Learning to be Beautiful

Bonus Scene: ~The Date~

Nervously, I smooth down my hair, hoping to tame any fly-aways with my hands, and try to hand-iron any wrinkles out of the plain, light-blue skirt I am wearing. The long drive in my car has left me feeling stiff and somewhat exhausted, but I am determined to show myself as excited and happy. In all honesty, I am completely and utterly terrified.

               It is my first time back in San Francisco since I left earlier in the year for college. I’m on Christmas Break, and I have come back to spend the holidays with my mom as I had promised her I would before I left.

               The house hasn’t changed a bit in the five months that I haven’t seen it—not that I had expected it to, anyways. It’s nice that something has remained constant through everything that had happened this past summer. I had modeled… gotten my first kiss… had my best friend confess to me… Yes, it was definitely good to know that something—even if it was just a house—stayed unchanging.

               I see that the lights to the living room are on through the window that faced out to the street. I can’t see anything inside of the room because of the curtains obscuring my view, but I can see that sometimes the light fluctuates, so I assume that my mom is watching T.V.

               Mother is, as of yet, totally unaware of my arrival. I had told her that I was going to arrive two days later than I had, because I wanted to surprise her.

               Taking a deep breath, and pasting a smile across my face, I put my house-key in the lock, unlock the door, and step inside.

               “Mom, I’m home!” I call out to the house around me.

               As soon as I step in the door an overwhelming sense of familiarity and comfort sweeps over me. The long drive was totally worth it; it is good to be home.

               Something clatters from the living-room, and my mom is soon rushing towards me with her fuzzy-white bathrobe-covered arms outstretched. Weird, minty-green goo that almost looks like toothpaste is coating her face, and it makes her look like a crazed woman by accenting her overly-huge grin and messy hair. “Lyn, you’re home!” she cries ecstatically, throwing her arms around me and squeezing with enough force to kill a bear. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, you’re home!”

               She (thankfully) removes her arms from around my torso, and I’m able to regain the air that had been squeezed out of me as a result of her hug. “Hey, Mom, “I say, the grin that I had put on my face quickly becoming sincere.

               “I thought you said that you weren’t getting back until Monday,” she says, her goop-covered eyebrows drawing together.

               Shrugging, I grin at her sheepishly. “I lied.”

               Mom mimics my shoulder-movement and walks with me into the kitchen. “Do you want anything? Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink?”