The Arrangement

She stands there with a rose in her hand, smiling because her family is coming back for her. At least, she asked them, and that's what they said. She turns the rose over in her hand, admiring the soft petals, lifting it up to her nose to smell the fresh fragrance. It's sweet. Her sister will love this gift. She turns it over in her hands, once, twice, three times. She frowns, and shakes the doubt off. "They're just taking a long time to come back from that last errand. They always get held up by my mom or traffic... They'll let me know when they're on the way."

Eventually, she puts the rose down, and sits on the couch, looking out the window, hoping they'll come back for her. She does her best to distract herself, waiting for them to come back for her. If they do, she'll shower her sister with praise and tell her sister she's proud of her.

She's very excited tonight because one of them won an award. She wants to kiss them on the cheek and tease them for their bad argument right before the award, but say they ultimately did a wonderful job pulling through. See, she bought tickets to the show, and she bought an arrangement for them too. She went to the show by herself, though her family went too and sat together.

Earlier that day, her friends asked her to go with them to Sushiden after the awards ceremony, but she turned them down. "No thanks," she said, smiling. "My family's going out to dinner afterwards." She puts her phone down, ignoring dinner and her friends, for her family to come back for her.

She pulls out a book, and reads it on the couch, trying hard to swallow that sick lump in her throat. It doesn't go away. She skims the lines of the book, flipping back to the start of the chapter every couple of sentences. She keeps forgetting what happened on the last page she read, trying too hard to focus on the paragraphs. She wipes at her eyes when tears start to form; she steels herself. She checks outside the window to see if any of the cars coming by is her family's car. Each car passes by, white, red, blue, gray... white, red, gold, white again... a car turns into the neighbor's driveway. She stops looking at the window.

"They're taking a very long time," she thinks. "Maybe the traffic is very bad tonight." She thinks. "Maybe they have different priorities. It's not like they specifically invited her. Maybe I'm not their priority..." She thinks but dismisses the thought.

in her own world of boys and gossip, why would she care about one lousy family dinner?

She remembers when she won an award, and she invited everyone to come with her after she won. They all did, happy to have a good meal. It was really nice seeing everyone. She looks at her friend's groupchat: several of them posted photos with captions like "lol! Best food at Sushiden tonight." Her best friend texts her a photo of the food, and says, "You'd love the appetizers here." She smiles and texts back, "lol, still waiting for them to get back from their errands!"

She looks at the floor. "They would be disappointed if I'm not here," she reasoned. "Afterall, I would want them to do that for me."

They did not come for her. Eventually, enough time had passed that she got some water and settled into that long, lonely night, only her mother brought her out for a meal after, because there was no food at home, and she didn't want to bother them if they were having fun without her.

She ate dinner with her mom after and thanked her for the meal in an empty restaurant.

When they're driving home, her mom asked, "Did you like dinner?" She smiles and says, "Yes, I did," but her voice is tight, and she can't quite get tears to stop forming at the corner of her eyes.

When she got home, the bouquet was laying on the dining room table. The petals had begun to curl.

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