#also wanted to reupload it because out of self consciousness I changed Gal's name the first time I posted it

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

Bloom From Nowhere

The town that contained them for 21 years had become too small for them. When they'd graduated high school, arms linked in promise, they told everyone they were getting out of this one-story town. They feared, after a few years of working and saving up as much as they could, that maybe they had been lying; really, they were just waiting for the perfect, hurried moment. Nothing was more motivating than procrastination. It was about time they moved on.

Rosenda packed in a flurry, excitement and anxiety beating wildly in her chest as she threw necessities into a positively ancient suitcase she found at the bottom of the hall closet. She carefully folded and packed her favorite shirts: a green and blue striped top that fell from her shoulders toward the center of her chest, a crimson rayon top with ruffles from the neck to the bottom of her bust and a keyhole opening that showed off her modest cleavage, as well as her beloved Lord of the Rings quote t-shirt and a modified tie-dye t-shirt she got from Forever 21 that read “California Dreamin'” in a stitched Coca-Cola-style font. She added her comfiest pairs of jeans (two – light wash and black), a pair of brown capris, and a pair of denim cut-offs. A dress made it in there, too – a flowy turquoise summer dress that she saw on sale last summer and had to resist wearing it every day – and some jewelry, makeup, socks and underwear and a pair of tan-colored flip flops. If she needed anything else, she figured, she'd ask her mother to send it along once she was settled somewhere – after her mother started speaking to her again, of course.

Only a few hours earlier they'd determined that they would leave, so with what little time was left, she drove straight to the bank and withdrew all of her savings. The weight of the cash in her wallet that would only fit in her back pocket seemed heavier than she’d been expecting as she walked to her car, her phone in hand. She seemed to be waiting for a call, but why, she couldn’t tell – her plans with Gal were made already and they agreed to pack separately and meet up later. As she got into her silver 2004 Honda Civic (a car that she inherited from her mother, and besides that felt history, would not miss) and dropped her phone into the empty passenger seat, she felt the semblance of safety fall away. Every familiar red light she met on her way home looked like the call she was inexplicably waiting for, but once she pulled into the driveway, the expectation seemed far away.

Back in her room, she picked through her desk drawers for things she thought she might miss – photobooth strips of her with Gal and a couple of her high school friends, a lucky blue mechanical pencil she lost in high school more times than she could count that always managed to find its way back to her, a few small journals, and a homemade deck of Lord of the Rings themed playing cards that her middle school friend Liza made her one year for Christmas. She packed them, along with electronics and appropriate chargers and wires, into an extra travel bag where she packed the last important pieces of her future: drawing utensils, her most-used box of oil pastels, a newer set of paints, and three pads of drawing paper. Then, sitting on the edge of her bed leaning over her nightstand, she scribbled a note to her mother.

It’s been time for a while, hasn’t it? Even though I know how much you worry about me, I know you just want me to be happy. Bueno, gracias por eso. But take care of yourself, sí? Tú también mereces la felicidad. I'll be with Galia (who else?), so try not to worry about me too much. I know you trust her even though you'd like her to think you don't. We know you do, though. I’ll be okay. I’ll call you when I get somewhere new and beautiful. You understand, ¿a que sí? Te quiero tanto — Rosenda

Once she smoothed down her blankets again, she propped the note up against her pillow and stared at it for a few minutes. The blank edges of the note gave her something to focus on beyond everything that she was leaving behind in her childhood bedroom. When her eyes accidentally flicked upward, her gaze fell upon the yellow and black flag hanging above her bed that she’d rested her post-high school dreams on. She quickly looked away and sighed. 'Perhaps hope only blooms from out of nowhere and doesn’t grow from whatever you hang on the wall,' she deduced as her phone lit up with a text from Gal. I’m outside. That was why she’d never hung any photos of her with Gal on the wall. She wanted the unknown future to stay unknown for as long as possible.

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As soon as she throws her suitcase and bag into the trunk of the navy 2008 Subaru Outback and hops into the passenger seat, she looks over at Gal in the driver’s seat and finds herself staring.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” she finally says.

Gal scoffs.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” She picks at the thin threads holding on at the edge of a hole in the left knee of her jeans. “I just thought…like, it’d be a bigger deal or something.”

“Oh, this isn’t a big enough deal for you? Want me to honk the horn as I drive down the street, make people come out and see what all the fuss is about as we wave at them like princesses?”

“No!” she cries, and then immediately laughs. “I just meant…I don’t know. Does it feel like a big deal to you?”

Gal shrugs.

“Sort of.” In Gal-speak, Rose knows that means, Yes, absolutely, and I’m terrified and I’m not going to talk about it.

She glances at the phone in Gal’s hand, the bright screen glowing in the dimming cab as the outside light swiftly grows darker.

“I made a road trip playlist before I left, though.”

“Oooooh,” Rose says with genuine interest.

“Fuck yeah. We’re ready, babe.”

As they pull away from the curb of her childhood home, she chews on her lip. Passing by the quiet houses that line her block, lingering on the illuminated outdoor lights hanging beside front doors, she tries not to think about how they will change, how neighbors will move away and be replaced by new ones that her mother will have to adjust to or try hard to ignore. She looks over at Gal whose pale face is cast in a garish orange glow by the overhead street lights and she wonders, but doesn’t want to know yet, how they will change.

After a few hours of idle chatting – nothing deeper than what they did earlier today – and singing along loudly to their playlist, they pull into a quiet AM-PM gas station. As she watches Gal, standing tall with her eyes forward but her gaze faraway, fill the gas tank, she suddenly realizes what would make this seem more important. She pops the trunk and scrambles out of the car. Gal looks at her with furrowed eyebrows but says nothing, and Rose offers no verbal explanation as she grabs her suitcase and opens it, sifting through the clothes she hastily packed. Finally, she finds what she thought was a random dress she’d stuffed into the slightly emptier side of the suitcase and places it carefully over her left arm. Closing the suitcase and then shutting the trunk door, she gives Gal a smile and tells her that she’s going to the bathroom and will be back in a minute. Gal raises an eyebrow at the garment slung over her arm but nods and goes back to the arduous task of pumping gas and sort-of-not-really paying attention to her surroundings – they’re alone in the station, but who knows for how long.

When she walks into the store, she offers the too-tired-or-too-awake white cashier a smile and asks for the bathroom key. The strawberry blond man who looks to be in his 30s sighs and picks the key up off a tack in the wall at the end of the counter and hands it to her, gesturing toward the back of the store. She marches through the side aisle and then down a small hallway that ends with the plain-looking hefty green bathroom door. Once she opens the door, she wrinkles her nose at the soapy smell that seems to be trying to mask the torrent of years-old scents of bodily functions. The brown tile floor looks clean enough, but the once-white walls seem suspiciously grey, and she tries to ignore anything that looks remotely like a stain smeared on the wall.

Closing the door and placing the key on the edge of the sink, she drapes the dress over her shoulders and slips off a boot to remove her jeans. She’s barefoot, but they should stop into a hotel at some point later so they can shower. Removing her other boot, she then shimmies out of her jeans, conscious of the sound of denim sliding together down her legs and bunching around her ankles. She pulls them off and folds them up, setting them on the edge of the sink. Next, she pulls her shirt off over head and folds it and places it on top of her jeans, then steps into the dress and pulls it up to her chest and shoves her arms into the straps. After adjusting her bra not to poke out so noticeably above the cups of the dress, she finally looks in the mirror and notices the way the bust of the dress seems to stretch and she raises her eyebrows – her boobs have grown since she last wore this dress. She half turns and notices the way the gown’s soft polyester material curves over her rear and cascades down past her calves – at least it seems to fit better than the last time she wore it. When she turns around again and looks at her reflection straight-on, she sighs and suddenly feels shy. She remembers she has to walk back to the front of the store and return the bathroom key to the cashier, and what if there are other customers wandering around, just waiting to judge the other oddballs stopping in at gas stations at 1 o’clock in the morning?

Suddenly, she hears Gal’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Hey Rose, can you hurry it up in there? I wanna get back on the road.”

She pauses, looking at herself anxiously in the mirror and makes sure her mascara hasn’t run to her knees, and then begins to gather up her clothes.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m done.” She grabs the key off the edge of the sink and opens the door quickly to see Gal standing in front of her, waiting. When Gal notices the change in attire, her eyes widen.

“Is this what you meant by ‘a big deal’?” she asks.

Rose blushes.

“I feel silly, actually.” She’s still standing on the ground in her bare feet and she just remembers to grab her boots as well.

“Well…you look-” Gal pauses, apparently searching for some grand adjective to describe the woman before her, of Rose’s tan skin flushing under her stare and limber body draped in a vermilion gown, “-amazing.”

The word isn’t enough, but Rose recognizes the breathless way Gal ends her sentence and knows what she means. She smiles and hands Gal the key and adjusts her clothes in her arms and carefully holds her boots between her fingers on one hand.

They stand there for a minute, Gal admiring her, before Rose clears her throat and shifts her feet.

“Ready?”

Gal shakes her head, as though shaking herself out of a trance, and nods. Before turning around to leave the store, she smiles at Rose who returns the gesture.

As the two walk together through the store, Rose feels all anxiety regarding the trip fall away. Even as she walks barefoot in an evening gown through a random AM-PM store at 1AM clutching her discarded outfit, the presence of Gal beside her makes her feel light. She smiles again at the cashier as Gal drops the key onto the counter and nods goodbye to him and they leave the store, walking across the gas station parking lot to the Subaru on the other side of the gas pumps.

Gal rushes over to the driver’s side of the car so she can unlock the door for them, and as soon as she presses the button on the inside of the door, Rose reaches the passenger side door and pulls it open, a faint smile still present at the corners of her lips. She throws her discarded outfit and boots into the backseat and steps into the car, the material of her dress gathered by hand and tucked under her thighs. Once she closes the door, she looks over at Gal who is staring at her.

“What?” she asks self-consciously.

Gal keeps staring for a few seconds before she looks away into her lap.

“Nothing.” When she looks up again at Rose who is now staring at her, she laughs and shakes her head, grinning.

“You’re just-”

“’Too much’?” Rose asks, quoting her from years of knowing each other.

Gal pauses and her smile slackens a little bit.

“No. You’re beautiful and I just feel too lucky to be here with you right now.”

Rose feels her blood thrum quicker in her veins and she glances at their surroundings for a second.

“In this gas station?”

Gal laughs, and she watches the way Gal’s roomy mouth opens wide at the corners and reveals all the gaps between her straight teeth. She remembers when Gal confided in her that she hated her teeth, though she recognized how privileged she was that her teeth were taken such good care of in the first place. They were too straight, according to Gal – ‘Totally unlike me,’ as she’d put it with a wry smile. Rose meant to bat her on the arm for saying that, but instead she’d grazed her skin with her fingertips and watched the goosebumps rise on Gal’s arm in their wake. She enjoyed that reaction as much as she enjoys Gal’s laugh, so she smiles even as Gal’s laughter fades.

“I love you,” Gal says after a few seconds of silence, wearing a matching smile.

Rose reaches over to tuck Gal’s short dark hair behind her ear.

“That’s why I’m here,” she says. They stare at each other for a minute, Gal blinking in gratitude or awe, and then Rose eventually seems to zone out, away from them as they sit there though her eyes remain glued to a small, unassuming mole resting on Gal’s chin.

Even once Gal finally looks away and turns the key in the ignition, Rose continues to stare, only now at Gal’s cheek where a few more small, inconspicuous brown dots adorn her skin. Perhaps there is nothing more she wants to know then what is already there. Still, as Gal guides the Subaru away from the gas station and back onto the road, they move on.

#my writing #creative writing #original characters #wlw #realistic fiction #short story #y'all might remember this story actually. I'm reuploading it because I got inspired to improve it a little #I think (hope) I improved the Spanglish this time around. LOL #also wanted to reupload it because out of self consciousness I changed Gal's name the first time I posted it #but Gal was always her name to me when I first wrote this so I wanted to retain that instead of change it #anyway I might work on this again and give it more of a purpose some time. who knows. (not me!)