The groan that left Mike’s lungs as his warm blood spattered onto my hand was disgusting. It was like a horny old man touching himself to a crinkled up issue of Hustler, completely devoid of understanding that the blonde toy at his fingertips was a real living, breathing human being. The deeper I pushed, the easier the knife glided into Mike’s stomach, blade puncturing the deep fatty tissue like rare filet mignon. I didn’t know how far I needed to go, I just let my hatred guide me. I didn’t care that my gray cotton seats would be stained. I didn’t worry about what I would become after I finally pulled the knife out. 

The lone street light in the empty parking lot illuminated the whites of Mike’s widened eyes. I could see the horror glistening against the reddening veins around his irises. His mouth dangled open, nothing other than gurgles and moans escaping. He vibrated slightly, the remaining strands of his thinning brown hair shaking against his pale forehead. My heart continued to race, my entire body still overheating. I pulled the knife out.

More blood began to dump itself out onto my car. Mike fell back at an angle against the passenger door, his head thumping against the window. The terror hadn’t left his eyes yet, but his eyelids began to droop. I didn’t want him to stop looking at me. So I leaned further over the center console and thrusted the knife into his stomach again. 

His eyes shot open and he moaned again. He tried to raise one of his hands in a pathetic attempt to stop me and I felt myself smirk a little bit at his feebleness. How does it feel to be the weak one? How does it feel to be overpowered? How does it feel to be helpless, Mike?

I pulled the knife out again and pushed it right back in. Again, and again, and again, and again. The world began to swirl around us as the disgust and rage overtook my senses. My arm ripped the life out of Mike, pulling his blood along with it. He was feeling what I felt. He was having his soul stolen, his person stolen, his everything stolen. He was alone, he was pitiful, and he was dying. It was his turn to feel the penetrative blows that would render him humiliated and worthless. Nothing but a body. 

I finally stopped stabbing him, my eyes fully adjusted to the darkness. Blood soaked into his green t-shirt, the fabric torn in several spots revealing shredded slices of his hairy stomach. The street light made streaks of blood sparkle as it continued to gush out of his wounds. His eyes were still wide open, his mouth still agape as dots of red decorated his chin. He still rested on the passenger door, unmoving. 

I tossed the knife on the floor next to the brake. Placing a hand on my door handle, I scanned the area. WM trash bin, lid shut. White and yellow delivery van with the words, “Mona’s Flower Nest,” and Mom’s daisy logo. Shallow puddles among the empty parking spots. Moths fluttering around the street light. No sound aside from a lone cricket and my own heavy breathing. The coast was clear enough. It’s not like I expected anyone to be behind the strip mall this late at night, anyway. I pushed open my door.

I hated that it had come to this, but maybe I could finally be free. The nightmares, the flashbacks, the feeling of someone watching me, the lingering feeling of hands on my body. Maybe I could finally sleep again, maybe washing the sheets for a 48th time would finally get the poison off of them. My mattress had begun to smell like sweat from all of my sleepless and sweaty nights on it despite having no comforter. My neck hurt from the lack of pillows. Sometimes I couldn’t turn my head for an entire day at a time. I initially told myself I was going to wait until I had a full plan. But the empty detergent bottle from failed attempts at freedom showed me I needed more than just a new bottle. I needed all of this to end.

I decided I would put him in the fridge until I knew what to do with him. Maybe the temperature would keep him from smelling bad. After tiptoeing to the other side of my Chevy Impala, pinning my body to its gold exterior like it would somehow protect me, I cracked the passenger door. It only took my hand pulling lightly on the handle for the door to fly open, Mike tumbling out and hitting the concrete with his shoulder, then his head. His legs contorted like noodles on the seat as his abdomen slowly slid out of the car, the stab marks still spilling blood. I made eye contact with him and I wanted to throw up. 

My mouth began to salivate as my throat prepared itself for a stream of vomit. Good. I was sickened by him, but not because of the gore. I could cover his helpless body in my own fluid. It’s your turn, Mike. 

I bent over him, hands on my hips, and my stomach forced up my dinner—undigested corn lacing the green mush from my dinner salad. Tiny, wet patters echoed against his blood-soaked shirt as chunks fell onto him, making mountains of unrelenting repugnance. I tried to quiet the roar of my puking, but the hacks and coughs broke their way through my mouth. My entire body began to sweat as I watched the last drops of bile land on Mike. So much for preventing him from stinking. 

I scanned the area again. Same everything, though the cricket had stopped chirping. 

The blood began to trickle into the thick bile as I grabbed Mike by the wrists and yanked him towards me. Holy fuck, was he heavy. I managed to pull him out of the car after several heaves and hoes, and his whole body landed onto the pavement. I was able to get a quick glance at the biohazard zone my car had become before I shut the door and positioned myself—knees bent, back towards the back door of the shop, and hands still firmly grasping Mike’s wrists. I tried to avoid looking into his eyes again. With a sharp breath in, I began to pull Mike’s body across the ground and towards the back door. It was only a few steps away, I could do it. I could do it. Just breathe, pull. Breathe, then pull. Every tug came with a tiny grunt. Mike was something like 6’2, I was 5’2. He had to be around 250lbs, I was less than 150lbs. 

I leaned Mike’s head against the dumpster by the back door before reaching into my leather coat pocket to retrieve the back door key. There it was, the pink key cover in between the front door key and a Tujiana keychain, colorful and decked with beveled flowers. Sliding the key into the lock, I scanned the area once more. The automatic light in my car dimmed into nothing as an airplane flew above the parking lot, the red and green lights flickering through the purple clouds. 

I propped open the door with a half empty cardboard box of clear Teleflora gathering vases and switched on the light. My floor full of chopped stems and stray leaves and shelves stacked with vases of all shapes and colors welcomed my tired eyes. The last time I had been here this late was most likely during Christmas-time over 10 years ago with my mom while she was making a last minute centerpiece to bring to Grandma’s house. Mom’s solution for gifts was always flowers. Anniversary? Flowers. Graduation? Flowers. Birthday? Flowers and a balloon. And finally, she gifted herself her own flowers as I ended up using some of her premade funeral arrangements for her service a few months after the last-minute centerpiece.

I dragged Mike inside and locked the door. Taking a moment to breathe proved to be a mistake as I watched blood begin to pool underneath his body amongst the petals and leaves. Fuck. I hopped over him and into the supply closet. After pulling the chain to the hanging lightbulb, I grabbed an unopened package of Scott paper towels from the top rack, my toes straining from the pressure of my reach. The package hit me on the head on its way down, the tightly packed towels surprisingly hard against my skull. I struggled to regain my footing as I wrapped my arms around the package and waddled my way backwards out of the closet. 

Into the fridge I went. Buckets and buckets of flowers sat beautifully on the green tiles, the finished arrangements decorating the waist-height shelves. Most of them were for delivery tomorrow morning, a few for the rest of the week. Underneath a shelf in the corner between a bucket of white Gerbera daisies and a bucket of pink Alstroemeria was a person-sized gap, dusted with dead Baby’s Breath and severed zip ties. I tossed down the package of paper towels, letting the door shut behind me. Even though I had my jacket on, the fridge felt just as cold as usual, the cooler hum just as loud. 

My knees crackled as I bent down and began to tear the package open, digging my red nails into the plastic seams. Red fingerprints now lined the paper, red streaks on the floor. The light of the fridge was bright enough for me to see the blue veins in my hands as I spread out the heaps of paper towels. There were 50 packs of 100 sheets—plenty. His bed was laid. 

I flinched at the sight of Mike again. It was as if those few moments in the fridge erased the image of a dead man being right outside of the door. I grabbed his wrists with a new burst of adrenaline. He was easier to pull this time, though small grunts still escaped me with each step. One of his sneakers was pulled off by the lip of the fridge doorframe, revealing a black sock with the upside down words, “HERE FOR THE BEER!” below a hole in the middle toe. Along with him came a trail of blood much like that of a snail and its mucin. Again would I be left to clean up something that came out of him, but at least this would be the last. 

The paper towels shifted as I shoved him into the corner, immediately sucking up the blood. There he was—while it wouldn’t be his final resting place, at least the heavy work was done. Kind of.  

I stood up and placed my hands on my hips, following the trail of blood from the fridge door to Mike’s body with my eyes. Oh, fuck. What, what, what was I supposed to do now? When would the freedom set in? When would my eyes have a chance to rest? When would the sheets finally feel clean? 

Mike was in my fridge. Tomorrow was Monday. Well, no, today was Monday. It was just past 12am. Mateo would be in to run deliveries at 8. What the fuck was I supposed to do?

I heard a gurgle, and then the sound of paper shifting slightly. No. There’s no way. I was just imagining things. I was just hallucinating. 

Ughhh…grrggg…

Fuck. My eyes met the now shut eyelids of Mike. His arm had moved just a bit before going back to being motionless. He gurgled again. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

I looked around for something, anything. The knife was still in my car, all of the shears and cutters were in the front of the shop by my work table. 

Plastic. A stack of sheer bouquet wraps sat on one of the shelves next to a case of wedding boutonnieres and corsages for later in the week. I didn’t think twice before snatching a handful of them and rushing over to Mike. 

The plastic fogged up as Mike sucked in through his mouth for air, only to be met with the crinkles of finality. His eyes were pressed shut as I firmly held the plastic against his face. I looked away, then back, then away, then back again as the plastic continued to crumple against Mike’s attempts for air. It may as well have been hours until he finally stopped breathing. The only thought in my head: Stop, stop, stop, stop. 

I put my finger to his neck to check for a pulse. It was gone.  

***

I sat down in my car. The smell of blood—something like old pennies in a coin purse—shoved its way into my nose as I shut the door. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know why I was sitting there. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be feeling, but it may as well have been everything. I looked over at the passenger seat, sopping with blood. The kiss we had shared earlier was horrid, his saliva forcing itself into the gaps of my teeth. His breath tasted like salami and the rough hairs of his mustache scraped against my soft upper lip. A flashback of a few months prior, the same one I had been having over and over again, started as I struggled to shut my eyes. I had to sell it, though. 

He thought we were going on some sort of late night rendezvous like a couple of teenagers. Though he was nearly 40, he certainly acted like a kid. We were best friends from 1st grade until we weren’t—he thought we were now “a thing,” and I thought that he needed to die. His wife got tired of him and the day before the divorce hearing we went to the snooker hall by our old high school for a drink. He cried like a baby, gobs of snot drooping into his 4th glass of Knob Creek neat. What a fucking mistake. He smushed his lips against mine while I was standing up to pay our tab and I shoved him away before telling him to take out his own wallet. Nothing is sacred, not even a nearly 30 year old friendship. This wouldn’t be the end of this, of course. 

I continued staring at the soaked seat. Like a period blood stain, I was sure the longer I waited for the blood to seep into the cloth, the harder it would be to get it out. Soap and water was the best I could reasonably do for now. I could make the mixture in an empty bucket and scrub it away. Maybe throw a little baking soda in there, too. My heart rate picked back up before I rushed out of the car and back into the shop. How long would it take—an hour, three hours? It needed to get done before sunrise, at least certainly before Mateo came in and revved up the delivery van right next to my car. 

All of the empty buckets were stacked in the corner of the fridge. With the box of Arm & Hammer from the supply closet in my hand, I pushed open the door. I couldn’t ignore it though. Mike was back in my peripheral. 

Oh, I killed someone. I actually killed someone. I killed a real-life person. A real person was alive, and now they’re not. And it’s because of me. I ended someone’s life. The box of baking soda felt like the heaviest thing I had ever held in my life and it slipped out of my grip. Mike was dead. Mike was dead and it was because of me. My stomach lining burned. 

I swallowed hard as I looked down at the pile of baking soda next to my feet. My best friend was gone. His mom would be so, so heartbroken. His little brother would drop tears into the childhood photo album. His dog would wake up in the morning and wonder why breakfast isn’t in her bowl. I did this. 

I remembered the horror in his eyes when I was thrusting the knife in and out of him. I remembered the initial moan he let out. I could only imagine the terror in his throat when he was forced into shock. He thought this was a hook up. He thought I finally came around to him. He thought I forgave him and I would be the thing to replace his wife. He thought the sloppy kiss I put on him moments before meant everything had fallen into place for him. 

But how? He knew that I didn’t want anything. He knew that I was scared. He knew that my world was so, so different from his. He was the friend I went to to cry about Caleb, my ex boyfriend of a decade before now, back in college. Mike knew everything. Caleb shouting at me for wearing a sleeveless top to my mother’s work party. Caleb choking me when I told him I didn’t want to move in with him. Caleb repeatedly slipping his mother’s Trazodone into my tea so he could have his way with me until I caught on. Mike even knew that I risked so much just to talk to him through Messenger, knowing damn well Caleb would beat the shit out of me if he knew I was still talking to a male friend. But none of that mattered, I guess.

So did this matter? Did the pit that was forming in my stomach as I stared at the paper towel deathbed matter? Did the coagulated puke and blood mixture on Mike’s stomach matter? Did the months of torture that Mike’s body did to my mind matter? 

Everything still felt so heavy and my knees began to shake. I lowered myself to the floor, the freezing tile against the heel of my hand forcing me into a shiver. The centers of semi-bloomed sunflowers, brown like dirt, were like the pits of Mike’s empty pupils. The deep red of thorned roses just looked like more blood to me. But then the delicate, curved petals of the pink lilies were dirty, I noticed. There was pollen on them. Thick, fuzzy, brown clumps of pollen. Would flowers choose their pollinators if they could? Do all flowers even want to be pollinated at all? What if some flowers wanted to remain pure? 

You’re sick, Mike. I listened to you bitch about your now ex-wife and how you resented her for everything. I made you a homemade pizza bagel while you cried on my couch. I brushed off the kiss at the bar as a drunken mistake so that our friendship would remain the same. But you took advantage of it all. You still stayed after I told you I was tired. You still pinned me down after I told you to stop. You still pollinated me after I told you no. You were supposed to be different. You were supposed to be my friend. Just my friend. You were supposed to support me. You were supposed to care about me. But here you were, just like Caleb. Just the same. The lake would love to decompose your manhood. 

I could dump him in the lake. It was a thirty minute drive from the shop and surely no one would be there late at night. The road that led up to the kayak port would be pitch black and no one would see anything, not even the deer, not even the coyotes. I could tie him to a box of vases to weigh him down. This could work. I could do it hours after the shop closed, shove him into my trunk, wait until the last boat left the port, and I would push him into the water. It would be so easy. He just had to survive a day in the fridge. 

Maybe “survive” is the wrong word. 

For some reason, tears were falling down my face as I filled up the bucket. I watched the bubbles rise to the top through the blur. Would Mike’s mom be more heartbroken to find out that her son was dead, or that her son was a rapist? 

***

From what I could see through the dark, there was still somewhat of a stain lurking in the cloth of the passenger seat, but I had done as much scrubbing as I could. Maybe it could pass as the remains of a coffee spilled at a yellow light. To be safe, I put my extra sweater from my trunk over the seat. I would be good until I could get my hands on a rental steam cleaner. I tucked the knife into a stack of Culver’s napkins from my glove compartment and shoved it under the seat. I dumped the extra soap water onto the pavement where Mike’s blood was seeping into the cracks. 

I wiped the floors, first soaking up as much blood as I could with reusable rags that would now live in the trash, then with a mop that was now red and brown. When I finished mopping, the clock on the wall read a quarter past 4am. I let out a sigh. A sleepless night was nothing new, but this was the first time I’d had an all-nighter in the shop. Besides Christmas, I’d come close to it when I helped Mom during Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day for the last couple of years of her life, but Dad would always take me home before midnight. “C’mon, Bella, it’s getting late. Mom can meet us back at home.”

I wasn’t ready to smell death. Nor was I ready for Mateo to smell it, either. I had no idea how soon Mike’s body would start to smell, but I had an idea on how to be prepared for it. Back into the supply closet I went, out with a bottle of fresh linen Febreze I came. By the time I had sprayed down the entire shop, back and front, and entire fridge, my wrist ached and throbbed. Every breath for the next few minutes had to be shallow or else I would erupt into a coughing fit as the spray arrested my lungs. 

There’s no reason Mateo would go in the fridge, absolutely no reason. 

Mike needed to die so I could sleep.

No one would notice the blood stains in my car.

The fresh linen scent would drown out the smell of death.

I would finally be able to put the sheets back on my bed.

Mike’s body would sink to the bottom of the lake tomorrow.

These were the things I told myself over, and over, and over again as I paced around the shop for an hour. I stuffed my bloodstained coat into the supply closet and my t-shirt underneath had luckily dodged all of the carnage. My jeans were black, so any blood on them was well hidden. Hopefully the blood would come out of the leather. Dad would be mad that I ruined his coat, even if he would never see it again.

As the sun started rising, I started humming, and then singing, and then belting as an attempt to push out the anxiety, but my heart just kept rushing. No song, not Toxic, not Rock your Body, not even No Scrubs could get my palms to stop sweating. At one point, I even took out the boombox and switched it to its radio setting. I spun in circles, kicked my feet, waved my arms. I thought that forcing myself to dance would shake all of the anxiety out of me, but it only made me panic even more. I was getting weak from hunger, but there was no way any amount of food would stay down, let alone make it into my mouth. 

The shoe. My blood rushed past my eardrums and my forehead grew warm. The fucking shoe. It was still over by the fridge door, right where it had slipped off of Mike’s foot. Oh, fuck.

I rushed from my work station to the fridge and grabbed it, the black shoelace vibrating as my trembling hand held it up. It was worn out, the sole almost completely flattened and the black mesh torn. There were some dark spots on it, could’ve been blood, could’ve been something else. But it couldn’t live here. “Whose shoe is that?” 

Gritting my teeth, I pushed open the fridge door. I immediately looked at his feet, dodging any view of his face. His middle toe still stuck out, though the skin had become blue. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. He really was dead. 

I slid his shoe onto the top of his foot, laying to rest his ridiculous sock. But when I went to tuck his heel into the bottom, his foot barely moved. His leg was stiff. It was like trying to bend a tree trunk and I felt sick again. 

But it had to go on. So I pushed. And pushed. And pushed, and pushed, and pushed—

Each shove was harder than the last, my hair dangling in front of my face as I sped up. The shoe had to go on. It just had to. I kept pushing, my brain wouldn’t let me stop and I lost count of how many times I did it. Again and again, Mike’s leg was too stiff, the shoe was too tight, my eyes blurred with more tears, and my arms wouldn’t give up. Maybe I made a mistake. This was the one thing I could fix right now. 

Until I couldn’t. The tears just kept running down my face and soon I was coughing, hacking, even. My choking grew so intense that my arms were forced to stop and I leaned back on my knees, defeated. I sobbed into my freezing cold hands. The inside of my brain was a garbled mess. I blinked a few times, imagining this was all just a dream. How badly I wanted it all to be a dream. The suffocation, the stabbing, the kiss, the nightmares, the flashbacks, the assault, everything. I wanted so badly to wake up from it all. I let the shoe dangle off of his toes.

***

The clock eventually read a quarter till 8. I stank from sweat, though the Febreze was doing a good job covering everything else up as far as I could tell. I tried not to think about what was happening to Mike’s body in the fridge, but I couldn’t help but imagine the pools of blood and the whites of his eyes every few minutes when my mind would wander from the radio. According to the clipboard, there were 10 deliveries going out this morning, meaning there were 10 arrangements in the fridge that I had to take out and load into the van. That meant I had to go in and out of the fridge at least 4 or 5 times, which meant I had to literally turn my nose up to avoid catching a glimpse of Mike. He wouldn’t be in my direct line of sight, as he was in the corner opposite the shelves that held today’s deliveries, but how tempting would it be to just look over, really quick? 

First round of retrieving the arrangements from the fridge was successful. I managed to keep my gaze on the flowers and only the flowers. A pink vase with a blue and red arrangement inside and an all white wrapped bouquet, done and loaded. Check. 

Second round was a bit harder. I struggled trying to grab 3 vases at a time, and as my hand wrestled with the condensation on one of the vases, my eyes so badly wanted to look over at Mike in the corner. I held strong though. 

Third and fourth were fine. It was the fifth one where I finally slipped up. The only thing left to load in the van was a funeral spray easel. I always struggled with those—they were a foot taller than me and weighed around 20lbs, and one wrong move and the entire arrangement would fall right off of the easel. I latched onto the back of the easel with both hands as I normally did and began side-stepping out of the fridge, balancing the peak of the easel on my thumb to keep it intact. I felt my heel bump against a bucket and I looked down to correct my footing, but on the way down, my eyes met the now blue hands of Mike’s body that had almost completely soaked through his makeshift deathbed. 

I stumbled. Trying to rush out of the fridge in reignited fear only caused me to trip over my own feet, knock the bucket over, and land in a growing puddle of ice cold water. The entire spray arrangement—about the length of my whole body—fell on top of me, squishing me further onto toppled-over Snapdragon stems. The arrangement obstructed my view of Mike, giving me a moment of relief. 

“Miss Bella, are you okay?”

Oh, fuck. Mateo must’ve just come into the shop. 

“I’m fine!” I shouted back. “Just dropped something! I got it!” If there was a window on the fridge, I’m sure he would’ve looked in and sprung into action. Mateo was so kind and helpful and a bit softer than other college boys his age, and I hoped he would stay that way. How horrid would it be for him to end up acting like Mike or Caleb. 

I pushed the arrangement off of myself and scurried back onto my feet as quickly as I could, ignoring the water that was now all over my jeans. I would certainly bruise later on. 

I dragged the arrangement out of the fridge and shut the door behind me with my foot as soon as I got out. I looked around the corner towards the front desk and Mateo was drawing his route out on his map, the clipboard of addresses in his other hand. He looked back at me with a smile on the half of his face that I could see. 

“Good morning, Mateo!” I yelled. “This is the last arrangement I’ve got for you this morning!”

He stood up before half-jogging towards me through the work area. “Let me carry that, Miss Bella! I can load it up myself!” Mateo grabbed the arrangement out of my hands before I could reply. I couldn’t tell if it was from the water or the sweat on my hands, but my fingertips had begun to prune up. 

“Oh, okay, thank you,” I muttered as I watched him effortlessly swoop the arrangement to the back door. I scanned the floor for any sign of blood despite knowing I had cleaned up every last drop, and the only dirty spots I could see were new smudges of mud from Mateo’s Converse as he made his way to the back door. I tried to take a deep breath, but I choked. 

There was less than a second for me to recenter myself before the bell of the front door dinged. I looked over at the clock, and it was 8am sharp. Whoever just came in must’ve been waiting outside for us to open up. I appreciated Mateo’s promptness and work ethic, but it would’ve been nice—just today—if he’d forgotten to unlock the front door. Maybe a lack of walk-in customers would’ve given me a chance to get my thoughts straight. 

I could’ve fainted. There’s no fucking way, I thought. There’s no fucking way a police officer just walked into my shop. Oh my god. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I completely forgot how to act normal. Where was I supposed to put my hands? Should I lean on one hip to look relaxed? Should I smile with teeth or no teeth? 

“Hi there!” I greeted him. Was that too loud? Did I sound weird?

The officer smiled back at me. “Hey, good morning.” His nametag read “Officer Herrera,” and the shininess of his badge could have blinded me. His crows feet nearly pushed his eyes closed as he smiled, his teeth straight and nearly perfect. “Hopefully you can help me with something.”

“Oh, uhh, yeah, for sure, I can help! What can I help you with?” That definitely sounded weird. I folded my arms in an attempt to get my hands to stop shaking. I hadn’t looked in a mirror in hours, so I could only pray that I didn’t look like a maniac. Hopefully there wasn’t any blood on my face. Or in my hair. Or anywhere for that matter. 

Officer Herrera put a finger to his chin and furrowed his brow. “Well…” he started before humming a Hmm… His eyes darted from up to the right, then down at me, then back up to the left, then down to the table. Whatever he was about to say, I could tell he didn’t want to do it. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it.

“You’re a woman, surely you’ll have an answer for me,” he said. 

What? My stomach couldn’t decide if I was still scared or not. I tilted my head as the officer continued talking. 

“If you and your husband got into a fight, what kind of flowers would you like? You know, like, as an apology?” His eyes finally stopped moving around and settled on me. 

I let out a quick sigh. Okay, I can work with this. I didn’t have a husband, but I could humor him. “Maybe some classic roses?” I threw in a small chuckle and a smile. My knees unlocked themselves with what I only assumed was some form of relief. 

“That’s what I was thinking, too. Red? Or is that too corny?”

The reality of what he had said moments before was now kicking me in the stomach, making the remaining bile bubble. Wait. A fight? I thought back to Caleb and I. The sting of his palm against my shoulder while I cooked the “wrong” thing for dinner, the new bangs I cut on myself to hide my first black eye, the way his fingers dug into my trachea while he called me a lying cunt. 

I guess I didn’t reply fast enough because he added, “What do you think? What’s your womanly opinion?” At first I just stared at him, the word “fight,” ringing in my head. I looked at him, his smile still plastered across his guilty face as if this was just another day. How despicable. How do you have it in your chest to hurt someone you love and smile about it the next day? How are you okay with hurting someone you love at all? How does your body allow you to override everything and hurt someone you claim to love? And why are you in front of me, me of all people? 

“You want my ‘womanly’ opinion?” air-quotes on “womanly.” “My ‘womanly’ opinion is that maybe a man shouldn’t hit me!”

The officer raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I—”

“My ‘womanly’ opinion is that no amount of roses, red or not, will fix the fear or the pain of being hit by someone you love! There’s nothing in this world that can repair that! Once the trust is broken, everything is broken! Never again can you claim to love her. There is no love or care in pain! Absolutely none!” Words came tumbling out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop, but I was barely even aware that I had started. I just kept going. The world swirled again, all I saw was a blur of nothingness—the cop was gone, I wasn’t standing in the shop anymore, the smell of Frebreze wasn’t in my lungs. In front of me were Caleb and Mike, their faces distorted as I screamed at them. “You’ll never understand! You can’t just do that to people!”

“Hey, hey, let’s calm down,” Officer Herrera said sternly, snapping me out of whatever I was drowning in. “Okay? There’s no need to be hostile here. I can take my business elsewhere.”

I looked back up at him as I came to. “I’m…I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.” My entire body was shaking now and I leaned against the desk, nearly pushing the register over with my chest. “Umm…Let’s find you some roses. Women like the pink and red ones.” I reached down and pulled out the plastic 3-ring binder of arrangements, a comprehensive guide that my mom had written and I had eventually added pictures to—Disposable camera photos printed at Dominick’s. 

The back door thumped shut as Mateo came back inside to grab his map and clipboard. “Hey, Miss Bella?” he called from the back. I turned to see Mateo holding up a blue lunchbox in one hand, the other hand on the fridge door. “Don’t let me forget I put my lunch in the fridge. My ma made me a sandwich for once!”

“No! Mateo!” I shouted, my feet carrying me to the back with an intense power walk. “Fucking, no!” 

He’d already opened the fridge door before I could stop him properly. I didn’t even have enough time to pray or hope that Mateo would somehow overlook Mike’s body before the color faded from his face. He stood there, his eyes wide, his knuckles growing white around the handle of his lunchbox. No amount of blinking was going to wake me up, no matter how hard I smashed my eyelids together. 

“Mateo, look at me,” I pleaded as I stopped next to him. “I promise everything’s okay.”

His head whipped towards mine, his eyebrow raised. “Huh?”

“I…I don’t know what to tell you,” I started. “Just—Just don’t say anything until this officer leaves.”

Mateo shook his head. “What? What are you talking about?” 

“That?!” I pointed into the fridge before noticing that my finger led to nothing. The only thing at my fingertip was a person-sized gap covered with dead baby’s breath and severed zip ties. 

“The…the floor? If you think that’s messy, you should see my dorm room.”

“Wh…What?” was all I could mutter before pushing past Mateo and wandering into the fridge. Mike wasn’t there. There was no blood, there were no paper towels, there were no crumpled bouquet wraps harnessing last breaths. Just flowers. 

I turned my head, scanning every corner just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. But no, everything was in its place. It was like nothing had happened. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mateo asked, setting his lunchbox down on the empty shelf closest to the door. 

I didn’t know. Was I okay, was anything okay? I stepped around and out of the fridge, Mateo following me to the front with concern. My legs shook as I struggled to walk and I leaned all of my weight on the counter before making eye contact with the officer again. I began to fight off the haziness in my head, but the world began to swirl one last time. The ground opened underneath me and I began to fall.

There I was, on the floor of my late mom’s flower shop, Mateo panicking, the officer calling for medic, and my hands somehow clean despite my own blood on them. I blinked, but instead of waking up, my eyes stayed closed. I wondered where Mike was, and as my body grew faint and the muffled police radio dimmed, I still hoped he was dead.