CHAPTER 1: RAIN ON GLASS
1460 Words
VESPER'S POV
The bell above _Ashvale & Thorns_ hadn’t rung in three days.
I counted.
Not because I was waiting for someone. I wasn’t. Ashford Bay hadn’t wanted black roses in twenty-six years, and it wasn’t about to start now. I counted because silence has a weight, and if you don’t measure it, it will crush you.
Three days. Seventy-two hours. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes of nothing but rain on glass and the sound of my own breathing.
I liked it that way.
My shop sat at the end of Bay Street, where the pavement cracked and the streetlamps flickered. The rest of the town had coffee shops and boutiques with white paint and gold lettering. I had fogged windows, a chipped wooden sign, and a greenhouse in the back that leaked when it rained too hard.
Which was often.
I pulled my shears from the bucket of water and started on the black roses again. Stem after stem. Cut at an angle. No hesitation. Hesitation made the cut messy, and messy cuts rotted.
My hands were stained. Soil under my nails, black dust in the lines of my palms. It never washed out completely. Aunt Livia used to say that was good. “Let the earth keep a piece of you, Vesper. That way you’ll always find your way back.”
Aunt Livia was gone now. Five years. Cancer took her slow, and I took over the shop faster. I was twenty-one and too young to know how much I didn’t know. But I knew roses. I knew how to keep something alive even when the world wanted it dead.
That was enough.
A thin line of blood welled on my thumb. I’d missed a thorn. I didn’t curse. I didn’t stop. I just wiped it on my apron and kept cutting. Pain was quiet here. It didn’t ask for attention. It just existed, like the soil, like the rain.
“Miss Vesper?”
I didn’t look up. “We’re closed, Maren.”
The door opened anyway. The bell jingled, too loud in the quiet.
Maren Solis had never learned how to be quiet. She was the opposite of me in every way. Loud. Sunlight in a human shape. She owned the laundromat two blocks down and had been my best friend since we were twelve, when she beat up a boy for calling my roses “ugly black weeds.”
“You can’t live in a greenhouse forever,” she said, dropping a brown paper bag on my counter with a thud. “I brought lumpia. And news.”
“I don’t want news.” I kept cutting.
“You want lumpia, though.” She pushed the bag toward me. “It’s still warm.”
I sighed and set the shears down. My back hurt. My shoulders were tight. I hadn’t left the shop since yesterday morning.
“Talk fast,” I said, peeling open the bag. The smell of garlic and pork made my stomach turn. I hadn’t eaten since… I didn’t remember.
Maren leaned on the counter. She didn’t sit. Sitting meant staying. “Calder bought the lot next door. Closed yesterday. Cash deal.”
The lumpia stopped halfway to my mouth.
“White Resort,” she continued, voice dropping. “That’s what he’s calling it. Whole block. Says it’ll ‘revitalize’ Ashford Bay. Make it ‘presentable’.”
Presentable.
That was Calder’s favorite word. He’d been saying it since he was on the town council. Presentable meant white. White buildings. White flowers. White tourists with white money.
No black roses.
No me.
I put the lumpia down. My appetite was gone. “He can’t buy my lot. I own it.”
“Not yet,” Maren said. “But he’s talking to the council. Eminent domain, Ves. He’s calling the shop an ‘eyesore’. Says it brings down property value.”
Eyesore.
I looked around. At the cracked tiles. The fogged glass. The rows of black roses that no one bought. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was an eyesore.
Outside, the sky went dark. The first drops hit the glass roof. Soft at first. Then hard. Then like the sky had decided it was done being gentle.
Rain on glass. My favorite sound.
“He’ll have to go through me,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. I made sure of it. “I’m not selling.”
“I know.” Maren reached across the counter and squeezed my hand. Her fingers were warm. Mine were cold. “You’re not alone in this, okay? I’ve got you.”
I nodded. I didn’t say thank you. Thank you made it real.
The bell rang again.
Both of us froze.
Customers didn’t come in the rain. Not here. Not to me.
I looked up.
A man stood in the doorway.
He was soaked. Water ran down the shoulders of a black wool coat. His hair was dark and plastered to his forehead. He didn’t shake off. He didn’t apologize for tracking water onto my floor. He just stood there, looking.
Not at the flowers. At the shop. Like he was trying to see what was underneath the rot.
“We’re closed,” I said. It came out flat. Automatic.
“I know.”
His voice was low. Calm. The kind of voice that didn’t need to be loud to be heard.
“I’m not here to buy flowers.”
Maren straightened. Her protective mode clicked on. I could see it in her shoulders. “Then what are you here for?”
He ignored her. His eyes were on me. Grey. Not blue. Not brown. Grey, like the sky before it storms.
He stepped closer. Water pooled at his boots. My floor would stain. I should’ve told him to stop. I didn’t.
His gaze dropped to my hands. To the blood on my thumb.
“You’re bleeding.”
I curled my thumb into my palm without thinking. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s blood,” he said. Like that was a fact that mattered.
“It’s thorns,” I corrected. “It happens.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t offer a bandage. He just did something I wasn’t expecting.
He took off his coat.
Underneath was a black shirt, damp at the collar. He held the coat out to me. Not to wear. Just… out. Like an offering.
“Then let me pay for the quiet,” he said.
I stared at the coat. Then at him.
No one paid for quiet. People paid to be loud. To be seen. To be fixed. But quiet? Quiet was free. And worthless.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Elias Thorne.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“I collect things,” he said. “Art. Objects. Places.”
His eyes flicked to the black roses behind me. “I don’t collect things that are perfect. I collect things that are real.”
Maren made a noise. Not quite a scoff. “This isn’t a gallery, Mr. Thorne.”
“I know.” He still wasn’t looking at her. Only me. “It’s better.”
The rain got louder. It filled the spaces between us.
I should’ve told him to leave. I should’ve taken the lumpia and told Maren to kick him out. But I didn’t. Because for the first time in three days, the silence didn’t feel like a weight.
It felt like someone sitting in it with me.
“I’m not for sale,” I said.
“I didn’t think you were,” he replied.
He set the coat on my counter. It was expensive. I could tell by the way it fell. No creases. No cheap lining.
“Keep it,” he said. “For the quiet.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait.” The word came out before I could stop it.
He paused. Didn’t turn around.
“You didn’t tell me why you came in,” I said.
Now he looked over his shoulder. Rain dripped from his hair onto my floor.
“Because I saw your roses from the street,” he said. “Black. In a town full of white. I wanted to see who would grow something the world told her to throw away.”
His eyes met mine.
“I found her.”
The bell jingled as he left.
The door closed.
And I was left holding a stranger’s wet coat, with rain on glass and blood on my thumb, wondering if maybe… just maybe… black wasn’t bad luck.
Maybe it was just waiting.
Maren picked up the coat. “That man is trouble, Ves.”
I didn’t answer.
I went back to the roses.
But my hands were shaking.
*END OF CHAPTER 1*
- Writer
