Guilty Pleasure

Seven: spiraling mind

"What a marvelous feeling it would be, if we could say exactly how we felt. What a monumental victory. What a terrifying thought."

~Akif Kicholoo

Jean

Nibbling on the toast crust, I sighed. The headache pulled at the back of my skull, even after I had chugged down two glasses of water. Two.

Megan died. I was too late. It was my fault. I should have done something. Anything. The slightest change could have saved her life. If I had done just a singular thing differently, she'd be here perhaps.

She was dead. She wanted to live.

I should have been the one instead.

There was no reasonable explanation as to why I survived this shit. Bill didn't think I was deep enough into it? Was this his reason? If he only knew. I could be dead.

I should be dead.

Was Annie alive? After all these years?

A warm hand from across the table placed itself on my lower arm. Those pools of hot chocolate glared at me and I wanted to scream and cry, but all I did was stare. For god's sake I wanted to explain it all to Emily right fucking now. But I could not. My tongue was tied.

"You will always remember your first. With children it's even worse." She voiced.

"Will it get better?" I asked and I knew the answer.

Her brows pulled into a faint furrow. "It get's easier, with time. But Jean," She grabbed my hand, I felt the urge to pull away with an instant, yet I sat through it. "You will be okay. Allow it to hurt for some time, but don't drown in it."

I nodded in reply and placed the toast back on the plate. Her gaze lowered to the piece of bread and scrambled eggs in front of me. There was not much I had eaten. It was hard to focus on nurturing my body, when my only thought was it should have been me.

The plate was taken from me, when Emily got up and waddled into the open kitchen, placing the dishes in the sink.

"Hey! I wanted to eat that!" I protested weakly, not even sure why I did it.

Her cocked brow left me leaning back in my chair. "You've been staring at your breakfast for half an hour, before you decided to do nothing more but nibble on a bit of toast."

I huffed at her comment, wanting to throw something at her, though nothing came to my mind. Nothing but my own thoughts regarding the past days and I surely would not lay it all out for Emily to grab and use against me. Not again.

It wasn't too bad getting it off my chest.

I immediately dismissed that thought and focused on where I had left off before. At least I planned to do so, yet the brunette who had pulled me into her bedroom seemed to have other plans.

"Emily, I really am not in the mood." I groaned.

"Get dressed." She let go of my hand and walked into her bathroom, leaving the door open. I frowned heavily at her words. Moments later, although it could as well have been minutes that passed and I wouldn't know, her head poked around the corner. "Jean, I want to leave in ten minutes and I don't consider a shirt and thong as appropriate attire for outside."

Flashbacks of the morning after the bar rushed through my head like a train without breaks. "Outside?" I finally got to work on finding presentable clothes from her wardrobe. "What do you want to do? Go for a head clearing walk?" I scoffed and eyed a familiar looking bra in her drawer.