His Favorite Flower

Chapter 22

Junior year had officially ended and summer break started. The days became longer and the heat waded in slowly. I spent most of June with my mom and grandma, we lived at her place in the beginning and then at the end of June is when I went camping with Ivy and her parents.

I hung out with Rose a few times, simple hangouts and mostly with Ivy accompanying as well. I even hung out with Dahlia once when ran into her and Rose at the frozen yogurt place.

Some days were simple, boring you could say. When Mom worked almost all day and I had no one to hang out with I would instead go to the diner, seeing Alex work. He worked more as we didn't have school, but I still saw him a lot.

When I would go there I would be served by Iris who previously got rejected but by her attitude, would have no way of showing it. I noticed whenever Iris and Alex interacted, Iris still had great confidence. She mentioned that her feelings weren't going away soon enough.

She will be entering her first year in college in the fall.

Despite how much Iris and Alex saw each other, I thought maybe Alex could gain some feelings towards her. Anytime I brought it up, he shot it down. I was very wrong.

In July, Ben, Ivy and I frequented the pool, arcade, and theme parks as much as we could. Ben would stay with his father for the majority of July. After he came back, he spent his time with Ivy, having a picnic almost every week.

Whenever I would feel lonely I would go to the diner. There I would eat the same thing and converse with Iris. One time Alex waited on me and I stop teasing him on how he was serving me. It felt much like a reward for all the suffering of the math tests.

We would always walk back home after his shift and one night, after leaving the diner, we stumbled upon a cat. A pregnant cat. I worried so much for it that I convinced Alex to help the cat more comfortably. There wasn't a pet clinic anywhere near so I bought a kiddie pool and some blankets and brought the cat into my home. Mom wasn't home, so that was an interesting conversation that awaited me.

Alex and I gathered up all the supplies and I researched all the ways to help with the pregnancy. After one, two, three, and four kittens were birthed I couldn't stop smiling.

"Are you crying?" Alex asked concerned.

"They're just so cute" I said grabbing a tissue. "What should we name them?"

"Name them? Are you going to keep all of them?"

"Probably not, my mom wouldn't stand for it" I respond. "But we can still name them. There's two girls and two boys"

"Mmm how about Thorn for one of the boys. That's a cool name" Alex suggested.

"I like it, and for the girls, what do you think of Peaches and Bay?"

"Bay?" Alex asked.

"Yeah like bay leaves" I say.

"It's great and for the last one" Alex says softly petting the kitten. " Foxglove"

"Floxglove?" I questioned.

"It's a plant, my mom currently has those sitting in a vase in our kitchen. I heard her say the name of it and I thought it was a cool name. I just remembered it" Alex gleamed.

"Foxglove it is"

After cleaning up a bit, Alex offered to say a while longer to help explain to my mom why there were cats in our living room but I sent him home. When my mom finally came home, the conversation was interesting. However by the end of it, we ended up deciding to keep one of the kittens and the mom cat.