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He’s upping the stakes, but failing to plan ahead while doing it. He can only keep getting closer for so much longer before I meet him, face-to-face, and find out what secrets he’s hiding from me. Eventually, he’s going to mess up.
There’s a persistent banging across the front door. Somebody is insistently knocking outside.
“One second!” I yell out across the threshold.
I get dressed, throwing my pajamas into the hamper and leaving the rose on the counter. I don’t have the heart to throw it away.
I don’t know what happened last night, but something tells me this rose, among all the roses in the vase, is significant.
I peek out the peephole to see Rory, standing outside my front door with her arms folded.
I consider not letting her in, before finally surrendering to my rational, more well-adjusted side. I open the door a crack, chain still stretched across the door, and smile at her as authentically as I can.
Even though she wants to control my life and keep me from living, she’s my greatest friend.
“There’s a matinee showing of Donkeycop in a few hours, and I was wondering if you wanted to go see it,” she states. There’s a coldness there that makes me uncomfortable.
I look around my apartment. Only the roses are left sitting on the counter now, so she probably won’t harass me about it if I let her in.
“You mean you’re not still mad?”
“Of course I’m upset,” Rory says. “But I’m slowly realizing that I can’t control you, so I’m not going to worry as much about your bad decisions.” She pauses thoughtfully. “As long as you don’t bring me into them?”
I open the door all the way, letting her inside. She tries to contain her curiosity this time, not peeking around the house for signs of my suitor.
“You got rid of all the pretty flowers you liked,” she said, noticing the roses on the counter.
I shake my head.
“Greenhouse,” I say simply.
She nods. I can tell she wants to say something, but I’m glad that she doesn’t, because I don’t know if I can tolerate being told how to live my life right now.
We go to the movie, and it’s about as bad as the reviews are saying. It was filmed during a writer’s strike, so a lot of the dialogue seems contrived and phoned in by executives. When Donkeycop loses his wife toward the end of the movie, there isn’t much point to it.
It seems like the writers treated her as a disposable character to try to enrage Donkeycop rather than actually taking the time to develop her.
We discuss our thoughts on the way home. But the entire time, I’m wondering if whoever has generously left me these gifts has found another way into my apartment. He’s made every aspect of my life more interesting.
We stop back by the house, and I can feel that Rory is a lot less distant toward me, much to my relief.
Then she stops by the kitchen to grab a glass of water. As she rounds the kitchen counter, pouring the glass and returning toward me, she looks down at the counter.
“Why was this rose left out?” She asks, acknowledging the wilting rose on the counter.
“I don’t know, Rory,” I say. “What happened to making my own mistakes?”
She produces a satchel from her pocket. I get up to stop her - she’s being completely ridiculous - but she mutters an incantation and I am frozen in place.
I cannot move.
“What are you doing, Rory?” I ask urgently.
Taking the rose up to her nose, she squints at me, confused.
“Retexere,” she mutters.
Seemingly nothing happens, but as I watch her, her eyes grow wide with revelation.
