Consequences

⟡one⟡

"We're moving back to Fairborn,"

Those words changed Brinley Jacobs' life, along with the words, "without your father."

    As a seventeen year old girl about to venture into her senior year of high school, those were not the words she wanted to hear. She wanted to argue and complain against the uprooting of her life as she knew it. Brinley wanted to question her parent's decision, but she knew they were justified in their decision to end their drawn out relationship.

    Brinley's parents had been going through what they brushed off as a simple rough patch for the past eleven months. In reality it was much worse than just a little hard time in their relationship. In the dead of the night their screaming and fighting rung clearly through the thin walls. Often times Brinley's younger brother, Carter, would crawl into Brinley's bed, scared of their parents. Although her mother refused to admit it to anyone, especially to her children, she had already signed the divorce papers, and this move was her last objective in leaving her husband.

Brinley's parents, Connie and Will, were possibly the two most opposite people that had ever existed. They were like night and day. Connie was a neat freak, always trying to clean up some kind of mess, no matter how small, but Will was the biggest slob Brinley had ever met. He was worse than Brinley's three year old brother. The only difference between the two boys was their age, and that a big factor in Will's sloppiness was his excessive drinking. But Will did appreciate art and photography, much like Brinley did, whereas that kind of stuff went right over Connie's head.

"When?" Brinley responded to Connie's very forward statement, holding no emotion in her firm voice. She had suspected something like this would happen for a while now, but not this soon, not the week before her senior year of high school began, and not 300 miles away from home.

Fairborn was where Connie and Brinley were born. Their family lived there until Brinley was nine and her dad got a job in the Pittsburgh area. Brinley and Carter's grandparents still lived in the same little light blue house as they did when Connie grew up there. Brinley hadn't seen them since their family moved. Will actually hated his in-laws, and vice versa. He didn't allow either of his children to make the drive all the way back to see them. Even Connie only went back twice since they moved, and Carter had never even formally met his grandparents, they only knew of each other's existence from pictures.

"Wednesday." her mother replied, then quickly left the room to wake up little Carter.

    She knew Brinley preferred to be left alone when receiving disheartening news, and Connie respected her privacy, or tried to as best as she can. The two women didn't need many words to understand each other. Connie was an immensely emotional woman, but sometimes it was hard for her to convey her emotions into words, Brinley was the same way.

    Unfortunately, that was also one reason why Will and Connie were divorcing. They could never communicate civilly, and whenever they tried, it turned into a vicious argument.

It was Monday when Connie broke the big news to her children. They had three days to pack up and say their goodbyes. Will would be keeping the current house, and pretty much everything inside of it. Connie didn't care much about giving up the house that she tried so hard to make a good home for her children. Amid the pointless arguments and crying, she was ready to escape everything that reminded her of Will. The new family of three would be living out of a little motel on the outskirts of Fairborn until they found a decent place to move into, which Connie and her planning spirit had already been searching for.

    For Brinley though, what kind of house she was living in wasn't the real problem that weighed heavy on her heart. Rather, it was telling her boyfriend that they would have to give long distance a try. It would be an even harder task considering that her boyfriend, Brenden Abner, was the hottest guy in her grade, and leaving him was sure to spark rumors.
-
    Upon arrival to Brendan's mansion-like house, Brinley scurried up the stairs, nervous for his reaction to the news. She rung the bell once, and then let herself in, a habit that she now felt wary about. It was Tuesday afternoon when she arrived, and she had less than twenty four hours to convince him to preserve their relationship. Brenden was sitting on his black leather couch, watching a foreign soccer game. He didn't even notice Brinley until she finally spoke up.