The rose and the sunflower.
The girl with the golden eyes and the boy with a golden heart.
The girl that believed love was just a fairytale and the boy that believed fairytales are just stories waiting to come true.
'I used to think love was a point...
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July, 2011
"Hayley! Dinner's ready!" my mother calls me downstairs for family dinner.
I arrived back home, Barbados, a few days ago. I'm supposed to stay for the whole summer, though I don't think that'll happen once I tell my parents my new plan involving staying in London.
About a week ago my exams finished, Emma took me to meet her grandparents. They're both sweet, really cool hippies. Even at seventy the couple have a tradition of smoking weed every afternoon while listening to one of their hundred records. I aspire to be like them.
A few days went by and she was with me at the airport. Emma knows about my anxiety, only because I nearly had a breakdown the day before we took our first exam. She insisted she come see me off before my flight, being that it was an eight hour one.
So now that I'm finally home, have gotten over my jet lag and am about to socialise with people other than my immediate family, I've readied myself for the peaceful few days I've had to fall to shit.
I make my way downstairs quickly so I don't keep everyone waiting. Tonight, my grandparents are joining us for dinner, as well as my brother and his new girlfriend. I laughed when my mother told me Quinn is bringing someone home. I just hope she isn't an annoying twat like some of his previous girlfriends.
"Can you bring the bread over since you're passing." My dad speaks as he looks up from what he's doing.
I do as he says, picking up the small basket full of garlic bread and bringing it over to the dining room. It's a nice room. They recently redesigned it but I have yet to acknowledge its beauty to my parents. Maybe I'll use it as a conversation breaker later.
"So, Brooklyn," I decide to start up a conversation once everyone has gotten settled in, "how'd you and my dear brother meet?"
"Funny story actually," Brooklyn begins to tell a story about them meeting at a frat party and my brother being persistent in getting her number, a story that I'm sure my very strict grandparents don't find flattering in the least.
The entire time everyone around me is carrying conversations, I stay silent. My anxiety is getting the better of me. I keep thinking over every possible outcome to how my family will react when I share my news with them.
In the Granger household, formal academic education is the top priority. That's how it's been for generations. The kids in the family grow up, going to the best schools and educating themselves in order to one day take over the family businesses. My great-grandfather started up our family's name and then his son, my grandfather, is the one who carried on the legacy when he opened the Sandy Lane Hotel in 1961. My dad took over just before I was born and now, Quinn and I are next in line.
