Page 1 of Dahlia Made A List

Chapter One

Dahlia

Icurleddeeperintothe plush rattan egg chair and refreshed my phone’s messaging app for the nine hundredth time. No dots, not even left on read. Just out there in the world, ignored.

Where are you?

Texted to my boyfriend. Five hours old and still no response.

Jaw tight, I shifted for a more comfortable position in my chair, and craved a redo. As a kid, we could holler out 'Do over!' and get things right the second time around. Crying shame the same couldn't apply to adult situations like relationships, jobs, and picking the right balcony lounger.

I sighed and wiggled into a new spot. Who sold a rattan egg-shaped chair and didn’t put a cushion along the back? How could I curl up into a ball of misery if only my asscheeks had any cushioning?

I swiped down yet again on my phone, the last message still my own, shining out at me in a digital ‘I told you so’ glare. Maybe another girlfriend would be in a panic by now. Calling the nearest hospital, visiting her boyfriend’s favorite hang-out spots. Maybe they’d be worried out of their minds that something terrible had befallen the man they’d chosen to call theirs.

But not me. Nope.

Because my boyfriend just decided to sleep in another woman’s bed last night.

I’d known two days ago something was coming. I recognized the signs of change. But did I say anything when he avoided meeting my eyes? Did I question him when he played on his phone instead of talking to me on the couch? Or tearfully beg him to . . . I don’t know what other people might have done, but I just didn’t have the will to beg someone for their time and attention, for their loyalty and commitment.

Not any more.

My store-bought afghan slid from my legs to the floor, leaving my pink fuzzy-socked feet crossed on the balustrade of the balcony, exposed to the chill March morning air. March in Virginia meant I was freezing my ass off out here but I couldn’t sleep, and no way was I lying awake in that bed while myex-boyfriend banged it up between some other woman’s sheets.

Dragging the blanket from the cold floor and wrapping it over my head and around my shoulders like some sort of morbid shroud, I shuffled into the warmth of my second-floor apartment.

Fingers white-tight around my phone, I mentally started a list of things to do. One, turn off my phone. If Brandon called now it was too damn late, and I didn’t plan on listening to whatever story he’d try to feed me. Two, decontaminate my place of all the crap he’d moved in over the last month. Three, use the new doorknob and deadbolt I’d picked up two days ago when the idea hit me that Brandon might not be as into commitment as a girl might wish.

Not my first rodeo.

And, last on the list, get to work. Get to the salon where I could focus on fulfilling my clients’ imaginings for the perfect hair. Like a succubus, I would feed off their happiness and forget the pathetic state of my romantic life.

I powered off my phone and set it on the dresser. Sometime between my last text to him at two in the morning and before the sun cracked the dawn sky, I’d filled a box with his crap from the bedroom closet.

Shortly after that, I’d plucked his copy ofThe Brewer’s Biblefrom atop the built-in shelves, along with a plastic bag of bottle caps and a glass dish of odds and ends I had no idea why he saved and just looked like junk to me. My arms loaded up fast, but luckily, he had a canvas storage bin holding his game console, controller and stupid games. I piled everything I held on top. His tablet, some drawing gizmo and assorted other electronics followed with a clatter in the stark quiet of the apartment.

If my fingers trembled and my vision turned blurry as I stripped my home of every sign of cohabitation, I powered on. Letting Brandon move in last month was a bad decision in a long list of bad decisions, and the nausea teasing the back of my throat was the cost I would pay. Shouldn’t be a surprise, really. I blinked until my eyes cleared and the sick feeling passed, and shoved his shave kit on top of the game controller.

In the bedroom, I heaved his bin onto my bedazzled secondhand dresser and checked the time. Ms. Minerva Conway had her weekly set and style in two hours, and I still needed to change the lock, get my shower and walk the six blocks to the salon. I didn’t have time to be delicate, and the jerk didn’t deserve my consideration. He wanted to break up with me? Have the balls to say so. Have the decency to end things before finding another bed to sleep in.

The fire reignited in my belly, I stomped over to the pretty French doors that opened up to the balcony over the porch of the first-floor apartment. The same balcony where I’d sat up all night, the realization that Brandon thought so little of me, he couldn’t even be bothered to let me know we were done. I heaved the bin over the balustrade. No reason I should be stuck with hauling his junk down the long staircase along the side of the house. The box crashed into the bushes below with a satisfyingwhomp.

Crap. What was my landlord gonna say about his crushed azaleas? I’d never been late with a month’s rent, so maybe I’d built up some leeway?

A problem for another moment. Not this one. No, I was too busy surviving this moment and this moment was all about cleaning house and moving on.

And maybe thinking about making some changes. What had I moved away from Richland for, if I wasn’t going to change? My heart did a little twist in my chest. The kind that came when you’d waited in line for the biggest roller coaster in the South only to second guess the idea of riding it when the attendant buckled you in. The kind that had you anticipating an exciting adventure as easily as a reckless catastrophe.

I heaved his shirts and clothes and all his stupid,stupidhipster gear over the banister. They fluttered in the wind before sailing down to decorate the bushes and the tiny patch of grass between the house and sidewalk like a frat party a keg short.

When Brandon finally did show up and found his junk festooning the manicured front walk, he would lose his mind. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked hard. I’d moved to Weston Mill for a reason. And Brandon wasn’t it.

Over the next hour, I changed out the doorknob and deadbolt, showered and blew out my hair, and dressed for the day. I tossed a pair of salmon pink heels in my bag and headed out the door in a pair of Converse that wrecked my look but didn’t light my heels on fire.

My brain whirred, a welcome humming undercurrent that blocked all thought of Brandon and what would happen when he made it back to the apartment. The idea of confrontation added a spike of anxiety to the buzz in my brain, but I shied away from thinking about a showdown right now. Better to move on with my day. Pretend things were normal for as long as I could. Pretend I hadn’t screwed up yet again.

I made the trek along Main Street to the salon just as I had for the last six months. Blue and silver banners decorated the street lights lining the road. Renegade colors. I’d moved from Renegade Central over in Richland, to Renegade HQ here in Three Corners. The owner of the ice hockey team lived on the other side of Mapleton Creek and if he wanted team colors dangling from the light posts, the team colors would dangle from the light posts. I’d learned early on what the Pendleton family wanted, the Pendleton family got.

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