Floriography: Red Roses
Chapter 23
“I've been over twenty-one years! I'm legal!” Tracy pouting. Jasper was clearly holding back his laughter
until his face was red. For some reason whenever Tracy talked to Jasper, Tracy could imagine that she could choose someone to be reborn as her Big Brother, that person was Jasper.
“Oh yes? Where's your boyfriend legal, Tracy? Come on, it's time you thought about marriage.” Jasper raised his eyebrows. Tracy's getting sullen.
“About you're engaged, don't kira—“
“Lho, who was Tracy's boyfriend, Jasp. Why aren't you sensitive?” Louis hit Jasper's arm playfully. Jasper looked up and looked in the direction where Steve was going. But the taxi Steve was driving was long gone.
“That was it?” Jasper shut his mouth. “I don't think you're feeling—“
“Hey! Steve is handsome for me!” Tracy replied without thinking. He wanted to pat his forehead and run into hiding after that. If this conversation were to happen only in front of Jasper, Tracy would not matter, as everyone knows, Jasper is already like her own brother. But Louis— who held back his laughter from earlier listened very carefully.
“Oh, it's not her face that's a problem, Trace, my goodness. But you're a model, if you stand with a stiletto next to it, you'll be taller than him.” Jasper clicked his tongue.
“Ugh, I'm not a model.” Tracy rolled her eyeballs.
“Your body is like a model, at least you need to realize it early on.” Jasper laughed, then looked in the direction
Louis, and an idea flashed through his head.
“Oh! How about you just be with him.” Jasper landed his hand on Louis' shoulder. Tracy frowned, and threw an expression of disdain unintentionally.
“Dia?” Tracy asked, pointing at Louis.
Louis snorted and imitated Tracy's face and pointed back at her with his shoulders raised, making her look like a gremlin. “Dia?!”
“Hey, don't be hypocritical. At least from your physical size fits not main.” Jasper took a step back to pay attention to Tracy and Louis. They looked at each other with disgust.
“This time is neither the face nor the height of the problem, he's a jerk.” Tracy pointed at Louis with her thumb.
Louis snorted, “I think the capacity of the curse you gave me has crossed the safe line, miss. From now on there will be a sweat jar and every time you curse me you have to buy me fancy food.” Louis ruffled his waist.
“Fancy food? Cih.” Tracy imitates Louis and sneers at him. “Don't make that an excuse so you can date me.” Tracy's been shaking her waist.
“What did you say?!” Their voices grew increasingly shrill.
“Are you not aware we're on the side of the road and you two are fighting like children now?” Jasperjust shut his mouth holding back a laugh. Tracy and Louis looked around and found one, two people looking at them watching.
“Manson... child base.” Louis patted his forehead.
“Say Jasper, you too, little boy! I'm legal anyway!” Tracy still stresses that.
“I'm also far from legal, little boy. Don't be rude to this older me.” Louis clicked his tongue and walked closer towards Tracy.
“OH? Is that so? Grandpa Louis?”
“Wah they start again.” Jasper whispered to himself. “My dear friends, I want to go home before I count your friends and get evicted to the nearest police station, okay? Please don't burn his office.” Jasper quickly walked away toward his car.
“OK! Okay fine! Be careful on the road! Hugged Violetta for me!” Tracy waved at Jasper.
“Cih, hug Violetta for me~” Louis imitates Tracy while sneering in a small voice. Tracy waved her hand at Louis who was slightly behind her while her eyes still looked at Jasper. Louis avoided the blow in time. He pushes Tracy into the office by force.
“Come in, son, outside cold.” Louis said and closed his office door and turned on the lights.
Tracy growling.
“I still can't believe, Jasper can be cool, eccentric, and cool to have friends like you who are cute, jerk and brash.” Tracy looked at Louis.
“Cupu?? Cupu said you??” Louis raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
“Iya. So you agree a little bit, don't you, you jerk and brash?” Tracy was copying Louis's face.
Louis wiggled his small shoulders while curling his lips down.
“H…. From time to time. Yuk, to the top.” Louis walks up the stairs but Tracy manages to hold his arm this time.
“Eh? Top where?”
“Lho? Don't you still need help moving?”
“Already tidied up by Steve, you are not needed too much!” Tracy smiled proudly.
“Really? Six boxes tidied up in three hours, I'm not sure. This floor hasn't been swept yet, has it? I have more doubts about the second floor.”
Tracy was growling, right, now her nose is itching.
“Floors one and two let the cleaning staff take care of tomorrow. But there are only three books that I need
tidy up, so if you want to go home please.”
Louis's eyes suddenly sparkled.
“Which is true, I'm not sure you're the type of man who reads books.”
Louis rolled his eyeballs. “Many things one can be sure of but turn out to be wrong in the end. Ayolaaaahhh, I'm lazy to go homehh.” Louis whining. It turns out that guy has a side like this. Tracy hissing.
“Ugh! Yasuda! Hop on! You are like a child.”
Louis laughed in satisfaction and walked up. The location of the box containing the book was not far from the stairs, because the bookshelf
not far from the stairs either. Violetta kept two large and tall bookshelves in white. There are a few books, not many. Tracy already keeps them in the bottom left corner for easy discovery.
“So...” Louis directly sat cross-legged on that wood-lined floor, folding his long legs in a stylish manner
he looked uncomfortable and put his hand on one of the boxes in front of him. “This?”
Tracy shrugged her shoulders and sat down in front of Louis. “Ya, just open it. I also don't know which one contains what.”
Louis opened the box and Tracy almost breathed a sigh of surprise. Fate says the first dus that Louis should open is the one containing Tracy's book.
“Oh...” Louis took one, and immediately smiled.
“Bipolar…. By Tracy Manson.” Read Louis slowly and flip the black and white book.
“Chrissy had no idea what was waiting for her when she met William. All he knew was that man
jerk—hey, it's not about me, is it?” Louis read the synopsis on the back of the book and immediately raised his face looking at Tracy to ask the rhetorical question.
“Read the year of publication, Grandpa. Are your eyes starting to get blurry too? Can I get you a blanket?”
Louis laughed mockingly, Tracy could see her eyes glancing at the year of her publication imprinted at the bottom. Bipolar was published three years ago.
“I mean cool too if you write about me.” Louis put the book on the shelf, to the second row from the bottom. Tracy was surprised. He had just planned to line up his book there. At least Louis is pretty useful to him now.
“Ah, if only it were that easy.” Tracy let out a sigh, leaned back with her hands as a pedestal and decided to watch Louis finish his book. The man seemed to be fine, at least for now because his eyes were still tracing the other Tracy books and reading the synopsis while chuckling at himself.
“Why? Isn't your new book even finished? I saw Gracy talk about it once if I don't remember it wrong.” Tracy's eyes looked at Louis's hand that entered his other book—Sandiwara—to the side of Bipolar.
“Yes, I got a writer’s block.”
“View in Japan yesterday did not help?”
Tracy raised her eyebrows, a little surprised. Louis turned out to be pretty decent, not too stupid about this.
“The problem is not there.” Tracy's tongue stopped. Louis had only known him for a few days, they had even just made peace and decided to be friends with each other right yesterday. Twenty-four hours less. But something about Louis made him comfortable telling anything, almost eleven twelve with Jasper and Violetta. But those two people had known him for a long time.
“Then? I don't want matches anyway, if it's personal for you don't need to be told, but just relax
with me. I'm not a person who likes to talk about one person to another.”
Tracy's eyebrows shot up again. Why does this guy read his mind?
“I've never dated.” Suddenly, the words came out of Tracy's tongue. Surprisingly, there was no shame at times
these. Tracy is always shy about telling people her arid love story, when she is a romance novelist.
“Iya, then?” Louis asked again. Nodding as her eyes continued to pay attention to Tracy's books one by one. But now he pays more attention to the beauty of the cover design.
Tracy grunting. What's wrong with this guy? A few days ago Tracy thought this man was the most
stereotypes and judgments he had encountered, but now he felt like he was chatting with the most open-minded person he had ever met.
“Yes, my novel romance novel. So the absence of my experience was a bit difficult for me to continue my novel this time.” Now Tracy's mind is raging. What he wants to talk about now is not about him, but about Louis. What kind of person is Louis?
“But your romance novels are already this much.” This time Louis raised his head. Patting the brush that he pulled until it stuck to his feet, then to the book he was holding. “You never write another genre, right? Never suddenly write a serial murder mystery story right?”
Tracy could not help but laugh. “No. But the main couple in the book were mostly taken from real stories. Like the White Rose Book for example, it is the story of Jasper and Violetta. So it's easy for me to understand both ways of thinking.”
“Then you ran out of people to interview?” Louis put the books back on the shelf. This time he did not pay too much attention to one-on-one too carefully even though he occasionally stopped to just read the title or admire the material of the book cover in his hands.
“Hmm. This book is more like.. If a Tracy Manson can choose his own love story, then this book is the story.” Tracy laughed bitterly. “But I don't have a love story yet, and the type of male lead in my book I rarely meet.”
“Steve?” Louis asked, moving on to the second dus.
“I don't know him that deep. Like I said we were just friends, it wasn't a lie.”
“Still friends.” Louis.
A question suddenly ran across Tracy's head, and her tongue was running faster than her brain when she said,
“Hey, falling in love is what it feels like?”
