I tossed my purse onto the front seat, placed my phone in the console, then slid into the vehicle. After buckling my seat belt, I pressed the fob attached to my visor and waited for the gate to slide open.
The drive to my mother's house was quiet. No music. No podcasts. Just me and my thoughts. And my thoughts were being torn in so many damn directions. Mom. Kelly. Ivy. The Petals. Rome. Weddings. Funerals. The Circuit.
It was all so much.
Toomuch sometimes.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel. I loved my job. Though I hadn’t always wanted to take over the shop, I was happy I had. Working there brought me joy... most of the time. And I loved growing flowers.
I’d always loved working in the garden and flower nursery with my grandma and my mom. It was calming and allowed me to clear my head. But even my garden was no match for the chaotic thoughts I had these days.
I also loved the people in my life.
Every single one of them. Most of them had grown up with me. As kids, they’d run around the shop and the garden with me. But as our shops and intel hub grew, they moved away with their parents, branching out to run the new shops.
These people weren’t just staff to me. They were family. I would give my life for them and knew they’d do the same for me. The problem wasn’t love or loyalty. The problem was me. I was tired.
It felt like everyone needed something from me. Everyone depended on me. Everyone trusted me to hold everything together. They had such high expectations of me, but I didn’t deserve the pedestal they’d placed me on.
I didn’t deserve the faith they’d put in me. If they knew what really went on in my head, how scared I was sometimes, how I often thought about giving up just to escape everything...
"Fuck," I whispered, warm tears sliding down my face.
My vision blurred. Blinking, I brushed my knuckles over my cheeks, hating that I was crying. What the hell was wrong with me? So what, I was having a bad day. There were people in the world dealing with more than I was.
There were those out there with terminal illnesses, fighting to stay alive. Those who’d recently lost a loved one, who were trying to convince themselves that waking up each day was worth it, despite the pain.
People everywhere were battling demons no one could see. Many of their demons were scarier than mine. So why was I crying when I had it better than so many others? I didn’t even know what I was crying about. Nothing had happened. Not really.
Sure, Mom was having a bad day. But I could handle that. I would be there for her, comfort her, and help ease her anxiety. And sure, Rome had walked into my shop today and left me shocked.
But he hadn’t seemed suspicious of me. Interested, yeah.Cheating bastard. But not suspicious. And yeah, funeral consultations had drained me. They always did. But I pushed through because my customers needed me.
None of those things should've broken me. None should have me feeling this low. And yet tears kept coming anyway. My shoulders shook as a sob escaped me.Fuck!Why was I falling apart like this?
I swallowed, trying to bury this pain in the deepest parts of me so that my mom didn’t pick up on this negative energy of mine. I didn’t want to make her day worse. I also didn’t want to keep stressing Ivy out with this whole Rome thing.
And I didn’t want to keep Kelly at a distance, making her feel as if all the fault for the incident rested with her. I guess the reason I couldn’t pinpoint the one thing that had me feeling down was because it wasn’t just one thing.
It was a culmination of connected things.
This negative energy, this... depressed energy, hadn’t just occurred today, or this week. It had been accumulating for months. And today, the weight of it all felt a little too heavy for one set of shoulders to bear.
I had responsibilities stacked on top of responsibilities. And I’d been shouldering them for so long that I couldn't remember what it felt like not to carry them. I hadn’t realized I was becoming depressed because this was normal for me.
I swallowed hard. Enough of these thoughts! I reached over and turned on the radio. Rap music filled the car. But it didn't help. There was no drowning out the chaos in my head. Or the turmoil in my heart. There was no escaping it. No burying it. No shoving it aside.
All I could do was endure. But that was something I was good at. So, ignoring my pain, I sang along with the rap queens as I drove, only turning the music down when I pulled into my mother’s driveway. The second fob clipped to my visor controlled the garage door at my mother's house.
After pressing the button, I gathered my things while the door slowly rolled upward. Once there was enough clearance, I pulled inside and waited for it to close behind me before climbing out. A quick wave from me to the camera was followed by Nancy's voice through the speaker.
“I just deactivated the alarm,” she told me.
I nodded. Using my spare key, I let myself into my mother’s home and quietly made my way through the house. I heard the television playing, but couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. At this time of day, it was probably coming from my mother’s room.
A lamp cast a warm glow across the hallway. We kept battery-operated lamps on throughout the house in case my mother got up in the middle of the night and moved around. The kitchen stayed locked at night.
We didn’t want her trying to cook at one a.m., then forgetting about the food and falling asleep. That happened once while I was staying the weekend with her. I’d awoken to the fire alarm going off and found my mother asleep in the laundry room.
