Everything Happens At 2:04 AM

Chapter Forty-Four: Queen.

Dedicated to A_M_B_R_O_S_E for the covers at the above and below, thank you so much <3

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Chapter Forty-Four: "Queen."

THE NEWS OF DANIEL'S engagement only added to the constant reminder from my father to come home. Specifically with Caleb. 

He was relentless and it wasn't that I didn't want to go home but when I told him I was in the middle of filming, he only told me to get on a plane the second it was over.  

Mom, on the other hand, would not stop talking about her only son getting married.

When Daniel had dropped the news, our friends and my boyfriend disappeared left me, Naomi, Daniel in the kitchen to engage in a phone call with our mother. From there, we had witnessed our mother's very expressive form of joy. Where she congratulated him over and over again and was singing gospel songs so loud I felt as if she was in the room with us.

It wasn't hard to imagine her dancing around the house, clapping and praising her strongest belief with potential having tears in her eyes. She gushed over Daniel, asking about the details of how it all came to be. 

Turns out, he proposed to his girlfriend, now fiancee, over lunch at their favorite place. That's all that was needed and the way that Daniel had told the story with the highest form of happiness in his eyes pushed out anything awful the bastard had said to me in all his years of living, making me hug him. 

Mom was quick to ask about the plans for the wedding. When he told her hopefully sometime in the spring, she was already calling our extended family members.

Then she told him that on top of the 'basic' wedding (her words not mine) that western people do, that he had to have a traditional wedding somehow included. Her tone indicated that Daniel had to have that or else he was going to be disowned. He would have included it anyway; we all had a strong pull to the motherland.

Suddenly, our mother went from overbearingly happy to accusing. The tables turned when my mother had asked when Naomi and I were getting married. We shut up fast and ended the call, not even a beat after.

My sister was transfixed on the phone, falling quiet.  "You okay?" I asked with a nudge on her arm. 

She pulled on a smile. "I'm going to go in the back."

That didn't answer my question.

Before I had the chance to further expand on that topic, we were way into September and my sister headed back to law school, away from LA. I didn't have time to ask her about it but I had a feeling of what it was about. Regardless, I was going to ask her in person when I would see her again.