PEACE. jareau

PEACE

all these people think love's for show
but i would die for you
in secret

There was something about new beginnings that used to freak her out, pull and pinch her skin apart and paint it in goosebumps while also lighting her heart up and filling her lungs with fresh air at the same time. It had been like that quite often, to be fair, because she felt her emotions so deeply, so fast, there was little to no time left for her to differ, to choose either happiness or heartache. As a kid, whenever she had started crying, as tiny as the reason was because, well, kids burst out for the smallest things, she had been laughing only a few blinks of an eye later because she knew her mother was about to come, hold her, tell her the world was going to be okay. That made it easier. Knowing before you even start crying that you will smile again, before the heartache has even reached you, you could be so sure that happiness would rain onto you again, even if it was just in the form of a loving parent holding you in their arm.

Now, though, the world looked a little different. She wasn't the little girl scraping her knee on the playground anymore, she wasn't in first grade anymore, there were no blonde, shiny girls making fun of her bright red hair anymore. Instead, Robyn was sitting in a bar, one who's name she hadn't even tried to remember, staring down at her glass of lemonade with dim lights falling onto her face. She had been fascinated by the amount of bars in Washington D.C. when she had arrived yesterday already, why remember one in particular when there were hundreds more to check out?

Robyn Montgomery didn't know what she was supposed to feel, or well, she didn't know what she was feeling. The lowly shining fairy lights over her head and the softly smiling, round bartender behind the bar made her feel somewhat comfortable; her hands clutching the glass of lemonade and her strained shoulders screamed it was a lie though. This was her new beginning. Somehow, through all her twenty-six years, through all the twenty-six years of new beginnings, she had ended up here - the city where it all had begun, anyway. In a bar whose name she didn't know, in a city she couldn't call home anymore even if she tried to, the night before starting a job that somehow made every single muscle in her small body scream for her to run away. The man next to her, one with pale skin and a soft but arrogant chuckle falling from his lips whenever he spoke to the woman on his other side also made her want to run away, somehow. Maybe that just came with change though, the discomfort, the strained shoulders and clutched glasses and clenched jaws and maybe, just maybe, she should've gone home. But her home, or well, the tiny apartment she had rented was, in fact, tiny, filled with boxes and half-built furniture.

She liked to tell herself it was the fact that all of this was new - the apartment, all of her surroundings, but then again, was that really the reason everything felt odd? Hadn't she lived in so many different places and homes, that she had stopped caring whether she fit in or not? Robyn didn't know. And to be honest, she wasn't keen on finding out. What choice had she left anyway? Leaving the city before her first day of work? Throwing everything away that she had worked on so hardly just because of some unease tensing her muscles and storming through her head? No. Maybe she wasn't as excited or nervous - or whatever - as she should've been, but that didn't mean she didn't want it.

She clutched the glass tighter, turning away from the man next to her a little more as her fingers held onto the glass, the warmth of her body having stolen all of the coolness of the bright yellow content already. Her emerald eyes flew towards the door, then to her bag, to the bartender, the figure sitting on the bar stool to her right, and back towards the door. She pulled her wallet out of the little black bag resting on her lap, grabbing a five dollar bill and laying it down onto the bar before putting her glass down next to it.

The night was cold, dark, and as she breathed out, the air crystalised itself in front of her mouth like smoke from a cigarette. Robyn didn't know what time it was but she knew it was too late to be running around in only a dress and a faux leather jacket, as the goosebumps on her legs were pointing out. Only the streetlights and cars rushing by showed her the way across the pavement until she reached the side of the street and began looking for a cab. This was her new beginning, she kept repeating these words in her mind, hoping at one point they would cause her to feel excitement, happiness, nervousness, something.

But they didn't, they didn't change anything, didn't have any effect on her, didn't shake her shoulders or her legs in nervous fidgeting. Maybe it would come tomorrow. It surely would, meeting her new co-workers, her boss, that would make her feel nervous, she tried to convince herself, even though she knew that wouldn't be the case.

Robyn Montgomery had had too many new beginnings in order to feel a change of some sort, not even a new work place, a new city, nothing. Or so she thought. Maybe so she hoped. It didn't make a difference though, because what was about to come at her would cause her to feel feelings, whether she already knew or not. It was going to cause a lot, a new kind of change in Robyn's life that would throw everything over, a hurricane of feelings she didn't know how to feel, a chaotic mess of love and work and grief and hurt. Maybe it was a good thing Robyn didn't know what was coming at her, for she couldn't have prepared herself in any way, for she would've stepped onto the next bus and left this city before she had even fully arrived.

Maybe it was a good thing.