Page 55 of Picking Daisies on Sundays

I kicked my heels off, blew my nose, and pulled the skirts up onto the couch with me. Gabe and Jia ran around the first floor like fairy godmothers, grabbing me various things: tissues, makeup wipes, and pizza. The gratitude I felt to have them in my life was so overwhelming during moments like these that I almost began crying again. They were there for every instance where Dad would’ve been. The crying, the ranting, the complaining, the congratulations, the laughter. They became my family when I moved away from home.

“This doesn’t make sense, Dani. Something needed to have triggered this. There’s no way the man would’ve kissed you and then decided suddenly he didn’t want to,” Gabe explained with frustration.

“She said Bella was standing right there,” Jia argued. “There’s your trigger! This is all for her, remember!”Ouch, that hurt.

“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Gabe shook his head. “Does he have any qualms with the French?”

Jia and I gave him a questionable look.

Gabe huffed and explained. “It didn’t sound like he was happy about the Paris situation.”

I shook my head in disagreement. “Levi’s dreamed of going to Paris for years. He speaks French fluently.” The blue silk of the dress folded up around my knees like waves. I brushed them down in thought.

I needed to be honest with myself. “The kiss was a mistake. I let my feelings take over and—”

“But Dani, he kissedyou,” Gabe urged with exasperation.

“It was in the heat of the moment. We were dressed up and we had been dancing. It happened whether or not he had planned it, and now it’s over. Tomorrow, things will go back to normal as if it had never happened.” I needed comfort in the fact that I knew what to do next.

Gabe and Jia exchanged looks but I didn’t have the energy to

explain more. I rubbed my eyes and began to speak thoughtlessly.

“I almost told him I love him.”

“Oh no, this is too early in the romance movie plot for you to be confessing your love to him. That’s not supposed to happen until at least the last thirty minutes of the movie,” Gabe commented.

“If I’m part of a romance movie plot, then Levi and Bella are the stars. Jia said it herself when I agreed to all of this.” I sighed. “I thought your 20s was supposed to be about finding yourself and traveling and making these big career moves—not missing a guy, eating pizza on the couch, and still crying over insecurities from high school.”

“Did you not watchSex and the City? That shit keeps going until your 40,” Gabe replied. I groaned in response.

There was a lull in the conversation where no one knew what to say next. Until Jia cleared her throat and looked at me with a face that told me she was serious.

“My father always says this Korean proverb when me or my brothers have a problem,” she thought for a moment and then spoke slowly in Korean. “It translates to English asat the end of hardship comes happiness.”

I leaned over and squeezed her hand for her comfort and whisperedI love you.

I just didn’t know how to tell her that it felt as if the hardships weren’t nearing an end.

I sat down at my desk in an old T-shirt and pajama pants after Gabe and Jia left, opening my laptop to start typing. Not an email

to Dad though.

The Lazaro application glowed on my screen, blank, waiting for an essay to be filled in. I could’ve painted this screen on a canvas because of how often I stared at it.

Write about a pivotal time in your life that sparked growth and why.

But I didn’t feel annoyance looking at it this time. Instead, I thought on what Levi said about making my essay unique to me. So, I thought of the one thing that always made me stick out: my insecurities, imperfections, and failures. I wrote about every failure I experienced.

The time Jack Huntington made fun of my clothes, so I went home, watchedBreakfast at Tiffany’s, and then created a (very rough) replica of the classic, black Givenchy dress Audrey Hepburn wore.

The instance in which I didn’t get into a design summer program and spent the warm months drawing up twenty-nine dresses that I would later create for girls for prom.

I wrote about when Dad was first diagnosed and we watched every episode ofProject Runwayat the hospital together when I visited, learning sewing techniques and working with models and makeup artists.

When I saw Levi kissing someone and my heart broke. So I cut out hearts from crimson red satin and sewed them into a gown with delicately embroidered cursive sonnets, which I ended up submitting as my final piece for my college applications.

I wrote about every instance in which I experienced loss, and how I came back from it.