Devils Roses 01 - Cursed

oh, and if her mom comes back to our town, we need that guy she’s dating gone. Like warn the cops and shit. He’s a ped. He touched Giselle high up on the thigh and said he always wanted a daughter.”
    “ Are you kidding? Ok, I will talk to them. That’s sick. She is on her death bed and he’s trying to touch her?” Shane’s voice was full of rage. I could tell he was trying to stay calm, hearing such hopelessness in my voice.
    "Are you close to home?"
    “ Yeah. I’ll be there in three hours.” There was silence on his end. I waited for him to speak and looked at my phone thinking I had lost the signal.
    Suddenly, he just blurted into the dead air. “I like you, Aimee, I can’t stop myself. I’m trying to just be your friend, but you’re perfect and I can’t fight it anymore. I want to be with you. I wanted to be with you before, but with you being you and me being me…I just panicked.” The words were everything I had ever wanted to hear, plus some I didn’t understand.
    The phone was silent again as I held my breath, not sure how to respond. “Ok. Uhm, maybe we should talk about this later.” My heart was skipping beats and my head was dizzy.
    “ Okay, I just wanted you to know. I’m falling for you. I've fallen. It's done. I love you. I always have.” He went silent after his declaration. I could tell this was hard for him, too.
    I wanted to respond with a ‘thank you, God’ or ‘please don’t move from where you are, I’ll be right there’. Instead, I held my breath, and with the exhale I shouted, “Ok! So I'll see you in a few hours.”
    “ Drive safe.” He hung up.
    I sat staring ahead at the van in front of us. I didn’t know what to say. I started my list of pros and cons and then I phoned Giselle.
    “ Hello.” Her voice was raspy.
    “ Shane just told me he likes me.”
    She squealed into the phone. “Yayyyyyyy. Okay, I need to hear every detail word for word skip nothing.”
    I told her everything he told me, word for word, to which she responded with ‘OMG’ and ‘seriously’ and ‘I knew it’ on repeat.
    Her advice wasn’t exactly sage wisdom. “I think you should just do it. You should date him and have sex with him. Your sister never did, hey? She never got him into bed. He was always busy and stressed out. That’s why she's been sleeping with Mitchell this entire time.”
    "Oh my God. She's disgusting. Mitchell too?"
    "What did you expect? She likes physical relationships, Aimes."
    I cringed. "I can't talk about this."
    “ Okay, look—I've got to go. I’m super tired out. They took more blood this morning and I’m beat. I’ll see you in a few weeks. Cool?”
    I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. “Yeah for sure. Dad and I will be back. Don’t worry.”
    “ Peace out.” She clicked off and I was alone again. I had officially lost control of my emotions.
    I looked to the sky, well—roof of the truck, and whispered, “Mom, I need you.”

Chapter Five
    I am a rational human being.

    I walked into the library, where Dad dropped me off. Thankfully I felt the outside world leave me alone, as I caught the first scent of the books. I loved the smell of books, but even more, I loved getting lost in them. If there ever was a time in my life I needed to get lost in books, it was that moment. I didn’t know what to do about Shane, or Giselle, or the stalker. It was too much excitement for how sick I was starting to feel again. I worried about my own liver, nearly as much as I worried about Giselle's.
    I smiled at the librarian. “Hey, Mary.”
    She waved, not really letting her eyes leave the stacks she was checking. “Aimee, it’s been forever. Thought you might have died, kid. You still have that book out on ancient medicinal practices?”
    I laughed. Obviously, she hadn’t heard. I nodded. “Yeah, I need it for a few more weeks; I will re-sign it out today.”
    “ Good enough for me.” She walked over to her card catalogue.
    Our library was tiny, with little to no technology, ever making its way through the front doors. It was partly from lack of funding, and partly because it wasn’t needed. Mary remembered every book that left and who it left with.
    I made my way to the history section and sat on the floor touching the spines of the books, feeling the history flow from them to me. My mom had taught me to love and respect history, especially art. She said it was a visual documentation of history. Every aspect of a civilization's time, whether