CAPACITY FOR WONDER. | alex albon

xvii. tendency to vanish

Kamri was right. It would've been strange for this statement not to be true, Kamri was always right. Since they were young, it had been the trait she had used as a definition of herself if anybody ever asked her to describe herself. 3 words they asked for, Kamri always, always, returned:

1. Hard-working,
2. Righteous,
3. Correct.

It was the most accurate 3-word description Juniper had ever heard because it was correct -- just as Kamri claimed to be.

"You're back soon. Something blow up in your face?"

"I wish that had literally happened," Juniper responded, "Might've been easier." Though her words were followed by a flippant shrug, her emotions were too close to the surface where she was inches away from fizzling over, the bubbles boiling underneath the aspect of herself that she showed the world.

Ultimately, that was why she had returned. Her parents would've caused her to erupt but their lack meant her escape to England encapsulated everything she wanted: Kamri, Lilia, and their hugs.

Lilia must've sensed her oldest sisters homecoming, Kamri's phone pinging with a message from the youngest of them. Some exclamation about how dare Juniper come back and tell Kamri instead of her.

Juniper supposed this was where a surprise would no longer work, for a reason she couldn't understand. She'd flown back commercially, not leeching from friends like Isla who made their way flying those who could afford it across the globe as she usually did. It was an easy enough move for her to make, she could play as an air hostess for a faster flight with no boarding queues or tireless airport motions. That hadn't happened this time though, her flight being as casual as the ones she had taken when she flew back and forth between England and Monaco with Alex.

Alex.

He could be associated with too much, Juniper deemed, even having shared her sisters with him in some capacity, even they could remind her of him, and airports, and hills, and stars, and parties, and stupid calligraphy pens, paint-covered cuffs, special friendships -- Lando, George, Charlotte, Charles, Pierre.

But this, she couldn't explain how he'd have a hand in it.

It was like Lilia had gotten her information from some outside source, and Juniper theorised if she ever became recognisable through affiliation or her own work, that this lack of privacy would annoy her more than anything. It was a silly aspect to think about, she knew Charles and Pierre through association but it was so light in the media that a white crayon on regular paper showed up more.

"Still," Kamri added on as they pulled into Lilia's college now, "She's got to have found out from somewhere."

Lilia must've forgotten about her anger, meaning the sensation can't have been as close to bursting as Juniper's was, so their reunion was as much of a Maddox sister reunion as it ever was, ever had been.

The crushing hugs, the ones that pushed Juniper back into herself and pushed her emotions further. The hugs that levelled her out, took away some of Kamri's pressure and eased the expectations of Lilia. They benefited everyone, their goals were mutually exclusive in that they just wanted to help each other.

A hug a day kept their worries away.

But Juniper hadn't been around to hug every day, so whilst Lilia and Kamri included her in their thoughts if her physical presence was missing -- it wasn't the same.

The worries had crept up on her so much so that she wished the hugs could last a lifetime, that if she held onto them tight enough then she'd take all their worries too. It was the kind of thing she'd do for them, even if she didn't think they'd do the same for her.