Embrace the Sky | ✔

3 | baby's breath

Despite her slumped little shoulders and quivering lips, Diamond picked her head up from the ground at the sight of the glass door of the tall burgundy brick building before her and Rae. They'd finally arrived home, after one whole hour and a half at their local supermarket. Rae had taken her sweet time wandering through every aisle in search of the pre-made pizza dough she needed for tonight's dinner, dropping tons of other things in the shopping cart as she went; pineapples, potatoes, rice, kidney beans, cereal, milk, eggs, grapes, you name it. Rae just couldn't help it. Though the fridge at home wasn't empty enough to shop altogether for groceries, the deals and discounts for the week were far too tempting── it's not every day that prices drop to such drastic levels and the cashier accepts coupons in addition to them── to the point that, by the time she found the pizza dough, the cart was hard to push around due to its weight.

Now, as she staggered up the concrete, uneven doorsteps because of all the vicious pulling the plastic bags from FoodShop were doing on her tired arms, Rae was facing the consequences. She not only had to keep the muscles in her arms tensed to fight against the bags' pulling, she had to maneuver her way around them so as not to have her hips pummeled by the gallon of milk on her right side, and be mindful of her pace. The bags threatened to break apart at any moment, they couldn't hold their own.

And she had a whole flight of stairs to look forward to once she and Rae get in the building, before they could even reach their apartment. They lived on the fifth floor. And the elevators had yet to get fixed since last month's short circuit problem that kept two of her neighbors stuck in the small, empty space between those four claustrophobic walls for just short of thirty-six minutes. Things would've been easier had she at the very least had her utility cart in the trunk of her car so that she could haul it up the stairs with all the groceries instead of having them hang on her shoulders and arms, but last night she'd brought the cart home for a reason she could no longer remember.

Amazing, really. Truly.

But Rae knew that once all of the groceries she carried were in the comfort of her home and more than anything, off of her, she would be proud of her efforts and grin at the thought of all the extra dollars she'd saved and could leave resting in the bank. There would be more to transfer over on Friday to the savings account she'd been setting up since forever for the Destiny Diamond of ten years from now.

The young Destiny Diamond skipped her way up the doorsteps and only turned to look behind her once there were no more steps to skip over. She gripped onto the egg carton on her gloved hands as she waited for her mother to reach the top and skidded one of her sneakers against the grayish grime, snow, and salt crystals beneath her. Her face was as glum as it'd been on their way to the supermarket and the supermarket itself, but her muddy brown eyes were starting to go back to their usual lively glow.

Rae sighed. "I told you to be careful with the eggs."

"I know Ma. I am," Diamond replied.

"Then why are you holding them like that? Loosen the grip."

Diamond made eye contact with the matching pair in front of her after looking down at her hands. "Like this?" She pursed her lips, opened the carton, and showed them to the staggering Rae. "Mama they're fine. See, see?"

All of the eggs were in pristine condition, lined up in rows of six. Exactly as they'd been when Rae checked each and every one of them for cracks in FoodShop. Rae wrinkled her nose. "Fine, fine. Close them already."

A cheeky smile crossed Diamond's face as she closed the carton of eggs. Rae couldn't help but roll her eyes and chuckle at that, but she made sure to look down at the snow-covered ground as she did so. Hopefully the howling of the wind covered up the sound she'd made. She couldn't let Diamond know she won her mother over with something as simple as a shit-eating grin. Rae didn't like it when others saw her lose or be wrong about anything, period. Nevertheless the eight-year-old-going-on-nine she'd given birth to and raised. It doesn't necessarily make her blood boil, but it did poke at her ego in some way or another. In this case, it amused her, too. It left a funny, bitter taste in her mouth.