Flower Girl | h.s.

50.

Visiting Palm Springs in the springtime was always one of my favorite memories as a child.

The heat of the sun was starting to warm the desert, but not enough to address the summer heat that would soon dry the air completely to make it feel warmer. There wasn't an ounce of moisture in it, which made days by the water feel like a gift.

I remembered being a kid, going out to the desert for the weekend with my family. There were always parties happening as my parents loved to entertain. I'd stare out the window on the car ride the entire time there, watching as the grass turned to sand as we drove just a few hours away. It was one of my favorite places that we would go; we had a few vacation homes in various cities growing up, but there was always something about Palm Springs that I loved the most.

When the weekend was over, and we'd have to leave to go back to a normal existence for the upcoming week, I always felt sad about the lost memories of spending our days by the pool and watching my parents away from work for a bit. It was an oasis, a time spent when my parents would find reason to spend time with Phoebe and I.

It didn't happen often enough.

This time, as we follow the highway back towards our reality now, Harry sat in the drivers seat beside me; one hand feel on the steering wheel, the other on my thigh as we were making our way towards the ocean breeze now.

The beginning of the weekend felt like a century ago. It had started as such a happy occasion; Harry gifting me my presents, having a night to ourselves in the museum was one of my favorite dates I had ever been on.

Instead of feeling the giddiness of drinking champagne to celebrate my own accomplishments, I had been nursing Harry's bruises with acetaminophen and Phoebe's emotional breakdowns with trying to crack jokes and  show her videos that may have her smile just for a few seconds.

I know that sometimes how you thought something would go didn't go as planned, but I had started to feel a bit of sadness to know that my graduation had turned into something that didn't feel like mine anymore. It would have this denotation of being scarred by horrible memories that inflicted the ones that I loved.

It had started to feel that it was taken away from me.

I didn't want it to feel disgruntled or that I wasn't grateful for the time and effort that others had spent on me. However, the situation with Phoebe had gotten out of hand, and I wasn't comfortable with leaving her there with the option to go back to Carson if she chose.

I had always hated Carson, and this trip had proved every point that my brain had warned me about previously. There were people who hurt me and my family, and those people didn't deserve a seat a the table in our life anymore. They didn't deserve the kindness that Phoebe had always exuded without the influence of him; she had spoken selfishly, even said words she didn't mean.

It was only out of defense to try to prove that she was in control of a situation. Carson always had the upper hand, and trying to win it back took a lot more than her brain trying to convince her of it.

It would take weeks, possibly months to unlearn every lie that he had told her. That she wasn't good enough, that his opinion was the only one that mattered.

There was so much good in Phoebe that she would have to grasp, and the only way that she would do that was to see how it felt to be treated correctly.

When we had woken up this morning, Harry was already making sure that Phoebe had packed her bags to follow us home. There were about twenty minutes worth of arguing, back and forth on whether or not she would go home with us or back to our parents.

"It's non-negotiable," Harry told her, completely sure by the way that he spoke, "You're coming home with us and staying at our place for a few days until you can figure out what your next steps are."