Travel // Shawn Mendes

forty: epilogue part one

A/N
once again, this is for hotel midnight readers! finish up that book in order to understand what's about to happen here!

_

"Shawn! Hurry up!"

I was not nervous at all when Shawn met my mother, but him meeting my grandma? A whole different thing. I was practically sweating at the thought of her seeing me again, much less Shawn. The thing is, my abuela was a little bit on the voodoo side, and I warned Shawn of this.

As I fix my hair in front of the bathroom mirror Shawn walks in, searching my eyes for approval on the dress shirt he picked out. I give him a silent thumbs up and he grins, giving me a quick kiss before rushing out of the bathroom.

"Okay, I think I'm ready!" Shawn calls out from the other side of my hotel room. Jen's been out with Aidan all day, so I suggested that Shawn just get ready at my place.

"You think?" I run my hands through my hair before walking out of the bathroom and slipping on my sandals. I got up and instantly tripped over them, earning a chuckle from Shawn.

"Oh yes, very funny. You won't be laughing in an hour from now, believe me!" I warn, and Shawn laughs again, tilting my chin up to face him.

"Just change the sandals," he advises, and I scoff.

"I wish. My grandma bought these for me, and literally told me I had to wear them today."

"You're cute when you're stressed," Shawn informs me, and I roll my eyes at his scheme to calm me down.

"You should see me when I'm angry, then," I respond, and he smiles. Shawn stares at me for a while, out of it, and I can't help but think of how he freaked out last night. Before I could dive into that topic, though, I wanted to get through meeting Grandma.

"Okay, so when you meet her she's going to stare at you for at most a minute," I say as we walk to the hotel elevator. "Don't let her intimidate you, she can smell fear."

Shawn finishes off his water bottle he brought, crushing it so he could hold it in his fist. Though we had only been together for a bit, I already made a lasting impact on him. My boyfriend had a serious problem with only drinking these weird mineral water things, and it took a lot of rehabilitation for him to see how dumb that bougie shit was. Thankfully he moved back to regular water as his main source of hydration, but still popped one of those small crystal containers time by time (which was fine by me).

"Right. Then she's going to kiss my cheeks if she likes me and I'm going to say 'Nice to meet you, ma'am' and if she really likes me, she'll ask me when I plan on marrying you" he finishes the drill, and I smile at him as the elevator door opens.

Shawn wanted to sleep for half of the trip to my abuela's house, which I had no problem with, since I wanted to drive. I turned on a calm playlist, set the GPS to my grandma's home address, and started towards the highway.

I drove for maybe twenty minutes before Shawn groggily mumbled that he had to go to the bathroom, and I started to look for rest stop signs. We had already passed a McDonald's, but I'm sure there would be another one coming up soon. As for time, my grandma would be fine with us being a few minutes late once she saw me driving.

Five minutes later and I exit the highway, taking a right at the light and entering the parking lot of a hotel. I parked as close to the entrance as I could, which wasn't a problem since there seemed to be no cars here.

"Shawn," I say quietly, running my hand through his curls.

"Mm," is his response, and he turns over to give me a grin that made me laugh. I think about staying in the car as he goes to the bathroom (if this hotel was even open), before noticing a black van in my rear view mirror with a girl standing outside of it. Despite her doing absolutely nothing I was a little too scared of black vans and empty parking lots, so I got out of the car.