December 24th [COMPLETED]

Chapter 8: Twenty-Seven

When George's plane took off from Seoul International Airport, it was the 24th. Because of the time change and the length of the flight, by the time George touched down in LA, it would still be the 24th. It was going to be her longest birthday yet.

Already, only an hour into the flight, George found herself the only person around her still awake. Everyone else seemed used to the long hours in the air. The cabin had quickly become dark and the atmosphere quiet. The flight attendants had done their rounds; they made up people's beds and were nowhere to be seen. Even Sydney was passed out in the seat next to George.

George was the only one still awake. And apparently the only one with a job to do.

To be fair, there wasn't much George could do on her 11-hour flight. Even George had her limits and 30,000 feet in the air was pretty limiting. But she couldn't sleep knowing her deadline was so quickly approaching, knowing who was counting on her. She had to do something.

Felix's voice was playing on repeat in her head. It had been ever since she had gotten Julien's voicemail the night before.

The desperation, the panic, that slight break in Felix's voice that no one else would have noticed except her. It was slight and almost completely unnoticeable but George had spent too many hours recording with Felix, pouring over his takes, having him record again and again until he got it right. She knew the breaks that came from a bad night's sleep, the breaks that happened because his voice wasn't sufficiently warmed up, or when his voice was too worn out from playing a show.

George knew Felix's voice better than she knew her own. And so that sound byte of him in Julien's office played on repeat in George's head.

In a vain attempt to distract herself,  George grabbed her backpack to pull out her computer. Laying on top of her computer sat her camera, precariously perched on top of the rest of George's impeccably organized backpack. A year she'd had the camera and yet she still couldn't figure out the perfect spot for it to go.

Unlike the rest of her backpack and suitcase, which were packed the same way every time to keep things neat, George's new camera was a floating piece, ever needy and wanting attention. The camera seemed a better distraction than George's work so she grabbed that instead of her computer.

With the camera came the stack of photos George had taken over the last year.

The camera had been a gift. A gift from Jae Min. It had been sent to her right after the New Year with a note attached. Sydney translated the note for her as the only words in English were 'George' and 'Happy Birthday!'

The note was short and sweet, with just a hint of reproach that George hadn't told Jae Min that December 24th was her birthday. George sincerely hoped he wasn't offended. She had developed the habit over the years of almost forgetting her birthday entirely.

From Sydney's interpretation, Jae Min's note read more playful than condemning and George was grateful for the camera. That year she'd actually had places to take pictures of. She hadn't spent the majority of her time in studios and hotel rooms. A first in her career.

The stack of photos was a chronicle of her past year. A year of residences, George had come to label it as. The first year in a long time she hadn't toured, a year that found her in one place for more than a week, sometimes even longer. Her trip to Korea lasted two months. The longer stays were a welcomed change of pace, George had come to find.

First, there was Upstate New York with Ali Sykes working on her folk album. The pop superstar had been reaching out to George for years to work together and when the opportunity to join Ali at her cabin in the mountains for six weeks presented itself, George took it.