"Take me away from the demons in my brain." - Take Me Away // Gabrielle Aplin
one.
The tears in her eyes are held back so hard, shutting her eyes tight, tight, tight she can feel her eyelashes almost breaks off of her eyelids. Her mom is by her bedside, shaking her awake, smacking her lightly with a pillow when she purposely ignored her. She inhales a sharp breath and covers her face with her head pillow, in case the tears welled in her eyes pour down her cheeks.
"God, Jade, wake up! Amelia's engagement is in three days!"
Jade tosses the pillow aside, revealing her damply wiped eyes and pretended to yawn. "Yes, Mom." She replies curtly, nodding into her pillow.
"I expect to see you at the lobby in ten minutes," her mom, Lena Miller, says as she exits her daughter's bedroom, closing the door behind her to meet the endless errands of her niece's engagement party.
Jade's cousin is getting engaged.
In three days.
And her family are swept along with the pre-royal wedding of the smart, model-like, everyone-in-the-family’s-sweetheart, Amelia Miller. For the past twenty years, after Jade's parents' wedding, no one in the Miller's family gets married, making Amelia the first Miller to soon be married since the past two decades. Thus why her engagement (and soon, wedding) are more grand than it's initially intended to be.
Amelia's engagement was set on the 24th of December, where all we know, the Christmas Eve. The Millers - their aunts and uncles from the other half of the State and their grandparents inclusive - usually spends their Christmas Eve together, whether cramped in at Jordan and Liana Miller's (Jade's parents) house or her Aunt Merida Valentine and Uncle Joe Miller's (Amelia's parents) house or mostly, their Grandparents' villa.
Either way, all of them will be together on Christmas.
This year, Amelia will be celebrating her engagement on Christmas Eve. So instead of fully focusing on Christmas preparations, their family are all buzzing around for the engagement.
Jade doesn't like the idea of Amelia stealing the spotlight of the wonderful, family-bonding celebration and making it all about her.
But Jade being Jade, she keeps her opinion to herself and lends her hands in for both of the events, even though her family had barely even remembers the other one.
For the past week, Jade has been running from store to store for Christmas preparations and picking up furnishing details for the engagement party.
Her arms are too limp they can slid off her shoulders. And her heart, God, her heart is too busy trying to be the best it stopped bleeding. She's just a skeleton of an empty soul.
Yet, she flings her towel over her shoulder and takes a hot shower and try, try, try not to fall apart in the four glass of the shower that aren’t hers and puts on her wool sweater over two layers of clothing (a tank top and a long-sleebed T-shirt) and stretched in her skinny jeans and her worn out Uggs that are too out of season to be worn and then she steps out of her bedroom door and takes the elevator, she searches deep down for a smile, catches it with a fishing hook and pulls it on her face.
She's surprised to know that she still has a smile to mask on.
Amelia’s family and hers are scattered in the front lobby, her parents and grandparents at the posh seats, chatting about their lovely Amelia’s wedding. Her sister, Julia, and their cousins Lola and Chad have their own smartphones out, but still idly talking and sometimes laughing with each other. Her head spins around, searching for the one person she findsnmissing: her Aunt Merida, Amelia’s mother. She spots her near the receptionist counter, her back leaned on the black tiled wall next to the washroom entryway. Aunt Merida looks worried, a hand grabbing a handful of her hair and the other clutching her phone to her ear. Lines of aging and worries creased on her forehead, her eyebags heavy. Just like Jade’s mom, her aunt is also carrying the weight of these upcoming celebrations on their lanky shoulders. Despite everything, Aunt Merida still looks beautiful. Like her daughter.
Jade approaches her.
Aunt Merida had hung up on her phone and now searching for certain contacts in her phone.
“Aunt Merida,” Jade says, watching her.
She looks up from her phone and a sigh of relief escapes her lips upon seeing Jade, “Oh, Jade. Thank God you’re here.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“I need your help,” she say the words Jade had expected the moment she opened her eyes this morning, “with the florist. You know how Amelia is allergic to flowers but a certain type of them, right?”
Jade doesn’t know it, but nods anyway.
“Well, one of the flowers Amelia is not allergic to is chocolate cosmos, and the thing is, chocolate cosmos are very rare to find.”
Jade nods, again.
“But I’ve ordered it at a florist in Northampton and she was supposed to send the flowers today, but she got stuck in a heavy blizzard in New Jersey during a special delivery. So she asked me to pick the flowers up at her shop but I don’t think I can make it. We seemed to forgot that Christmas is near as well and our -”
“I’ll do it,” Jade says quietly. “I’ll pick up the flowers for you,” she says again, more confidently than she had the first time.
Just like that, her aunt’s face lights up, “Are you sure?"
No, Jade isn't sure, because travelling four hours for a certain species of flowers that would be later on used for an engagement - not even the real wedding - is a stupid thing to do. She knows that, yet, she smiles and squeezes her aunt’s shoulders, nodding again. “Yes, of course. You, mom and dad are busy making this happen and neither Julia, Lola nor Chad are legal to drive, so it’s up to me now. It's just a five hours drive.”
Her aunt smiles, clutching a hand on her chest. “That’s nice of you, Jade. I know I can always count on you,” she reaches in her bag and pulls out a few sheets of paper, “this is the purchase receipt. The address is in here,” she points at the address printed under the name of the shop.
“I think you should take one of them with you as company,” Aunt Merida motions at her children and niece. Jade watches them, having a good time, and she thought of how much pain in the ass it would be to take a thirteen to fourteen year old with her on a road trip. Even her own sister.
Jade shakes her head, “Nah it’s okay. I think I’m alright by my own. Like I said, it’s just a four hours drive." She is too used masking her emotions, her aunt doesn’t notice how unconfident she was to drive from Maine to Northampton.
Aunt Merida smiles her tired smile and kisses Jade on the top of her forehead, wishing her a careful drive and then trotted over to the lounge to the others.
Jade followed her as well to tell her mom about her departure. Her mom just nodded and told her to be back before Christmas Eve.
Drive to the florist in Northampton, picks up the flowers, drives back home, pretends that the combined ten-hour drive was as fast as ten minutes. How hard can that be?
I know I can always count on you.
