In the pamphlets, The Grand Hotel Fleurette looked like an old Victorian castle with bleached bricks, surrounded by tall trees, endless hills, and dying flowers. When you were standing on its steps, it looked like a palace. It was beige in color and its architecture was more than elegant. It sat in the center of a beautiful, drawn out garden.
My parents had planned to send me here for a simple reason; rehabilitation. I had been abusing hallucinogenic drugs for a long while before they finally brought their concern to my attention. I was shocked when they said they planned to send me away. I would be lying if I said I was still not shocked.
I was still, as I was when they first told me, in a sort of denial. Mostly, you would think, because of the Grand Hotel in general, but that was not the only reason. There was a girl. Her name was Sara. I believe that I fell in love with her when she relaxed the Velcro on her lips and smiled in my direction.
Sara reminded me of a flower. She was just like the pink geraniums my mother grew in her garden back at home. Sara would only wear pink dresses. They would flow around her body like petals. She was of a sickly complexion, ghostly pale with green undertones. Her small veins decorated her skin. Sara was tall and slim. Her legs were drawn out like stems and her knobby knees bent out like thorns. I was drawn to her like a bumble bee.
I first saw her on my second night. I remember being toured throughout the area the rehab was surrounded by. My sponsor led me to the garden and I was greeted by the most exquisite frame of a girl and her beautiful smile. She sat on a marble bench just barely covered by geraniums, marigolds, and roses. Her dress hung loosely on her bones and fell in pools on the ground. When she walked over to greet us, her dress dragged on the floor. Her hair was tied loosely together. There were purple bags under her eyes. She was like a dream.
After that day, there was nonstop chatter. Every night I would go back to the garden to sit with Sara in the moon. She’d talk about her mother and her florist shop. I’d talk about my father and his landscaping company. We would have long conversations about everything but the obvious; why we were there. It was easier to avoid the elephant in the room than to confront it, so we avoided it like the plague and carried on with our days.
Nights with Sara were so comfortable. Sometimes, we'd go on walks. We'd end up in places I'd never seen, but we'd always end up back in the garden, and I'd always wake back up in bed without Sara. I would get up and search the hotel for her, but I'd only ever find her at night in the garden. I had assumed she had day long treatments or programs.
It went on like this for a long time. I'd wake up alone, spend my day chasing her with no luck, and then find her in the evenings in the garden. It was routine for what seemed to be weeks, maybe months even. One night, Sarah seemed distant from me. She was silent for the most part. She continued to act like this for several days. She was changing towards me.
A few nights later, I asked her what was going on like I had every night. Instead of an answer, she took my hand, led me outside down a walkway, and towards a lake. Sara sat on the grass in front of the lake. I stood behind her, starring at her profile in the moonlight. She peeked over her shoulder and nodded for me to come sit by her. I slide into the grass by her and she looks at me.
“Why do we avoid the issue?” she asks me.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve talked about everything in the world there is to talk about except why we’ve ended up here.”
“There’s never been a need to talk about it, yanno,” I said to her.
“Yeah, but, what if there is a need. We have this barrier up between us. It’s like a line drawn and we never cross it. It’s like a bad word to us. It’s not that big of a deal, honestly!”
Sara is more afraid of hearing herself talk about the big why than I am. My truth was simple, and I had tried to tell her several times. She would always quiet me and say we had to experience this moment of ignorant bliss before it disappeared, before everything we had disappeared. My reason didn't seem as terrible as I think she believed it to be. I was a boy who got to comfortable with hallucinogens. So much so, I would create worlds to escape into. I couldn't see what was so worrisome about that, especially since I was getting better.
Sara took small shallow breaths like she was nervous. I put my hand on her arm and told her everything was okay. I told her everything about my situation. I told her what lead me to my arrival and how the idea of rehabilitation had come about. I told her all I could.
She looked at me and smiled.
"I'm glad you've admitted this to me, Jakob. I really am."
I just smiled back at her. Sara went to open her mouth, but I stopped her before she said anything. It's not that I didn't want to know why she was here, I just didn't think she was ready to tell me.
"Let's save it for another night, yeah? You can tell me whenever you want. When you're not under pressure. I want it to feel right."
Sara nodded. She wasn't one for words. She spoke to me through gestures usually. Her next gesture, specifically, threw me off of my guard. She rose to her feet, helped me to mine, and led me back to her room in the hotel.
It was different. The walls were all white with small painted flowers here and there. the floor was some sort of pale wood. She had many windows and tons of vases filled with the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen. Other than that, it was bare. She took my hand in hers and took me to her bed. The sheets were white, like the room, but they were wonderful.
This was bliss. Sara and I were wrapped in fluffy white blankets. We stayed up through the night until the sun was pouring onto the walls. Sara was glowing. Everything was gentle and warm. We lay next to one another staring at each other’s faces. Every time I looked at her, it was like the very first time all over again. With Sara, everything was always new. Every moment and memory I would assume was déjà vu, it was like a new experience. She ignited a fire in me.
In this bed, it felt like we were floating. Our love was a zero gravity atmosphere. I held her so gently, like she might break. She tells me she isn’t made of glass, but she is. She’s skin and bones and sunlight. Sara is nothing more than a wisp of a girl and a violent need to feel all of the time. I wonder if she knows it’s okay not to feel sometimes. I wonder if she’s too afraid to feel nothing. We are nothing but opposites but somehow we stitched parts of ourselves into each other and now it’s like we can’t be on our own. I never want to be without her.
Sara and I stay like this until the sun goes down. She lets her fingers dance against my skin like a flower swaying in the wind. My hand ghosts over her shoulder. She smiles at me. My heart beats in slow motion in my chest. I want to tell her how much I love her, and I do. There are tears in her eyes by the time I tell her how much more I like living now that she’s here with me. I love the high I feel when I am with her. Sara cries while I hold her. Eventually, she loses so much energy she just falls asleep.
Sara breathes quietly against my chest. I hold her closer to me than normal like she’ll slip through my fingers if I fall asleep. Our bodies pump air in and out of our lungs as we remain molded against each other. My body is beginning to grow lighter and lighter and my eyes lids are heavily drooping. I feel content here with Sara. I feel like I’m in a dream.
Sara wakes up and smiles against my collarbone. She mumbles something just barely coherent. I poke her nose and she wrinkles it.
“Come on, Jakob. Go to sleep. Get some rest,” she says to me, pleadingly.
“Will you be here with me when I wake up in the morning?” I ask her with an honest curiosity.
“Maybe I will, maybe I wont,” she says. “You’ll find out when you wake up, wont you?”
She grins at me. I give in to her plead. She snuggles closer against me and I wrap myself around her. It doesn’t take long before she falls asleep. I squeeze her a little tighter and fall asleep with her. 
I woke up on my bed at home. It didn’t take me long to figure this out. My sheets were like stiff sandpaper compared to the white clouds of blankets at the Grand Hotel Fleurette. It was much more than a rude awakening. Normally, I would frantically search my bed for her, but I had done this many times before. I had woken up at home, outside of my mental haze, alone in bed. I used to wake up panicking, checking the house for anything to prove she was here. It was different this time. I looked at my alarm clock. It was 3:00 PM. My line of vision was directed at the pillow next to me, the one she would lay her head on and smile in her sleep. In her place, a pink geranium lay. My poor mother has dealt with me plucking these flowers from her garden in my moments of hallucinogenic bliss for months.
I got up out of bed wearing the same clothes I put on last night. It was still dank with the smell of drugs and what seemed to be vomit. When I first saw the sun, I shielded my eyes. I stumbled down the stairs and turned the corner into the kitchen. My mother was placing pink geraniums into a slim, pale green vase in the center of our table. I stood there confused.
“Mom…,” I said unsurely. She made a noise to signal me to continue. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, honey, I’m changing things up a bit. Dad and I are replenishing the garden. I had to do something with the left over geraniums.”
My dad walked into the kitchen covered in soil, holding a box full of the pink flowers. He placed it down on the counter and kissed my mother’s cheek.
“Hey, Jakob. How do you feel this morning?”
“I’m good, dad. I’m alright,” I said unsurely.
My mother looked up at me smiling.
“What’s in your hand, tiger?” my mother asked.
I held out the pink geranium between my fingertips and forced an ashamed smile. I looked down at my shoes and practiced breathing. It took me a couple of minutes before I broke the silence.
“So, this rehab thing, how long is the program?”
“As long as it takes for you to get better, honey,” my mother said reassuringly.
“I think I’m ready to go now,” I told them.