𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 & 𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 ━ girl meets world²

1│THE REELING

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❛ ʟᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀ & ʟᴀᴄᴇ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐎𝐍𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴇʟɪɴɢ ꒱


❝ I REMEMBER IT ALL TOO WELL ❞

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3 years later

It rained on the day of Juliet's twenty-first birthday.

The morning dawned with a pale gray mist that covered the streets of London in a thick fog. The precipitation only increased from there to a steady downpour by the time she opened her eyes. It was fitting for her mood, really.

Over the years, she had tried to move on. She'd accepted the position in the London orchestra and had found her first job. Her apartment hardly held any remnants of her past life; all of her furniture was from London and she'd donated her clothes to get rid of the memories that lingered on them. The only friends she was still in contact with were Kendrick and Celeste but that was because they had moved to England with her. Celeste had found a position at Sotheby's as an art curator and the offer had been lucrative enough for them to relocate— or that was partially true, at least, and that was the reason they gave Juliet.

Despite her efforts, however, it still felt as though her emotions were covered by a heavy blanket since. . . well, she was calling it "the breakup." It was easier to think of it like that than in any other term. The world around her seemed to move at a slower pace, as if she were submerged underwater and everything was slightly muted.

The clock read ten a.m.. With a heavy sigh, the redhead stretched in her bed and rubbed roughly at her puffy face. The nights were always the worst.

There was nothing to distract her mind as memories from her past replayed in loops. The time that she was supposed to spend sleeping was instead used to lie awake as she stared up at the ceiling as her eyes stung with tears that she tried to keep at bay. Most of the time, she lost that battle and then she would cry and cry with raw emotion. Sometimes she cried so much she wondered how there were any tears left to shed but somewhere, somehow, there were always more. She often woke feeling drained and wrung out from her turmoil from the night— or early morning— before.

Her glassy blue eyes stared up at the pale cream ceiling until she was able to gather her thoughts to throw off the covers. Her bare feet landed on the cold floor but the temperature hardly registered as she stared off into space. This. . . period of nothing was a new part of her routine: it seemed to take longer for her mind to wake up in the morning. She always took the time to sort out her lingering emotions before she "put on a happy face" and pretended that everything was fine.

At ten thirty, Juliet finally stood from her bed and padded over to her closet to select the clothes that she was going to wear for the party that Kendrick had forced her to have. ("It would be good for you!") The apartment was eerily quiet as she entered the kitchen but that was how it was most of the time now; she only put on music when someone was coming over.

The sizzling of eggs was the only sound that broke through the still barrier. She stared down at them as they cooked in the pan, watching as their clear whites solidified and the yolks hardened. The toast popping up startled her despite the fact that she had expected the noise— she had the same breakfast every day, after all.

She ate alone at the island and chewed methodically through her meal, never really tasting the food. After she did the dishes, she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and finish getting ready for the day.

Juliet hardly recognized the person that she saw in the mirror. While she still had the same long, red hair, it seemed limp and its color dulled. She'd always been pale but now 'ghost-like' was a more apt description; her empty, lifeless eyes and expressionless face only added to the appearance. Even when she forced a smile at herself in the mirror, she could see that it didn't reach her eyes. It would have to do, though; as long as she didn't look Kendrick directly in the face he wouldn't be able to tell that it wasn't genuine.