BTS Book Reviews Issue 18 | Page 36

| The Flower and the Flame By Lexi Adair | slight chill to the air, the last fingers of winter trying to hang on as the season slipped away. Madison gave a little shiver as she sat down at the sidewalk table outside the corner café. She wished she had thought to bring a sweater. She wrapped her hands around her warm latte then sipped, letting it chase the chill away. “You know what your problem is?” Sara asked before sipping from her own coffee. “No,” Madison murmured between sips. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.” “You don’t wait for things to bloom.” Oh, this was going to be good. She just knew it. “What things?” “Well,” Sara said as she slipped a rose from the vase on the table. “Take this flower for instance. How do you think it got to be a flower?” Madison’s brow furrowed as she studied the yellow rose. “What do you mean, how did it get to be a flower? It just grew.” “It was once a tiny seed. It needed soil to nourish it, water to strengthen it, and sunlight to make it bloom.” Sara drew her fingertip softly over one of the petals before she slipped it back into the vase. Madison smiled playfully. “Have you gone off your meds?” Sara huffed out a laugh. “I just mean love is like a flower. It doesn’t bloom overnight.” “Ah.” Madison toyed with the sleeve on her coffee cup. “And you think I didn’t let things bloom with Jeff.” “I’m not talking about Jeff. There was never a chance that things were going to bloom with him. His seed was already planted in someone else’s garden.” Madison laughed then sipped from her coffee. So maybe her affair with Jeff hadn’t been perfect, after all he belonged to another woman—not that she had known that when they started seeing other. But it had been passionate. Wasn’t that how love was supposed to be? Wild and passionate, a whirlwind of romance. “Passion is like a match.” Sara leaned across the table, her gaze settling on Madison’s down-turned face. “I thought you said it was like a flower.” Madison brought her gaze to rest on her friend’s face. “No, I said love was like a flower. But passion, that sweep-you-off-your-feet sensation is fleeting. Like a match. It burns hot, it burns bright, and it burns up quick.” “I’m not following.” “That’s what you had with Jeff. It was hot, it was bright, but it was fleeting. Aside from the fact that he was married, it would have never lasted because that kind of heat will eventually burn itself out.” “So you’re saying I need to quit playing with fire?” Madison cocked a smile. “I’m saying that you should look for the flower.” *** Even as Madison turned down the hallway of her building, she still had no idea what exactly Sara had been talking about. Flowers and fire, love and passion. They weren’t so different in her mind. What was love without passion? Sure, maybe passion was fleeting, but fleeting was better than nothing. No matter how disastrous her affair with Jeff had been, she had had it, at least for a moment. She slipped her key into the door and found it was