All Yours

VII

AURORA

I did not get any sleep last night. Any sort of noise or draft would send me squealing while clutching the blanket for dear life, hoping he wasn't inside the apartment somehow.

And to make matters worse, I had to wake up early since Katrina had a work brunch meeting on a freaking Saturday she had to go to. I had to wake up at 7 in the morning since she was going to go get her hair done or whatever.

Yawning, I circle my steering wheel for the last time before I arrive at my house. Peering through my bedroom window, I make sure there's no one inside and when I see nothing out of the blue, I open my front door and go inside.

My mom's supposed to pick up the car any minute now and take it back to her place. But before she takes off, I promised her a delicious at-home breakfast made by yours truly.

She arrives only ten minutes after I did and I get straight to preparing breakfast. Since she has a key to the house, she walks inside and engulfs me in a bear hug to which I return with the same amount of ferocity.

"Oh my child, it's been too long!" I roll my eyes at her antics.

"Mother, it's been a day," I laugh, while flipping a pancake.

"Yes, but I haven't been able to actually 'see' you in forever!" She says, helping me whisk the eggs.

Breakfast moves by fast and we end up spending the entire day talking about everything. At one point, Grandma is brought up and we try to move through the conversation, but she gets very emotional thinking about her.

Sitting on the kitchen table with me facing the windows and my mom opposite, I see her look behind me suddenly.

"Honey, why do you only have three roses in that vase?" She asks. Oh no.

"Oh, umm...they were the only good ones left so I didn't want to throw them away."

"Okay..." She eyes me suspiciously and gathers our plates to put in the sink.

Instead of staying home all day, we decide to go to the local Farmer's Market and grab some fresh flowers and any sort of homemade food we want to try.

Thinking we'll only buy a couple of things turned out to be bags full of stuff and we had to take a trip just to my house to drop off some stuff.

It was reaching evening when we finished since we stopped to have a nice dinner not to far from the market and I was beyond exhausted from today.

Setting the fresh daisies in a new vase, I sigh while putting all sorts of different cheeses in the fridge that I collected from the market.

My face contorts when I smell all the different kinds of aromas emanating from the dairy products. My fridge is gonna smell terrible.

Suddenly, a thud sounds from upstairs and my heart rate increases at an alarming rate. Another one sounds right above me, where the guest room lies.

My chest heaves as I frantically look for my phone, ready to call 911 again. I spot it across the kitchen in the living room, sitting on the coffee table. I make a run for it, but just as I'm passing by the sofas, movement from the hallway to my right catches my eye.