this love • gracie abrams

033 knowing her

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
knowing her
•

JUDE gave charlotte a killer present of a collection of the real fucking shelley duvall's top outfits from her prime, something he won at an auction worth god knows how much. for him, charlotte gave him a whole new collection of dark sage green instruments and gear to replace his navy blue ones he got to fill his studio from his dad on his nineteenth birthday. he said the original colour wasn't something he liked anymore. they spent their morning beside the tree with rue, timber, and weenie with a scratchy frank sinatra record on spin and wine for breakfast. their mom liked to make pancakes every christmas morning but charlotte didn't know what her recipe was. they watched the old 1989 simpson's christmas films like usual and then fought over what their favourite short was. charlotte always liked the one about homer bringing home a dog for the family the best.

matthew called later on and mr and mrs. jacobs hogged the phone the entire time of course. charlotte still hadn't replied to the text from her mom last night, nor had she spoken to jude about it. not after the feelings he expressed on the couch that one night. but she wondered if he had gotten a text too. she hoped he did, even though she knows he would scoff at it.

the two of them waited for sadie and everyone to hopefully show up later on, but everyone was stuck doing family stuff. so with nothing else to do for a while, jude and charlotte sat in her apartment doing dumb stuff that reminded them of their teenage years, which was basically just flicking through old photos and rewatching youtube videos they liked from that time. oh, and finding their old class from high school and stalking their social media's. they did until finally, the clock struck 2am, the 26th, and they could finally head to the airport.

charlotte impatiently squirmed around in her seat of the car, "do you see her?"

jude rolled his eyes, "you just asked this one minute ago."

charlotte ignored him and kept swirling around the windows, "maybe she got out on the other side."

"pretty sure there's only one gate K," jude replied, mindlessly scrolling through his phone. "hey wanna go to ihop after—"

the next thing he knew, charlotte was out the door and running up to a figure wearing a hood up and sunglasses. his first thought was how the hell did she recognize her from that far in a concealed look, and then it was why the hell is she acting like she hasn't seen her in a decade.

charlotte sprung into gracie's arms and was spun around in a bear gripping hug, gracie's suitcase fallen kicked to the ground. when she was put back onto her feet, still very much attached to gracie of course, she kissed her and held the side of her face, her touch warming up gracie's icy face. gracie sunk into her hand, exhausted from the late night flight and just so incredibly needy.

"take these off," charlotte quietly laughed, pulling the sunglasses off. "there you are," she smiled upon seeing her eyes. "y'know if you were gone for one more day i would've maybe started to miss you."

gracie rolled her eyes with a smile, "oh that's so kind, thank you."

jude honked the horn and waved his arm out the window, looking nervous about the pileup of cars behind him in the pickup lane.

charlotte took gracie's hand in one and the suitcase in the other. the second the two got in the car, gracie paused looking utterly confused.

charlotte raised a brow, "you okay?"

"where's weenie?" she frowned.

charlotte chuckled, "after seeing how chaotic and crazy boston and saint get after seeing us after a long time, no way was jude letting him in the benz."