Eternal Temptation

❥ 44| kisses in venus

THE HALL WAS DECKED out in an obscene amount of reds, golds, whites and greens, the hosts having gone all out with seasonal decorations as it was Christmas eve. Fancy lights, colourful tinsel, wreaths, garlands and golden chandeliers filled the space that would have been otherwise stark and boring, lightening up the atmosphere despite being full of rich, snobby bastards.

Even then, despite being overwhelmed by the sheer beauty in front of me, my body couldn't quite get the memo to let go of the tension that tightened every single one of my muscles. It made me stiff, making a few people give me weird looks in passing before I breathed out a deep breath and forced myself to calm down.

But the nervousness and anxiety had spread up throughout my body like poison ivy since yesterday and I couldn't shake the feeling that things would go wrong despite what my mother had assured me of. She thought that telling Zayaan I loved him would simply erase all our issues and make us one happy couple again. Me, however? I thoroughly doubted it and considered foregoing the entire plan my mother had devised for me.

I didn't know if I had it in me to face any more humiliation, especially at such a public event like this.

I looked at my mother standing beside me but listening intently to something that a woman who looked vaguely familiar was saying. It had taken zero point two seconds for a bunch of random people to flock to us after we'd walked in and though we'd been here for ten minutes, the woman who'd latched onto my mother first hadn't let go ever since.

Right as I considered running away when she was distracted, a waiter walked past carrying a tray and my mother paused her conversation to ask him something, grabbing two flutes before giving one to me. The woman took one for herself before my mum turned to me.

"Rosé. It's non-alcoholic, so drink it. It'll make you look less tense if you're doing something," she advised, giving me an amused look that immediately made me loosen my grip on the crystal flute.

"So, Faithe, darling, what are you doing now? Are you still in school or..." The woman turned to me, her question fluttering to an incomplete end.

"I'm still in school," I answered, given a grim reminder of how many more days I'd skipped over the past couple of months. Thankfully, I'd managed to force myself to leave the house ever since I'd moved back home since I couldn't make up excuses to my parents. But if I'd kept up the way I'd been, I would never graduate.

"Oh?" She raised a brow. "I thought you'd graduated already."

"I have," I confirmed. "I have my bachelor's degree. I'm just doing both my post-graduate and my clinical training now."

"How many more years is that going to take?" She inquired, cocking her head.

"Three years." You usually had to do your post-graduate and doctoral training separately, the former taking around two years and the latter taking three, but during my time at Oxford, I'd already done work experience elsewhere and gotten a placement to observe and watch clinical psychologists. That allowed me to get a head-start and merge training while I did my post-graduate at my current school (a private psychology training academy) for the first two years and then get another placement for the next two — since I could thankfully skip one of the years. I was halfway done with my first year, which meant I still had another three to go.