Page 8 of Bloom and Burn
I find myself first. With my fake glasses (which I thought were super cool at the time), slightly too long hair and goofy smile, freshman me looks nothing like I do now. The last couple of years were such a massive glow up for me that unless we were really close back in my school days, you’d never recognize me.
Flipping through the pages invites all kinds of memories, some fond, some less so. I come across Jack toward the middle of the album. The photo is from a sports day I think, because he’s wearing a uniform. There is a girl next to him, and it takes me a while to recognize her as his younger sister, Emily. I never knew her personally, even though we were in the same year. With her pretty blue eyes and black hair, she was the most popular girl in school, but the majority of the guys were scared to approach her because her brother hung out with the bullies.
I shift my attention back to Jack. Like me, he sports long hair. It gives him a rockstar vibe which I totally loved back then. Now, it’s way shorter, styled too, and it really suits him, showcasing his chiseled jaw and masculine features.
I guess we both did a lot of growing up, me more so than him. It explains why he didn’t recognize me. We were never friends, so he never knew me. At most, I was a momentary blip on his radar and only because the guys he hung out with liked to pick on me.
After a few more moments of reliving my high school days, I return back to wondering why he’s in town. I never looked him up after he moved, so I know nothing about him or his sister, which means… It’s time to stalk the hot guy on social media.
I pull out my phone and load the apps menu. Then I come up short—all my accounts are deactivated. Oh, fuck. I forgot I was in the middle of an internet detox! I’ve got about three or four days left before I am allowed to emerge from the Middle Ages, and as much as I want to just say ‘fuck it’, I decide that it’s better for my personal growth to resist. Since I launched my ‘Gardening with Ryan’ channels in an attempt to find like-minded people, sometimes I tend to get a little obsessed with checking likes and comments. It messes up my sleep too, so I decided I needed an intervention.
Another half an hour passes before I move on from speculation about Jack and Emily. My brain is suddenly exhausted, so I take a quick shower before I return to my rooftop gardening book. I take a bunch of notes which I organize in the document where I plan my blog entries and videos. When I’m done, the clock shows three a.m.
“Oh, shit, not again.”
I close everything and slip under the covers of my bed. But sleep doesn’t come easy as memories from high school invade my head. Most of them have this fuzzy quality about them, but a few are clear, as if I have been transported back into the past. Like that time when Benand Greg—the two biggest bullies who started the whole thing—took my plant encyclopedia and drew on the pages with crayons. I cried then.
Was Jack there at the time? I think so, but somehow I can’t remember if he was with them when they ruined my book. He… usually hovered around them without actively participating in the bullying…
I roll to the side and gaze at the dark sky outside my window. So I guess he didn’t actually like that part. He probably just wanted to fit in, so he didn’t end up being on the receiving end of the teasing like I did. Can’t really blame him for it, I suppose. Sure, it would’ve been nice if he stood up for me and defended my honor in front of everyone, but, well, we’d only gotten to talk a few times before he decided he wanted to be part of the cool kids’ club, so he didn’t really know yet at the time how awesome I was.
As I finally start to drift off, I find myself hoping that even if Jack didn’t stand up for me, he did for someone else. I have no idea what happened to him when he moved away, but I know one thing—the Jack Keller with his lopsided smile and charming wit that I met today could only be here if the bully-wanna-be Jack Keller from back then got his shit together and stopped trying to impress assholes.
A smile lifts my lips as I close my eyes. Could that really be the case? Did he change after he left Estacada? Did he choose to be good and not bad?
Giddiness spreads outward from my chest, filling my stomach with butterflies.
I can see it.Shit. That’s gotta be what happened. He had a redemption arc in some way or another. Damn, it’s a real shame that I’ll likely never see him again then, butwell, on the off-chance that I do, he better be ready for me because my crush on him is reignited.
4
Jack
Iwakeupwitha boner, right when my erotic dream involving a certain flower shop owner was about to get good. The smell of pancakes and bacon wafting through my bedroom’sopendoor—Emily’s doing, no doubt—softens the blow somewhat, but I’m still grumpy as fuck when I get my ass downstairs at the ungodly hour of six-thirty in the morning.
“Good morning, dear brother. I made you breakfast,” Emily chirps with a beaming grin, bowing her head. I am sure that if she still could use her legs, she’d be curtsying, too.
“You are evil. And I am never arguing with you again about the specifics of imaginary spaceflight.”
How we got there is a whole other deal, but let’s say that corrupt governments in mafia mysteries require drastic measures to take out.
She laughs. It’s open and loud and it brings a smile to my face, too. I sit at the marble dining table and watch her as she brings over the pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. It’s not until I’ve made a mess of myself that I realize I’ve put my hoodie on inside-out.Oh man.Sticky on the outside I can deal with, but sticky on the inside? This calls for the washing machine.
Emily laughs and stuffs more pancakes into her mouth.
“So, what’s the plan for today? Other than waking me up at an ungodly early hour?”
She taps her fingers along the streak of dark gray that zigzags through the lighter marble pattern and observes me as I take off my hoodie, scrub the syrup off it with a wet towel and put it on again, this time the right way on. “You contacted the legal team already, didn’t you?”
“Drafting the contracts as we speak.”
“That puts us at fifty percent ownership, then.”
“I plan to get the preliminary agreements with the café and flower shop today. I don’t… think there will be any issues.”
That’s not quite the truth, but I do hope things will go smoothly. The café owner shouldn’t be an issue, and Ryan seemed like a nice guy. He’s the youngest among all the owners, and I loved the spark of excitement in his pretty eyes when he talked about the flowers, but my research on him is the most lacking since I was expecting his mom. It’s fine. I’m sure he will understand once I explain what I want to do with that plot. Most people do, even if their distrust in corporations is big and well-deserved.
The thing is, JE Pharmaceuticalsisdifferent. Yes, our profits are massive and our employees are very well-compensated, but we all work hard for it, my Board of Directors included. Everyone is hands-on, getting involved with the actual research we do instead of sipping coffee or tea and chatting bullshit in boardrooms all day. Ask Timothy, JE’s Head of PR—he spends as much time in the labs helping analyze test results as he does looking after our company’s image. And he does a hell of a good job at both.
