Lila ✔

41I Mocha Frappuchino

THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER

I sighed, taking another large swig of my water and glancing over at Jessica who was sat opposite me. She appeared to have been taking this harder than me.

While I had been through this before with my mom, she hadn't. Also, recently my dad had been acting like a dick towards me so I, although guilty about this particular thought, considered it as karma. And finally, he had been away so much that my last two months of memories had purely been ones with my brothers. It was like he wasn't even family anymore.

I had to admit that for the first three days after hearing the news, I cried a couple of times and did mope around slightly, but then I learned to pick myself up and was almost back to my normal only a few days later.

My brothers had also really helped me through the last week, being there to hug me and goof around in an an attempt to life my mood. I had to say, they succeeded.

Jessica on the other hand, had still barely spoken to anyone. My dad's arrest had clearly affected her deeply, and now she spent all day in her room, only coming out to grab some food. She never ate meals with us, instead choosing to spend as much time alone as possible.

Right now was one of the rare occasions that she appeared out of her room and stayed downstairs for longer than five minutes. So, although I knew it was probably going to be pretty awkward and hard, I decided to try and give her a mini 'pep talk'.

"Look. We're all facing what you are. You're not going through this alone," I said gently, probably sounding kind of weird since I had said it randomly out of the blue.

I didn't get a reaction from my stepmom so I stayed silent for another minute, waiting to see if she would speak up. And she finally did. "I loved him," she breathed out, her voice scratchy probably from disuse.

"So did I," I sighed. Jessica needed to know other people were going through the same as her and were willing to be there for her.

"But he was my husband," she murmered.

"And he was my dad. But that isn't the point. The point is that moping around won't change anything. Being around people who know what you're going through and know how to make you feel better will help you a lot more than staying locked up in your room. Thinking over what happened will only make you feel worse. You need to be around people who care about you if you want to be able to come back from this. You need to come to terms with what has happened. Nothing you can do will change the fact he's gone. You've had your time to be upset, now it's time to start to try and feel better. And the first step is Starbucks!" I finished off my tremendous speech realising that I could potentially get Starbucks if I managed to get Jessica out of the house. And Starbucks is Starbucks. I was willing to do anything for it.

Jessica stayed silent for a few moments and I studied her intently as she continued to stare at the table. After a moment, she slowly lifted her head and made eye contact with me.

"OK."

LILA

"White chocolate mocha frappuchino and a white chocolate normal frappuchino please." Jessica ordered. I stood behind her next to Mase since he and I had been assigned to remembering everyone's orders.

"Coming right up," the waitress smiled, turning around to the coffee machine behind her.

"Do you want to go back to the others and we'll bring the drinks over in a minute," Mason smiled. I nodded back at him, mirroring his expression, before turning and walking over to the two tables we had set up. We weren't allowed to move the chairs so we had chosen to sit at two separate tables, Noah, Cole, Liam and Jayden sat at one while Logan, Mason and Jessica were sat at the other.