Flower Girl | h.s.

56.

Harry

We had finally gotten in the car around eight this morning, even though my eyes were awake way before then. The empty sound of the living room only kept me wide awake for a few hours, but it definitely felt like I didn't sleep at all.

Everything was packed and ready to go by the time I started to load the car up; Daisy had been moving around to try and make sure that everything was put in place before we left. She made a schedule for Phoebe days prior on what to do with the house while we were gone, but I didn't have any doubts that Phoebe wouldn't be able to handle it. She knew who to call and what to do—I was highly aware that Phoebe could get things done when she needed to.

Since we were up so early, we didn't get a chance to say goodbye to the kids as they were still asleep when we left, but I told them the previous day that I would call them and check in on them when we finally got to Monterey.

The previous night, Daisy had suggested that we needed to be ready by eight, as the ride from Malibu up to Monterey would be about five hours or so. We wanted to get there early enough that we could start to hang out with everyone before all the festivities began for the wedding.

Mitch and Sarah were renting two houses up in Monterey for their friends and family; one for their families to share and one for their friends to share. It wasn't a huge ceremony, and hardly a huge reception to be planned, but it was very them. From what I had heard from Mitch, it would be very quick and easy.

I was giving a speech, and Sarah's sister was also giving a speech at the reception, which I had been writing for the past few days. Getting my thoughts together now was much, much harder than it was previously.

I never knew the right things to say, but this was starting to feel even worse.

My brain, however, wasn't exactly working the way that I had wanted it to especially with the complete chaos that had ensued the night before.

Eve always seemed to have the perfect timing when it came to ruining and completely obliterating my life. There were moments that I needed her the most and thought I could trust myself, but that was fully down the drain as I looked over at Daisy in the passenger seat with her Starbucks sitting comfortably in her hand.

She hadn't looked at me all morning.

She completely ignored me when I said good morning, she even lifted her own bag into the car because she refused my help, and she only gave me her Starbucks order because buying her a coffee was the least that I could do. Getting her a coffee and a pastry to begin our road trip seemed to be the most efficient way of starting that process—doing the least.

And so, the groveling began.

In the grand scheme of it, I wasn't mad at Daisy last night when I had come home—I just had questions and felt that there may have been a larger coincidence to the entire story of it. I just wanted to know if she had known about anything before, we had started dating. When I thought about it more, it seemed stupid—but when I thought about it last night, there seemed to be genuine fear.

If she even had a feeling that maybe there were conversations happening behind the scenes that I didn't know about, I wanted to know about it. Of course, it wasn't received well, obviously, and that made me feel even worse. I didn't want her to be mad at me, just like I didn't want to upset her.

Meeting with Eve ultimately upset her, I think; I could tell that there was more to it than just the words that I had said to her, and I couldn't help but try to keep the space between us the slightest bit safe.

There were just insecurities in me that completely held me captive. I couldn't imagine losing Daisy simply over the words that Eve spoke to me, the possible lies that she spoke. It only created higher insecurities in me that maybe I was too stupid to understand what I had in front of me.