Chapter 7: It Was Him

Willow's Pov

I had only one suitcase, but it was heavy. I’d grabbed some clothes, but mostly, I’d grabbed the notebooks hidden in the back of my closet.

They were thick notebooks, and the heavy notebooks weighed down the suitcase.

My mother had left the notebooks to me in her will. My father didn’t seem to care about the notebooks. Maybe he didn’t know what was in them. I did, though.

Those notebooks were precious. They contained all of my mother’s perfume recipes, as well as detailed instructions about the different perfumes.

When my father and I had our falling out, he gave the company to Beatrice. It had shocked me, of course. Since Beatrice was his illegitimate child.

I had my mother’s notebooks, though, and I’d held on to them for all these years.

Now, as I walked down the street and away from my past life, those notebooks were my only chance to turn things around for myself.

They held the keys to my new perfume studio, figuratively speaking.

Beatrice didn’t know about these recipes. I didn’t have much money, but I had enough to get started. I had no idea where I was going to live, or how I was going to build a company from my meager savings account.

But none of that mattered.

I had the notebooks, so I had hope.

So heavy as they were, I continued dragging my suitcase down the street.

The sun was hot, and my forehead was sweating. I was still wearing the stupid designer dress I’d bought to impress Logan. It was satin though, and it clung to my sweaty body as I walked on.

Suddenly, the suitcase dug into the ground, causing me to come to an abrupt stop.

“What in the world?” I said out loud as I bent down to examine the suitcase. I saw the culprit. A wheel had broken off.

“Well this is just great,” I sighed. Without the wheel, the suitcase would be almost impossible to take with me.

It was the last straw, the final incident in the series of misfortunes that had been my life for the past twenty-four hours.

Like the wheel, I broke too. Tears streamed down my face as I found the wheel, sat down on the curb, and tried to fix it.

It wouldn’t reattach though. It just kept spinning off.

People stared at me as they passed by, but I didn’t care. I had to fix the wheel, so I focused all my energy on that.

That is… until I heard it.

The loud rumbling of a school bus.

“Please God, no,” I whispered.

I looked up, praying that it was some other bus. But one glance at the driver and I knew it was Leo’s bus.

The light turned red and the bus stopped, almost directly in front of me.

I guess fate wasn’t done with me yet; I still had further humiliation to bear.

I saw Leo’s face in the window above me.

I tried to swipe the tears from my face as I stood up. Leo turned his head and saw me, so I waved at him and forced a smile.

All the windows on the bus were down to let in the breeze.

Leo furrowed his eyes, looked me up and down, and then turned his head.

I knew what I looked like, a sweaty mess in a red dress with a broken suitcase and a tear-stained face.

“Is that you Mom?” I heard his friend, Tommy, ask.

Leo shook his head.

“Nah,” he told Tommy dismissively. “That’s just our housekeeper.”

Ouch.

I withdrew my waving hand and averted my eyes. I heard the bus drive off.

My heart ached, but I continued to wipe away my tears with more resolve this time.

I had to fix this wheel. There was no point sitting here crying over a broken suitcase. I had to keep moving forward.

So, I sat back down and aligned the wheel. But before I could put it in place, it slipped from my hand.

I watched it roll away from me, towards the storm drain.

“No,” I said, reaching for the wheel.

But I was too late.

The wheel rolled right into the drain.

Now what was I supposed to do? I had a broken suitcase full of important, but very heavy, notebooks and my stupid wheel just fell down the stupid storm drain.

Seeing no other options, I went over the drain and lifted off the metal grate. Then I laid down on my stomach and used my phone’s flashlight to find the wheel.

It was just out of my reach.

Fresh tears of frustration sprung to my eyes. Suddenly, though, a luxury car pulled up. It was a flashy BMW, with gold-plated rims and a sleek, black finish.

“Why is that car stopping on the side of the street? The light’s green,” I thought to myself. 

I couldn’t care less anymore. If I couldn’t find the wheel, I’d have no choice but to drag the suitcase along, and it was way too heavy. 

So I went all in. If my hand couldn’t reach it, then I’d sprawl flat on the floor if I had to. 

With my cheek pressed against the cold ground and my hair falling messily into my face, I stretched desperately for the wheel. 

Just then, a man in a tailored suit stepped out of the car I had seen earlier and stopped in front of me. 

He bent slightly, his voice low and polite, asking,“do you… need a hand?” 

I froze, my face burning as I slowly lifted my head. The moment our eyes met, I wished I could disappear into the ground. 

No time to dig, maybe I could just crawl into this drainage ditch. 

Because It was him. The handsome man who had complimented me on the street just last night.