Three Rusty Flowers

• Short story

								
The autumn air carried a sharp chill that pricked at their skin, but Rusty, Finn, and Delilah barely felt it as they trudged through the overgrown path that led to their secret clearing. It had been their spot since they were six, a place where scraped knees and wild dreams were born, and now, as seniors, it was where they sought refuge from the storm that brewed in their lives.

The three met the summer before First grade. Delilah moved to Cedar-falls with her mother after her and her father’s nasty divorce. Across the street from their new home was Rusty and his family. Delilah noticed the two right away, playing tag, laughing without care. Delilah only six, hadn’t laughed in a while. Before she knew it both boys made their way to her. “I’m Rusty and this is Finn, we’ve been friends since daycare” he said, in the most upbeat tone. “Wanna play with us”? Asked Finn, compassionately. After that day, the rest was history. The three of them spent everyday together since. And now they were in their last year of high school, the intense pressure of life creeping its way towards them. 

Delilah kicked at a stone, watching it bounce and skitter until it disappeared into the tall grass. Her dark eyes were sharp, filled with a restlessness she couldn’t shake. The weight of her mother’s resentment sat on her shoulders, always pressing, always there. Arguments at home had become a nightly routine; they fought over everything and nothing at all. Delilah was fire, and her mother was ice, and together they clashed until one of them shattered.

Rusty leaned against a tree, smirking as he watched Delilah. He was lean, his tousled hair falling into eyes that gleamed with mischief. Trouble was his shadow, following him wherever he went, whispering promises of rebellion. His parents, once artists full of passion and laughter, now drifted through life as if half-asleep, rarely noticing their son’s latest escapade or the girls who came and went from their house. He wore his trouble like a badge, but only Delilah and Finn saw the cracks beneath it.

Finn stood between them, ever the calm in their storm. His blue eyes were thoughtful, lips pressed into a line as he listened to their banter. To everyone else, Finn was perfect—a prodigy with a family legacy that was whispered about in the halls of their school. The boy who would one day become the fourth-generation surgeon. But beneath the surface, Finn felt the suffocation of expectations that weren’t his own. The thought of surrendering his dreams to an operating room made his chest tight, a cage built from his parents’ ambition.

“I swear, one day I’m just gonna pack up and leave,” Delilah muttered, breaking the silence. Her voice cracked, and she cursed under her breath.

Rusty chuckled, a sound that felt both comforting and infuriating. “Where would you even go, Lilah? You’d be bored within a week.”

Delilah glared at him, and for a moment, the space between them hummed with tension. It was the same tension that had been simmering for years, an unspoken, magnetic force that neither dared to acknowledge but couldn’t escape. Rusty’s smile faltered, and his eyes softened. For a heartbeat, there was no one else in the clearing but the two of them.

“Anywhere’s better than here,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

Finn shifted uncomfortably, his gaze flickering between his best friends. He had seen that look before, felt the unnameable ache that came with it. The truth was, he loved Delilah too, in a way that made him feel guilty every time his girlfriend, Caroline, looked at him with trusting eyes. Caroline wasn’t the best, but she had been his. But his love was tangled in years of friendship, blurred lines he couldn’t define. It festered in the spaces between what was said and what was left unsaid.

The months passed in a whirlwind of applications, late-night confessions, and fights that threatened to break them apart. Delilah’s anger flared like a wildfire, consuming everything in its path. She lashed out at Rusty when he came at the world with unseriousness, at Finn when he tried to play peacemaker. It was a wonder they stuck by her, but they always did. Codependent, the school counselor had called them once, after trouble Rusty caused them. It echoed in her mind, a word that sounded like both a blessing and a curse.

The first snow fell on a night when Finn sat alone in his room, studying for the test that would solidify his acceptance into the prestigious medical program his father had chosen for him. But his eyes kept drifting to his phone, to the picture of the three of them at the lake, arms thrown around each other, smiles wide. It felt like a lifetime ago. He wondered if love, real love, could ever be defined by boundaries, or if it was simply the blur of people who knew you better than you knew yourself.

Rusty found Delilah at their clearing, pacing like a caged animal. She spun around when she heard him, eyes wild.

“I can’t do this anymore, Rusty. I’m so tired,” she said, and the tremble in her voice gutted him.

He reached for her, but she flinched. The air between them crackled with something that felt like both danger and salvation. And then, before he could stop himself, he closed the distance and kissed her. It wasn’t soft or sweet; it was raw, a confession wrapped in desperation. When they pulled apart, she stared at him, breathing hard.

“Why?” she asked, tears threatening to spill.

He didn’t have an answer. He never did. 

The fallout was inevitable. Finn found out, and the look on his face was worse than any punch. The glue of their trio began to dissolve, leaving fractures that reached deep. The days blurred into a mess of apologies, silences, and lingering glances that only deepened the hurt.

Graduation came, and with it, the realization that they would be leaving behind not just their town but the safety of each other. Rusty, bound for a year of aimless travel to find something he couldn’t name. Delilah, heading to a city where she would rebuild herself away from her mother’s resentment and absent father’s shadow. Finn, surrendering to a future that felt like an obligation more than a calling.

The night before they parted ways, they sat at the clearing, the weight of unspoken words between them.

“I guess this is it,” Finn said, his voice steady but hollow.

“Not forever,” Rusty said, but even he didn’t believe it.

Delilah looked at them both, eyes bright with unshed tears. “We’ll always have this, right?”

They nodded, but they knew better. Life would pull them in different directions, and the people they would become might not recognize who they once were.

As dawn broke over the horizon, painting the sky with hues of gold and pink, they stood and walked away from the clearing, three silhouettes fading into the morning light, carrying the echoes of a childhood that could never be reclaimed.
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