Gently

Wedding Invite

~Shout out to gentlefiend for the gorgeous banner at the top.

For the past few days, the weather had me bundling up and blasting the heat in Hannah's car on our way home from school. Today was a warmer day for early March and I decided to walk home from university. My shoes were digging into my heels and it was driving me insane. I was now second-guessing my decision to trek the 20-minute walk to Zane's apartment.

With one hand wrapped around my coffee and grumbling to myself, I waited for the light to change. When it did, I easily stepped onto the road, which I immediately regretted when a cyclist ran his bike into my legs. The impact made me spill my coffee all over myself. Pain spread across my body, filling me with an uncontrollable rage. "Asshole!" I screamed to the man on the bike, who was sneering at me.

"Who you calling asshole? You should watch where you're going, you little bitch!" I should have counted to ten and walked away, leaving the man and his stupid bike behind. Instead, I let my anger dictate my actions and reached over to grab ahold of his bike.

Shaking his bike slightly, I shot back, "it's my right of way, dickhead!"

"Stop touching my bike," the man said through gritted teeth. We glared at each other for a long moment, neither one of us saying anything. The sound of blaring horns broke me from my daze. As I turned away from the cyclist, I heard him call me a Karen. Not wanting to cause more of a scene than I already had, I raised my middle finger at him as I walked away.

I should have let Hannah drive me home after class.

Near Zane's apartment, there was a bench that faced the street on which a familiar-looking woman sat. "This day just keeps getting better and better," I said to myself, approaching the woman who stood up from the bench when she spotted me.

She pulled her sunglasses off. "Sarah! I have been trying to call you all day," she gushed while I quickly moved past her.

"I was at school," I answered. It was silent inside the apartment building. That was until my mother followed me in. Her heels made a clicking sound on the floor as she trailed after me into the elevator. "What do you want?"

My mother was a tall woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. There was brown eyeshadow on her lids, which was probably from her makeup line, Ageless. Jane Atef was a walking advertisement for her all-natural and cruelty-free makeup. 

She was so young, so gorgeous and so unlike me that sometimes it surprised me that we were even related. "I'm not allowed to visit my daughter now?" she said, her words laced with vinegar.

Together we stepped out of the elevator and silently made our way down the hallway. Opening the door to the apartment, I dramatically waved my arm in front of her. "After you, mother."

She looked down at me, with her nose held high, the same way she used to do when I was a teenager. "Thank you, Sarah," she said and took a seat on the couch.

Dropping my bag onto the ground, I pulled off my soaked coat and hung it on the coat rack beside the door. "You want anything?" I asked. My mother was looking around the apartment, her gaze jumping from one thing to the next. She crossed her long legs.

"I'm okay. Please sit with me," she said while she patted the seat beside her. Her blue eyes were wide but void of any emotion.

 I collapsed onto the armchair that was adjacent to the one she had claimed. My mother passed her eyes across me, from my face to my legs, before landing onto my face again. The last time she came over was after Kat passed away and she had done the same thing.