HAPPY | ✔

13.0 FIVE AM IN NEW YORK

As I am posting this, it is actually 12 am in New York City. Which means it is officially my birthday. To make this year special, I will be spending it with you guys via various updates throughout the day. My gift to you for making me smile with every read, vote and comment.
I love you guys.
°°°

There was an incessant chewing coming from the backseat. It wasn't loud but it was unrelenting in its persistence and irritating in the way such noises usually were.

"Odette."

Chomp, chomp, smack, chomp, chomp, smack.

To be fair, perhaps it wasn't the constant sounds of crunching and munching, chewing and chomping, that had my panties in twist. Maybe it was the alternate silence that filled the car. It was so blatant it amplified that which would have been otherwise ignored.

"Odette."

Smack, chomp, smack.

"Yes Mommy?"

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

I swung around to find her cheeks stuffed as she dug into the largest pack of Sour Patch Kids I had ever seen.

"Put those away or you're never gonna see another piece of candy until you're thirty," I hissed.

Blissful silence.

"Where did you get those anyway?"

She swallowed quickly before giving a reply,"Selena gave them to me on the plane when I got hungry again."

"Why didn't you just eat the rest of your burger?"

Daniel had been kind enough to have her leftovers packaged and collected by our driver, while we walked the strip. She had barely managed to cut through half of it.

"I wanted to save it for granma and granpa since they didn't get to come with us."

And didn't that make me feel like a horrible person. I hadn't thought of Mom and Dad since I'd stepped foot on the tarmac.

"Oh, okay."

I heard the telltale crumpling of the bag as she wrapped it up and stuffed it into the larger giftbag she had used to carry all the tiny nicknacks and memorabilia Danny had gotten for her in Vegas.

"Don't worry sweetheart, next time they'll come with us."

I almost jumped, startled at the sound of his voice. I glanced over at him in the driver's seat. He sat comfortably, staring straight ahead with one hand on the wheel. His composure so at odds with the tension I felt between us. He'd been extremely quiet since our rendezvous less than an hour before.

"Promise?"

"Of course," he smiled at her through the mirror.

It was terribly annoying feeling jealous of your own kid. It began as an uncomfortable churning in the pit of my stomach upon the realization that he had offered her his grin and not me. Borderline moronic, that's what it was, and fücking pitiful. I cast my eyes out the window to save face.

It was around five in the morning on this side of the continent. The streets were alive with early risers despite it being a Sunday, as is common for the city that never sleeps.

I was thankful to have the whole day to recuperate before the dreaded Monday morning bustle. It felt as though I had been awake for a full twentyfour hours. The time difference here versus the west coast was jarring.