She quickly hung up. It wasn’t hard to guess why she didn’t want me back at the house.
Soon after, she texted me the details of the hotel she’d arranged.
When I arrived, a bouquet of 99 roses awaited me in the lobby. Passersby admired the grand gesture, oblivious to the irony. These were the same flowers Odessa had once forbidden me to give her, fearing they might expose our relationship. Now, when I was resolved to let her go, she was finally treating me like someone worth envying.
Unmoved, I hired a courier to deliver the roses back to her house.
Later, the courier messaged me, almost as if out of sympathy:
“She looked thrilled when she saw the flowers. But then she jumped into her boyfriend’s arms. You can imagine the rest.”
Odessa, realizing her misstep, sent me a string of question marks, but I didn’t reply. Perhaps fearing I might show up at the house unannounced, she rushed to the hotel later that evening.
The first thing she did was confront me.
“Why did you send the flowers back home?” Her voice was sharp, her eyes probing mine for answers.
I met her gaze, my expression indifferent. “We’re just neighbors. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to accept roses from you.”
Her confusion deepened. “You once said you wanted roses when you saw other men receiving them. What’s with the sudden change of heart? There’s no one else here—you don’t need to keep pretending we’re strangers.”
She didn’t understand that it was never about the roses themselves. What I wanted was for us to stand openly as a couple, for her to stop hiding me in the shadows.
The drive home was steeped in silence. Odessa kept glancing my way, but neither of us spoke. It was as though she assumed everything between us was still fine, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing within me.
As we neared the neighborhood, her phone rang. That same man’s voice came through, speaking urgently. Without hesitation, she pulled the car to a stop and turned to me.
“I have something urgent came up at the office. Got to go handle it. The house is just a few miles away—you can walk, and I’m sure it’ll be good exercise for you.”
Without another word, she drove off, leaving me standing on the roadside. The wind whipped at my face as I watched her car disappear into the distance.