Chapter 1: Flip-flops with white flowers

Blanca curled her toes in her flip flops. She pushed a sigh looking out the window. The May sun had given way to a pouring rain half an hour earlier and since that, it hasn't stopped . She was going to have to walk to the bus stop feet soaked. Maybe Jess would bring her back in the car. Or Gloria? Did Gloria hav a car? They had exchanged so few words since her back in this town because yes before being a Litchfield prison was a town.

A depressing town, ideal for setting up a prison complexe, forgoten there. A town where Gloria had opened this coffee shop. Something related to the Poussey Washington fund, aid granted to former inmates, that's what Jess explained to her when she came to get her the airport two weeks earlier.

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Jess also wore flip-flops, white with a flower on top. Her long blond hair fell on her shoulders, a few curls on the front of her green blouse. When she saw her, Blanca was seized with great emotion, not daybreak when she landed in Onduras and was finally reunited with Diablo, but still. To see her friend again, this girl with whom she had formed an unlikely friendship upon his arrival in the United States the transported her with joy.

"You haven't changed." said Jess approaching her gently.

She wrinkled her forehead as if she was trying to remember her face the last time she saw her. Blanca smiles.

"Maybe a little more maternal," added Jess. Blanca hugged her, the blonde's pointed hips colliding with its size. "Mi amiga," she said softly.

"My sister"? "Jess questioned with her little smile.

"Your Spanish is deplorable," said Blanca.

"ha, if we can no longer lauging. , Where's your suitcase? " ends up asking the blonde.

Blanca pointed to a travel bag on the floor next to her and grabbed it,before Jess takes it out of politeness. Jess grabbed her free arn and hugged her to make their way to the car. Blanca remembered for a moment that they were often doing this fifteen years earlier: in the schoolyard, to go buy snacks to snack on, to go to the bus stop that led to their respective jobs. Now, in the airport parking lot, their flip flops were slamming rhythm, and even after so long without seeing it, Blanca felt always linked to Jess.

"It's cute," she said, pointing the white flower at the tip of the flip flops .

"I wanted to pay homage to your daughter, and to you since the flower is white. And you, the flip flops in the plane, that's why? "

"Diana stashed my sneakers," said Blanca. "I was ready to leave, I thought they were sleeping Flora and her but when I'nwent to kiss them, Diana grabbed me by the arm and told me that I couldn't leave because barefoot people can take the plane. "

"And since you didn't want to miss your flight, did you sacrifice your sneakers?"

"Diana screamed when I told her I had to go. She said woke up his sister, and it took us 10 minutes to calm them down.

Diablo promised them they would spend the day on the beach with Mojito, and that they would have ice. And that tonight, the girls would skipe with mom. "

"Ha children!" said Jess, with a smile that said how much

she was glad her friend got what she had always wanted. Then she remained pensive for a moment, looking out of the window of her gray car, his left hand playing with the gear lever. Blanca changed the subject, she didn't want to ask for everything following the friend she had just found, where she was side there.

"And about Gary? Was the question she asked instead. A huge smile lit up the blonde girl's face.

XXX

Now sitting at the tables at the "Flaritza" for the book club Jess was no longer smiling. She spoke in a clear voice as usual, but from time to time she struggled to find her words, and when another participant intervened, her gaze immediately fell on the ceiling. His thoughts drifted away, away from the coffee cups, from the chocolate cake Blanca made, , far from Flaca's commentary on Liane Moriarty's book. Flaca

was there too, in this coffee shop. Wasn't it surreal? Blanca wondered when Jess would smile again, she wondered if she was still angry toward her for staying in the carwithout doing anything, this famous evening that had changed everything. And above all, Blanca is asked when she could go home, find Diablo and her two little girls.