Inevitable (Book One)

Chapter 43

Lyla

I watch Shawn drive down the street until he's out of view. I wipe the few tears from my cheeks as I head back into the house. I feel so empty all of a sudden. I want to call him and tell him to turnaround and come back. He's been gone one minute and already I'm reminiscing of the feeling of his arms around me. I shake my head as I will myself to get some self-control. I head back inside and finish wrapping the last few gifts and put them under the tree. I notice the two gifts Shawn got my parents sitting there as well and I smile at how sweet my boyfriend is. I glance down at my phone and it's just past ten o'clock.

I have been happy to see no more calls from the mysterious unknown number have come in since Shawn answered the last one the other morning. I decide to head over to my cousins and help my parents with the parade prep. I am hoping it'll be the perfect distraction to keep my mind off missing Shawn. I get dressed and go to leave the house when I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. It's a text from Shawn.

S: I miss you already.

L: I miss you too. No texting and driving though! Let me know when you get to your dads.

I don't get a reply and I know it's because of my order to not text and drive. I head over to my cousins, taking my parents other vehicle. When I arrive I am greeted by everyone with quick hugs before I am immediately put to work. It ends up not being the greatest distraction in the end. All my cousins pepper me with questions about Shawn. Then when I am left to my own company he's all I can think about.

Around three thirty I get a text from Shawn letting me know he made it to his dads house. We message back and forth about the drive and my day so far. My mom calls me to help her get the candy canes ready in baskets to be handed out and I am back to work. My aunt and uncle, whose house we're at, order Chinese food for dinner and we all pass around the different trays and pile up plates.

Suddenly, I'm being rushed as apparently we're running late for the parade now. Everyone scrambles around the house, running bins and baskets of decorations out to the cars. My aunt thrusts a large bin of different colored tinsel into my arms and I clumsily wobble out to the car with it. I ride with three of my cousins downtown. When we get there, we carry all our supplies to a meeting area where there are about nine or ten small floats already lined up on the street ready to go. The final one has Santa's sled, although it's unoccupied at the time. My uncle is riding in with my parents and he's already got the Santa suit on and is ready to go. My cousins and I will be walking along with the parade and tossing out candy canes to the crowd.

I take the small bit of free time I have before my mom shows up and starts ordering me around again to text Shawn. I have two messages on my phone waiting from him, the last letting me know he was heading out to meet some of his friends for drinks. I let him know I'm at the parade and even send a quick selfie with my Santa hat on. My mom barks an order my way and I realize she has arrived and I slide my phone back into my pocket. We all race around getting everything ready to try and start on time. One of the floats is setup with a bunch of speakers and they start to play some Christmas music and that is our queue to start moving.

As we round the corner and start to head down Main Street, I can see the crowd of people lining the sidewalks all the way down the road. I toss small handfuls of candy canes into the crowd and watch as little kids race around trying to catch them or swipe them off the ground quickly. We do basically a loop of the downtown block and then end back where we started, all the floats coming to a stop along with the music. Start to finish we took about an hour and I get no rest as we are told to start packing things up.

By the time we finish cleaning everything up I am drained as I climb into my parents car by myself. My cousins didn't need a ride back to their house so I just told my parents I would meet them back home. The clock on the dash of the car shows it's almost midnight and I yawn obnoxiously as I start the vehicle and crank the heat up. I didn't realize how sleepy I was until now as I sit in the driver's seat waiting for the car to warm up. I check my phone and see a few messages from Shawn. The first commenting on how cute I look with my Santa hat on and they progressively seem to get a bit drunker as they go, with a few spelling mistakes in the most recent two.