5. Rose
ROSE
As I pull into the parking lot of the only restaurant still open in the small town I’m staying in tonight, Luc climbs out of his truck near the side of the building.
I’ve had butterflies in my stomach since I got into my car at Dante’s house.
I don’t know why I’m so nervous to spend time with Luc when we basically spent every waking minute together in high school.
But things feel different now that we are adults and basically strangers again.
It was easy for me to spend so much time with him since my home life was not the most warm and welcoming.
I was left on a church’s doorstep as a newborn baby, so I grew up in foster care. I waited until I aged out of the system to start living my life for me and wasn’t just government dollars in a foster parents’ pocket.
Luc had always been my safe space since the moment we met our freshman year of high school.
I was always a loner growing up, since I had to change schools whenever my foster families changed, and they changed a lot.
It was easier to keep to myself instead of making friends, only to have to say goodbye a year later or sometimes sooner if my foster parents got fed up with my “attitude.” It only got worse as I got older.
I started to understand that I would never be adopted into a loving family and that the foster families I was placed into cared more about the money they received from the state rather than the happiness of a moody preteen.
But then everything changed when I sat down in my first class during my freshman year of high school, and there Luca was, doodling in his notebook in the chair next to me, oblivious to the world around him.
I envied the escape that drawing seemed to give him.
Once he noticed he had a tablemate, he looked up from his drawing and gave me a genuine smile.
I knew the pain of one day having to say goodbye to him might be worth the potential friendship, or maybe even something more.
Sure, I had flirted with a few boys in middle school and even held hands with one, but I never wanted a relationship.
It would just be one more thing I would have to leave behind if I had to move again.
Besides, even at my young age, I had enough foresight to know that relationships were meant to be treasured.
Something rare, that should be handled with care and should not be entered into lightly.
I’d experienced enough bad relationships with foster parents and other foster kids to understand what I wanted in a relationship once I was willing to be vulnerable enough to try.