" Hi Miss.  Flower delivery for a Kourtney Kidman," the delivery guy said, examining his clipboard. 'No f-ing way,' I thought.

After Jesscia had left, I did whatever I could to distract myself because I started to have continuous flashbacks of what I was tempted to do to myself. Trying it, was scary but nothing scared me more than bringing myself to the understanding that I found the thought of death to be so tantalizing. I watched a few movies with my parents before bed just to kill time. I miss being five because whenever I used to fall asleep, my dad would carry me to my bed. That night I fell asleep and woke up at midnight to find myself stretched out on the couch under a thick blanket alone in the dark.  And so, I had to walk myself to bed.  I decided to wear long sleeves for a few days just until the scars on my arm disappeared.

Sunday morning was a nice turn of events. I was on my way to the kitchen when suddenly, the front doorbell rang. I did not expect to see a guy holding a huge bouquet of beautiful roses.

"Yes, I am her, but I didn't order any-"  

"Just sign here for me please," he asked.

'My first bouquet' 

Holding the bouquet with one arm wrapped around it, I signed with my left hand. Yes. I can write with both hands.

"Cool. Have a good day, "he said before walking back to his van.

 Before I could get caught red handed, I ran upstairs with the bouquet to hide it in my room.  I placed them on my desk then pulled off the card that was attached to the wrapping of the bouquet. 

I read the card, but I refrained from writing back, calling or getting a response over in any other way. At the time I thought that he was making an irrational decision. 'I thought about it. It didn't change anything.'

He was so eager to see where we would end up, but I was still between a rock and a hard place. At the time I was not the kind of teenager that acted on impulse. I always considered the consequences. It wasn't long before that mentality phased out. 

Among other things, I feared ruining a good friendship with Trent. I went to the kitchen to find one of my mother's glass vases. I guess you could accuse me of being a bad person because even though I wasn't in favour of what was happening, I was still very excited for the roses. I trimmed of the edges and arranged them the way I wanted to. It was my first bouquet of roses from a guy. Keenan was not nice enough to buy me flowers and if I can remember correctly, the most he had ever done was buy me a box of chocolates.

I kept the card in a shoe box that I had inside my window seat. No one ever cleaned my room, but I didn't want to take any chances and leave the evidence lying around. I didn't do much that day, but I was fine with that because sitting around my roses was comforting and each time, I looked up at the bunch I became more and more fond of the idea.

                                                                                            ***

"We can get it back to him after school," whispered Jessica.

I was fortunate enough to get Trent's jacket out the door without getting caught. Getting it back to him was another problem I had encountered.  I forgot about his new practise times. Whenever the team had important upcoming matches, coach would increase their practise sessions, which meant Trent wouldn't be around as often. My biggest fear was not getting it back to him and being stuck with it again. "Don't worry about it. We will return it," Jessica reassured me. It was the long, tedious biology lecture that took my mind off of it until I went to my next class. Geography.

It didn't occur to me and in my defence, I always forgot that Natalie was part of Kristine's click.  In geography, I struggled to find my textbook in my bag, the jacket was kind of bulky and kept getting in the way, so I decided to take it out of my bag to take the textbook out. 

"Isn't that Trent's sports jacket?"

 I froze like a deer at headlights. Natalie was deeply affected by Kristine's passing. More than her other friends, apparently. I wasn't sure of what to say to her. "Why do you seem guilty about? Did you steal it?" Her joke was merely comforting. At the time Natalie did appear to be more innocent than the other two and therefore I felt that I could trust. And that she wouldn't judge. 

I told her the story of how I ended up with the jacket. Again, I left out the morbid parts of my dark attempts and only told her the good parts which I had also told Jessica. After sharing with Natalie, I felt a strange tingling sensation in my spine, and I couldn't tell what triggered that feeling. I wasn't sure if it was a feeling of relief or if I got that feeling from the look on Natalie's face after I had confessed everything. There was a slight shift in the atmosphere, but I assumed that I was just overthinking it. "Wow, that was an unexpected twist," was all she could say. 

"I'm guessing you're upset about the Kristine thing to," I said. "Shannon and Trina already confronted me about it. I'm sorry for what happened but it was never my intention to hurt Kristine. To be honest I never knew that she was after Trent for as long as they had claimed she was."

Natalie seemed to be confused about my vent at first, but after some time she finally responded. " Hey, don't even worry about that. It really wasn't anyone's fault.  We don't know the real reason why she did what she did and making assumptions won't change that."

Natalie may have been one of my greatest enemies in high school, but I am grateful that she was part of my life. In that moment she had helped me realise so much. I manage to look at the situation a lot differently. I couldn't change anything so the choices that I made after Kristine's death would change anything. It wasn't going to bring Kristine back nor was it going to make anything worse, and it may seem insensitive of me but the decision that she made wasn't my problem at all.  

If time travel were possible, I would go back and tell myself that there were so many things that were not in my control. I wouldn't have much of a difference because it was in my nature to stress over everything, but it would've reduced the number of times I obsessed over finding a solution for everything.

At the end of the day, Jessica escorted me to the bleaches as promised and due to events, that occurred throughout the day, I was excited to return Trent's jacket. "Trent!" I yelled from across the tracks. He and his teammates were doing warm-ups before their practice. He was both surprised and confused to see me. I run towards him while tugging onto to his jacket. I remember being happy to see him after a long day. "Kourt?" he asked perplexed. "Are you okay?"

For some reason I couldn't speak, all I did was smile and hold out his jacket. "Um..." was all I could say. " Thanks," he said taking his jacket from me. He threw it over his shoulder like it was nothing. He was disappointed because he didn't want me to return it to him. Without thinking, I threw my arms around him and squeezed him. "Thank you for the flowers. I thought about it to," I said. He hugged me back even tighter and started to realise where I was going with this. Something that I liked about Trent was that he could read my mind from time to time.

 "This is my second practise for the day, and I didn't shower after my first, just by the way." 

" I don't care. It probably won't be the first time."   

We both laughed then immediately pulled apart when Coach yelled Trent's surname. Some of Trent's teammates were laughing in the distance. It was a funny situation now that I think about it, but at the time I feared that I got Trent into trouble.

"Yes, coach?" he responded eagerly. He didn't seem too phased but then again neither did the coach.

" I need more cones and footballs," he said handing Trent a key. Coach leaves us the gets back to the team. The scene that Trent and I made on the field obviously sparked up conversations between them. My eyes moved around from face to face and deep down I knew that we immediately became Bellevue high's new hot topic.

"Come with me to the locker-room."  I didn't have much of a choice. He led me to the locker-room which was not far from the field. The locker- room was as untidy as I expected it to be, and I had to fight the urge to clean it. Trent unlocked a door that had all the sports equipment. He asked me to hold onto the cones to look for the footballs. "How was your day?" He asked coming out of the equipment room with a big navy-blue sack. "You know..." I began. The atmosphere became a little more tense when he set the sack down on bench next to him then took the cones away from me to set down next the sack. He towered over me. "...it was... average." 

I felt his hands on either side of my waist then slowly move down to my hips. He came down towards me to kiss my cheek. It reminded me that it was what I signed up for. I put my arms around his neck. A small part of me still felt guilty but a huge part of me was tired of living in fear. I knew that I would either loose the chances I had with Trent to ensure that I'm pleasing everyone, or I would let people down by fulfilling my teenage wishes.  So, either way, I was screwed. 

We stared at each other and said nothing as if we both had each other in a trans. "I think we should go before one of your teammates come looking for you," I said.  "Don't worry about that for now." Trent leaned in to finally kiss me. That was our first but not our last locker-room kiss and it was for sure, more intense than our first kiss. 

I pulled away from him remembering that we both had to be somewhere. "On a serious note; we should go. Jess is waiting for me."

"I'm sure she doesn't mind waiting a little longer," he said ready to kiss me again.

"Trent," I gently pushed him way. "We'll see each other tomorrow."

He seemed a bit disappointed but shortly realised that he still had to get back to practise. He released me then picked up the cones and sack. We walked out of the locker-room together without saying a word. I thought that he was angry until he put down the sack and said: " I want you to keep this." He pulled his jacket from off his shoulder and held it out. "Maybe you could wear it to one of my upcoming games."

I couldn't say anything else except for; "I would love to."

I remember his smile stretch from ear to ear as I took the jacket from him. He run off onto the field for practise.   

As I turned around; there stood Jessica beautiful. I couldn't hide anything after I came out of the locker-room and Jessica's reactions made me giddier. "Hey you!" she exclaimed. "You look different! What's new with you!" 

To be honest. I didn't really know.