Dreamscape Through Vanity | San Juanico Series #3

CHAPTER 1: The Hand

9:14am. The Flower Shop

The shop smells like a garden filled with fresh lavender, roses, sunflowers and fresh-cut tulips. Sunlight filters through the glass windows, catching dust in the air and turning it old.

Val built this place. With her own hands. Every shelf, every vase, every chipped terracotta pot lined along the windowsill-she chose it, sanded it, placed it. She named it Blooming Corner. It wasn't inherited. It wasn't gifted. It was rent money and 4am deliveries and a loan she paid off in three years.

Now it's hers. The bell above the door still has her scratch from the first time she installed it crooked. The counter is worn smooth where she leans, elbows calloused from years of cutting stems at dawn.

She owns the keys. The lease. The quiet.

Val's behind the counter, tying a red ribbon around a bouquet of lilies. Her hoodie's oversized, hair in a messy bun, coffee gone cold beside her. Normal. Safe.

The bell above the door jingles.

"Morning, Ms. Val!" It's Mrs. Lazo, 68, buying flowers for her 45th wedding anniversary. Again. "Same as always? Red roses, one white for me?"

"Always," Val smiles. She writes the card in neat cursive: Still. Always. You.

Mrs. Lazo pays, kisses her on the cheek, and leaves humming.

The bouquet costs less than a 5-course meal. Yet in the hands of someone who's been waited for, it turns into everything.

Val is always dedicated to this passion. For her, the real price isn't on the tag. It's in the way someone's eyes soften when they realize they were remembered. Love doesn't come with a receipt. And that's why it's priceless.

The next customer comes in.

He's maybe 30. Suit jacket, no tie. Looks like he hasn't slept. He lingers by the counter, eyes on the wall of pre-written cards.

"How much for dozens of pink tulips? With uhh...d-do you also customize love letter?" he says.

Val blinks. "You mean you want me to write it?"

"Yeah." He shifts, uncomfortable. "She likes how you word things. Saw the one you did for Mrs. Lazo last month. Posted it on Facebook." it seemed like a word out of liar's mouth.

Val leans on the counter. "You don't want to write it yourself?"

He laughs, short and bitter. "I wouldn't even know where to start. I just want her to know I'm sorry. That I still love her."

Val nods slowly. Grabs a card. Blue. Handmade paper. Her favorite.

"You know what's funny?" she says as she picks up the pen. "People think love is the grand gesture. The bouquet. The apology. The grand speech." She dips the pen in ink. "But love is the effort. The part where you sit down and try. Even if it's messy. Even if it's bad."

The guy frowns. "So you think I should write it myself?"

"I think if you can't sit down for ten minutes to tell someone you love them, then you don't love them that much." Val starts writing. "Effort is the mirror, Mr.-?"

"Jake."

"Effort is the mirror, Mr. Jake. What's her name?"

"Sandra" Then he goes quiet. Watches her write.

*Dear Sandra,

I don't know how to say sorry without sounding like I'm making excuses. So I won't.

I was stupid. I was tired. I was scared.

But I'm not scared of you. Not of us.

If you'll let me, I want to try again. Not perfect. Just present.

Every day. Even the boring ones.

Love, Jake*

Val caps the pen. Slides the card across.

Jake reads it. His throat bobs. "That's... that's good. That's better than what I would've said."

"Yeah. But it's not you," Val says gently. "Keep the card. Use it if you need to. But next time? Write your own. Even if it's two lines. Even if it's ugly."

He leaves with the bouquet and the card, looking lighter.

Val leans back against the counter and exhales.

"Effortless love is less."

The thought sticks. Sharp. True.

2:47pm. In The Backroom

Val sat down surrounded by boxes of dried lavender and spools of twine. She's supposed to be prepping for Valentine's next month. Instead, she's staring at her laptop.

The screen is blank except for one folder: *XXX DRAFT*

She'd found Robinson's audio dramas four years ago. One late night, headphones on, drowning out the silence of her apartment. His voice had this way of curling around her spine, making her forget she was alone.

She'd told herself it was just comfort. Background noise. Therapy.

But lately... lately she's been writing in the margins of her notebook. Lines that sound like his. Scenes that feel like they belong to someone else.

The door opened and her worker, Mia's voice cuts through from the front. "Miss Val! The customer's requesting for you presence. Something concerns about the bouquet-can you come quick?"

She shuts the laptop. Her face is hot.

It's stupid. She's not a writer. She arranges flowers. She writes 30-word cards for strangers. She doesn't write erotic scripts for anonymous voice actors.

She tucks it under the counter, sleeves her arm, and steps out.

The idea doesn't leave. It waits.

7:22pm. Closing Time

The last customer left ten minutes ago, but Val's still wiping down the counter, fingers slow, deliberate. The shop smells like wilting roses and cold coffee now.

"Lock up for you?" Mia asks, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She's 22, hoodie tied around her waist, eyes sharp in the way only someone who's watched Val too long can be.

Val nods. "Go on. I'll be out in five."

Mia doesn't move. "You okay? That lady earlier... she made you look like you just lost something."

Val pauses. The scissors in her hand click once against the counter. "She said the bouquet was 'just flowers.' Like it doesn't mean anything."

Mia softens. "Val, it's not your job to make people feel it. Some folks don't. That's on them."

"But if I don't try, then what's the point?" Val's voice is quiet. "If I don't believe it matters, then I'm just selling stems."

Mia steps closer, touches her arm. "You care too much. That's why this place works. But you can't carry every heartbreak, okay? Go home. Eat. Sleep."

Val gives a small smile. "You always say that."

"Because you never listen." Mia grins, then heads for the door. "See you tomorrow, boss."

She watches Mia go.

The shop is empty. The lights are low. Val locks the door, flips the sign to 'CLOSED', and sits on the floor behind the counter with her laptop on her knees.

She opens the document again.

*XXX DRAFT*

Her fingers hover over the keys.

What if she writes it? She couldn't stop thinking about the man from the bridge.

The way he said Darl like it was the only name that mattered. The way his hand hovered an inch from her skin and still left her burning. But writing about him-writing him touching her, wanting her-felt... wrong. Like writing a love letter to a shadow. A stranger she'd never really met.

So she didn't.

Instead, she typed for Robinson.

The one that's been in her ears for four years now. The low, raspy cadence that had talked her to sleep on bad nights, that had made her feel less alone in a room that was always too quiet. She didn't know his face. Didn't know his age. Didn't even know if Robinson was his real name.

Four years. Longer than most friendships. Longer than most lovers.

So when she started writing, it wasn't the dream man she pictured. It was Robinson.

Her face burns. But her hand doesn't shake anymore.

Val types.

*The room is dark. Just the sound of rain on the roof.

He's behind me. I can feel the heat of him, even though he hasn't touched me yet.

"Val," he says. My name. Not Darl this time. Mine.

His breath is warm against my ear. "You've been holding it in all night."

I bite my lip. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do." His hand slides around my waist, pulling me back against him. "I can feel it."

I shiver. Not from cold. From the way he says it. Like he knows. Like he's been waiting.*

Val stops. Heart pounding, realizing she's not writing Robinson.

She's writing him.

The man from the bridge. The man from the dream. The man who left a mark on her neck. That scene was a memory. It happened in her dream, a year ago.

She keeps typing.

*His hand moves lower, slow, deliberate. I should stop him. I should push him away.

But I don't.

"Please," I whisper. "Don't stop."

"Then say it," he says. "Say you want this."

I close my eyes. "I want this."

"Good girl," he murmurs. "That's my good girl."*

Val's fingers freeze on the keys.

Her palm is on fire.

Not a dull ache. A sharp, electric burn that shoots from her hand up to her shoulder, down to her fingertips. She drops the laptop. It clatters to the floor.

Val clutches her arm, gasping. The pain is blinding. Real. Like her skin is being branded from the inside out.

"Stop," she whispers. "Stop, stop, stop."

The burning fades. Slowly. Like water being poured over a flame.

Val sits there, shaking, sweat beading on her forehead. Her laptop screen glows in the dark, the last line still on it: Good girl.

11:03pm. Apartment. Bedroom.

Val lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. The fan spins slow overhead. Her phone is face-down on the nightstand. No calls. No texts. No one checking in.

Just her.

Her left hand is still pressed to the other, fingers curled like she can hold the heat in. The twin mole there glows angry red under her skin, raised and raw. She's had it since birth. Two perfect dots, one above the other, like a secret signature.

Eight of them, total.

First pair behind one ear, hidden in her hair and one on the front. Another pair over her chest, right where her ribs curve. A third on the inside of each hands. And the last-lowest, most private-on her inner thighs.

Her mother called them soul marks. Said some people are born with them in pairs, like the universe left a mark to remind them they were made for connection. Val somehow believed it. But they'd been there her whole life, quiet, unnoticed. Just part of her.

Until now.

The burning only ever happens on the right hand. Always the right.

Both palm has the same mole. Identical. Mirrors of each other. But only the right one flares -hot, sharp, like someone's holding a match to her skin. The left stays cool. Dormant. As if it doesn't know what's happening on the other side.

She's seen three dermatologists. Tried every cream, every steroid, every cold compress they suggested. Nothing works. The blood tests come back clean. The skin biopsies say "no anomaly."

Doctors call it idiopathic. Unexplained.

Val calls it strange.

She doesn't know why it burns. Only when.

It's not random. Not pain. Not rash. Just a slow, steady heat that rises from the mole on her right palm, like a secret alarm she can't shut off.

She feels it when her breath catches too fast. When a sentence makes her chest tighten. When the room goes quiet and her thoughts turn too warm.

Arousal. That's the only word that fits.

Val rolls onto her side and pulls the blanket up, thumb brushing over the mole without thinking. The skin is still warm.

"Why only the hands?" she wonders. "Why not the others?"

Val closes her eyes.

Outside, it starts to rain.

Not hard. Just a light drizzle against the window.

3:07am.

The man comes again.

"I told you, I'd find you."

Val doesn't wake up. But she smiles in her sleep.

And somewhere, across a universe she can't see, a man on a bridge feels it too.