satisfied with the ending of Angel?

  @agelastadam Of course I wasn’t satisfied! What will Lucien's fate be? He will attempt to avenge his mother's death but at a heavy cost.

  @agelastadam Whatever befell Marquez - he's obviously not dead. And that dastardly Cain – ooh, I hope he gets what’s coming to him.

  @agelastadam But nothing had better happen to Grimondo in the next book or I will curse Valiente for ever after. And you, what did you think?

  For some reason, she could picture @agelastadam, whoever he was, chuckling at her rapid succession of Tweets, straining against the 140-character constraint. Nothing got her quite so passionate as the topic of books.

  @bookbohemian You really are a fan. I agree with all you said, but don't worry about Grim, he'll be safe in the palace of memories thinking up outlandish new schemes.

  “Umm,” Eden heard someone say. She looked up in guilty haste, at the same time swiftly closing the web browser. No one at work knew she was on Twitter, much less had a blog. And she wanted to keep it that way. She tried not to look annoyed at having been interrupted.

  “Hello.”

  It was one of the newer police officers from Santa Margarita. He had been taken on a tour of the District Attorney’s office perhaps six months ago and given the lay of the land. She didn’t recall his name, but remembered how young he looked, freshly scrubbed, his navy uniform starched and pressed, his badge shiny with ambition.

  “Uh, hi.” he now said, shifting on one foot then the other as he looked at her. “Where do I return my subpoena?” He held up a piece of paper.

  “Over there,” Eden pointed to the basket right next to him which bore a large yellow sign that stated “SUBPOENA RETURNS.” She could have sworn he asked the same question last week. And the week before that.

  Santa Margarita’s in trouble if he was the one guarding its streets.

  “Oh,” he smiled apologetically as he dropped the subpoena in the basket. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Eden said then turned around again to face her computer. She waited to hear him leave her cubicle so she could get back on Twitter but he stayed where he was.

  “Is that your brother?” She turned. He was pointing to the pictures of Dante plastered all over her cubicle wall. Dante hiking in their trip to Spain two years ago. Dante in his basketball uniform. Dante with his baby cousins.

  “No,” Eden smiled. “That’s my seventeen-year-old,” She said slowly and deliberately.

  “Your seven-,” he said thunderstruck, eyes bulging. His head swiveled from Dante to her then back again, face slightly reddening.

  Eden felt embarrassed, for him and
for herself. She should be flattered every time she got mistaken for Dante’s sister, even his girlfriend (to Dante’s horror). She wished that she could come with a flashing sign saying, “I'm 35 years old and have a son that's almost full grown.” It would make things easier for everyone.

  “Hi, Beau!” Lisa popped her head in, a big smile on her face. “Dropping off a subpoena?” Unlike Eden, Lisa loved cops. And the cops loved her. She was blonde and outgoing and everything else Eden was not.

  “Oh, hey, Lisa,” he replied, his bewilderment vanishing. Everyone knew Lisa, even newbies.

  “Are you going to Denali’s tonight?” Lisa asked with a wink. Eden was always in awe of how women like Lisa made even the most harmless question sound like a double entendre. Denali’s was the bar across the freeway where most of the cops, some of the attorneys, and “badge bunnies” like Lisa hung out after work.

  “Yeah, sure. Are you?” Lisa and Beau headed out of her cubicle and continued their conversation in the hallway, to Eden’s relief.