“The sun was already setting when Charlie went outside. She gritted her teeth and put her hands in the rose bushes. The thorns cut her arms in a zig zag pattern. She could have gone inside and gotten something with long sleeves, but she didn’t.

She grabbed them by the roots and pulled with everything she had.

Charlie couldn’t remember the last time she had been so close to another human being.
Spread against another from foot to face. Lotte’s flushed face near hers.

Fuck. One of the thorns had created a deeper cut just under her elbow. She grabbed the
plastic bag with her free hand and put the gray, dead remnants of a rose bush in there. She looked
at the cut; a little stream of blood was following gravity and dripped on the ground.
Had Lotte seen Charlie throw a quick glance at her lips?

Charlie wiped her arm on the top of her jeans. She would get a band-aid later. She wanted
to get these bushes gone now. Everything dead in the garden had to go now.
Charlie didn’t think she could stand it any longer. She put both her hands on the next
bush and pulled. This one wouldn’t budge, so she grabbed her shovel. She put it on the root of
the rose, pushed down and put her foot on it.

She couldn’t believe she had ignored Lotte for the rest of the day. Avoiding eye contact.
Giving her the cold shoulder. I did it because otherwise she would have known. Charlie didn’t
want Lotte to know the strange feelings she was having.

She got the rose bush out of the ground with a groan and wrestled it into the plastic bag.
She would need to get more plastic bags. None of the rosebushes could be saved, that much was
clear now.

Sweat ran down her back, but it wasn’t enough. Charlie needed to do more. She needed
to do more to purge the image of Lotte’s sweet smile from behind her eyelids.
Thump.
Lotte’s eyes.
Drag.
Lotte’s hands and shoulders and arms.
Push.
Lotte sitting in her kitchen, drinking lemonade. Them talking.
Pull.
Charlie falling on top of Lotte. Charlie’s heart pumping so hard that Lotte probably felt it.
Cut.
Their mouths close.
Shear.
Lotte’s softness underneath her. Their breaths mingling.

“Ah!” Charlie pulled the last rose bush from the earth with such force, she fell
backwards, landing with a thump on her butt. In front of her stood seven empty holes. She had
cleared all the rose bushes.

Her butt hurt after hitting the ground, but she took no notice of that. Her chest was
heaving, her heart was pounding, and her T-shirt was sticky with sweat. She needed a shower.
Badly. Her hands were shaking. The thought of spending some time in the shower, under a hot

water stream while she was this fired up … She closed the plastic bags and gathered them in both
hands, then she hurried inside.”

This is an excerpt from my upcoming novel, “Another Charlotte” which will be out on January 23rd.