Rosie Coloured Glasses. Brianna Wolfson

and energetically threw her arms around him. Unbeknownst to Rosie, Anabel was a literature student and a great fan of e. e. cummings.

      “Your note is perfect,” Anabel told her boyfriend.

      “I will treasure it always. I love you too,” she said.

      Rex knew Anabel felt sure they would get married and Rex hadn’t yet thought of any reasons why she wouldn’t be correct.

      Rex received his undeserved hug without a word in response. But when he saw the card on that bouquet, he was furious. Because he was not interested in flowery language and he was definitely not interested in anybody doing anything without his explicit permission.

      At thirty-one years old, Rex Thorpe was both serious and particular about the things in his life. About his Brooks Brothers pants and steamed, button-down shirts. About the Eames furniture in his apartment. About the Upper West Side restaurants he frequented and the academic degrees of the people he interacted with. About the whiskey he drank and the shape of the glass it came in. About the brand of black ink in his ballpoint pen. About his vision of himself as a respected and successful man. About being a man of authenticity.

      Rex focused his attention so meticulously and intensely on all of these things that he never felt it logical or worthwhile to spare any energy on Anabel DeGette. He never cared enough about her to go out of his way even though she was both pleasant and beautiful enough. Rex, himself, was acutely aware that if a pleasant and beautiful woman were not part of his idea of what a “successful” life looked like, he probably would not concern himself with women at all. But since it was, Rex knew he needed occasionally to express some sentiment of affection while simultaneously ignoring his girlfriend and spending all of his time at work. And a bouquet of a dozen roses with a note that said “Love, Rex” was what he had decided on.

      “What the fuck did you do?” Rex shouted rhetorically at Rosie that next day even before he had both feet in the door of Blooms. “I gave you very clear instructions for my note. And nowhere did those instructions include a poem from fucking e. e. cummings. Who the fuck are you to interfere and manipulate my words?”

      He was prepared to continue his rant, but stopped abruptly at the sight of Rosie in her knee-length paisley dress. Her messy brown hair slipping out of a loosely tied braid. Her bangs that nearly hid the curvature of her thick eyebrows. The flower-stained gloves that were comically too large for her undoubtedly tiny hands at the end of her tiny wrists. Her petite bones. The slight scoop of her nose. Her freckles. The way the corners of her eyes turned down. The way she jaggedly swayed her hips and hummed the tune of Stevie Nicks and Don Henley’s “Leather and Lace.” The way she radiated.

      And most importantly, the way she casually ignored his fury.

      Rex was struck breathless by it all.

      He stood in his place, mouth agape, disappointed that Rosie had yet to look up at him. He thought he could catch her eye. Just for a moment. He wanted to catch her eye. He wanted to gaze right into it and see something new.

      * * *

      Without even looking up from her daily thorn trimming, Rosie knew it was Rex stomping through the door. She peeked out quickly from underneath her bangs. Handsome and jerky, indeed.

      She tried keeping her eyes cast downward at the roses in her hands as Rex spoke at her but lost the battle when his words stopped. She met Rex Thorpe’s eyes for just an instant and there everything was. His unruly eyebrows. His strong shoulders. His smooth skin. The creases in his cheeks. His black hair.

      His presence.

      Rosie couldn’t bear being in the shop with that overwhelming toughness. That simultaneous repulsion and attraction. So she shook her hands until the canvas gloves fell to the counter. And then Rosie picked up her tote bag full of scribbled-in notebooks and sweet-tooth fixings and scurried past Rex without saying a word. She put such focus on getting out the door and such little attention on what was happening in that shop, that she didn’t even stop to acknowledge the blue crayon and couple of pennies dribbling out of her bag as she dragged it behind her.

      As Rosie walked toward the door, she felt another twinge. Although she did not share Rex’s principle, she quite admired his authenticity. Not all people, all men, spoke their mind like this. Not all were willing to let others know what hurt them. Vexed them. Pleased them. Excited them. There was a sexiness in Rex’s assuredness. His masculinity. His convictions. But even with all of those thoughts about the man standing so firmly in the middle of Blooms, Rosie waltzed right out and decided to take the afternoon off.

      She hopped on her bike and, without a care in the world, headed straight for her favorite branch on the willow tree in Central Park. Just the tune of “Leather and Lace” playing in her mind. And Rex’s sylvan scent lingering in her nose.

       2

      As it were, Willow Thorpe hated Wednesdays. Per the rules of the divorce, Wednesdays were always Dad’s days. And Dad’s days were full of homework and piano practice and chore charts and manners.

      But it wasn’t long before her mother found a way to make Wednesday nights Willow’s favorite night of the week. Another adventure, another opportunity for so much love.

      Willow tugged her favorite Keith Haring T-shirt over her thick hair until it fell onto her shoulders. She smiled when she looked in the mirror to brush her teeth and saw herself wearing it. She loved that oversize T-shirt with the thick squiggly lines and bright colors. She loved how it exuded excitement all around. How the figures were so simple and so happy dancing around together.

      She washed the toothpaste from the edges of her mouth, then wiggled herself under her sheets. And then she waited. She squeezed her eyes shut like she was sleeping. But she wasn’t even close. And then she waited some more. And when Willow’s midnight alarm went off, it simultaneously felt like all the time in the universe—and no time at all—had passed.

      With a tingle just under the surface of her skin, Willow tucked her feet into her slippers, picked up her flashlight from her bedside table, slid her pillow under her sheets in case Dad might check on her and walked delicately on her tippy toes all the way down the back stairs. She gripped the railing for balance, but made her way down the steps so naturally. It was a shame that Willow was her most graceful on that dark staircase in the middle of the night when no one would ever see her.

      Willow pressed her toes slowly, purposefully into the lush carpeting that covered each step. She crossed the kitchen, slipped out the back door and made her way to the far end of the backyard. This moment, standing on the edge of the manicured grass with nothing but towering trees in front of her, made Willow’s heart tremble. It was just Willow alone in the dark. Nothing but the syncopated buzz of cicadas and faint crackling of the woods. Nothing but the crisp acidity of October nighttime air filling her lungs.

      Willow could feel the excitement pulsing through her nerves. She was on the edge of her father’s world and on the precipice of her mother’s. Here was the entryway to happiness.

      Willow launched off the thick lawn into the depths of the trees. Only thirty-seven and a half steps, she told herself as she hurried over fallen leaves and flimsy sticks to the tree house. She and her mother had counted the number once. Rosie had even made sure to account for the length of Willow’s stride instead of her own.

      And when Willow reached the base of the ladder that led up, she made the signal—three clicks of her flashlight. Then she waited, her eyes big and her heart rumbling. And without another moment of quiet, Rosie returned the signal and popped her head out the base of the tree house floor.

      Willow always wanted to zip up that ladder so badly at the sight of her mother, but she knew her loose knees were no match for the rickety wooden rungs. She was barely able to keep herself upright on the smooth ground of the fifth-grade hallway, let alone an old ladder. So she took her time wrapping her fingers around each wooden rung and then gripping her tightest grip as she carefully let her feet climb up slowly, one step at a time.

      And