4. Roses for the Birthday Girl
1031 Words
May this year be beautiful and full of delightful surprises for you, kitten.
The card that accompanied the beautiful bouquet of roses said.
It was Tara’s eighteenth birthday. She was now a student at Phoenix College. Together with Chloe, she was enjoying her day with some other friends when, completely out of the blue, a man approached the group with the bouquet of roses in his hand.
“Tara Scott?” He called, looking at each and every girl of the group successively.
“Yeah?” Came her perplex response as she rose to her feet from where she had been sitting on the grass on campus territory.
“Please accept this bouquet of roses,” he said with a small smile.
“I beg your pardon?” She retorted now more puzzled than ever. “Do I even know you?”
“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you either,” he said in a light tone, almost as if he thought the matter was humorous. “But my boss wanted me to give you these.”
“And who exactly is your boss?” She jutted an eyebrow at him in question.
“I am not at liberty to say,” he said in a non-remorseful tone, before adding, “Please accept this bouquet of roses.”
“You have a silent admirer, you sneaky girl,” Chloe teased while bumping her shoulder with her friend’s.
“It would appear so,” Tara tried to fake a smile.
“How did you find me?” She then asked as the man handed her the bouquet of roses.
“Take good care of yourself, Miss Scott,” was the only response she received before the man turned on his heel and left.
“Girl, why are you frowning?” Another friend of hers, Jennifer asked. “You should be happy. You were given these amazing roses…”
“You can have them,” Tara said distractedly on a sigh.
“Oh, can I really?”
“No, you cannot,” Chloe intervened, “How many times must I tell you, Tara, that one doesn’t just offer what they have been gifted?”
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
And then plucked the card out of the roses and read it.
“Who is the sender?” Chloe probed.
“I absolutely got no clue,” she told her friend. “It is not signed.”
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Stumbling out of the club, laughing like a maniac, although the joke wasn’t all that funny was Tara’s idea of having fun with a guy when she turned nineteen. Indeed, she wasn’t yet of drinking age in Arizona but she was old enough to be allowed into a club.
She was dragging the guy towards her one-bedroom flat, wanting to finally shed her v-card and rip off the band-aid, needing to forget all about those deep green eyes that haunted her at night from time to time even now, two years later.
As they were about to enter the building where she lived, she bumped into the very man whose mesmerizing eyes visited her wet dreams.
She gasped, partly in shock, partly in delight, as her body came alive with awareness. “Antonio,” she breathed out as she drank him in. He was as drop-dead gorgeous as ever.
His eyes narrowed on her before they took in the guy next to her. And then, he said, disdain coating his words, “Pardon me. Do I know you?”
She frowned, was about to try to remind him how they had met at her seventeenth birthday two years ago, and then thought better of it.
As if he’ll remember you, silly! A part of her tried to make her see reason.
“My bad, I must have mistaken you for someone else,” she told him in a saccharine tone, and then grabbed the hand of the guy whose name she didn’t even know, and dragged him away.
When she reached the flat where she lived which wasn’t that off campus. She opened the door with shaky hands.
Did she really need to lose her v-card so quickly, and for the petty reasons she had? Shouldn’t she value it more?
To say the least, she was starting to have a case of cold feet. She just didn’t know how to tell the man she had brought home.
The moment they entered her small place, the guy was on her, kissing her on the neck. She looked forward, and caught sight of a bouquet of roses.
Another one! On her birthday too…
It hadn’t been there in the morning, and there was no sign of forced entry.
She frowned and pushed the guy slightly away. He didn’t take the hint. So, she pushed him with more force. He stumbled backwards.
“Ooh, feisty. I like it,” he teased with a cocky smirk.
“Out,” she said in a cold detached voice.
“What?” He asked, puzzled, eyes wide.
“I said, get out,” she repeated in much the same tone of voice.
“What do you mean? I thought…”
“I know what you thought,” she cut in acidly, “I just am no longer in the mood. Out, now!”
“Like hell!” He all but bellowed at her… and suddenly, he was standing taller and prouder than ever. “You dare play me?”
“My father is the best lawyer in town,” she told him in a menacing tone, “You really want this to grow out of proportions?”
He narrowed his eyes at her and then was on his way out of her place, slamming the door behind him.
She made a beeline towards the bouquet of roses that awaited her on the table-stand. She reached out with shaky hands towards the card that was nestled between two roses, and opened it carefully.
May this card find you well, kitten.
May you carry on behaving and saving yourself for me.
When twenty one you will be, I shall come for you.
Until then, wait for me…
Yours,
A
Good god, how could this psychopath of a stalker know if she was behaving or not? He was one hell of a delusional nut case…
To say a shiver of pure fear wracked through her wouldn’t do the feeling justice. But instead of opening up about what was happening to her to anyone, she told no soul.
Maybe that had been a mistake… but then again, maybe not.
- Writer
