The Bodyguard

After the Wedding

(Title page/Cover by @AleBrasil01 )

"I can't believe she's doing this to me, it's only been a year."

"A year and a half"

"It's just too soon, and the new restrictions, I just, I don't like it."

"I know but it's not so bad is it? I mean, you still get to be here don't you?"

Emilia Heart, turns to look at her best friend in the entire world with the dirtiest glare she can muster as she peers through the raccoon-like makeup that she had been wiping off with a dirtied wipe.

"Ok, yeah, so it's bad, but, hey! Just think of it as a new beginning. You never really saw him anyway, it's not like you really miss him, right?" Jasmine asks, trying to give an encouraging smile but her eyes tell an entirely different story. Leaning against the bathroom wall, searching Emilia's face slowly to try and guess what she was feeling behind the pissed off look in her eyes.

Emilia couldn't answer, she didn't know how she felt about her absentee father. He had always been on the move from city to city, running from debt and loans. She only saw him once a year if that, and a card on holidays with a nice check or present to accompany it. An unreturnable "I love you" scrawled across the bottom like an after thought.

She didn't miss him exactly, she could never say that she had known him, but he was her father. They shared blood, and eyes, if nothing else. A small twang in her heart as she clears away the remnants of black and sees those unassuming green eyes with thin, long lashes and rather straight eyebrows of dark blonde hair. She pushed a piece of her long hair from her forehead and took a towel to her face, wiping off the water as an excuse to look away. 

"I don't know Jaz, I just. It just seems too soon, I know they had been separated for a while, but I also know that she really loved him, and Mr. Delmont, well." Emilia sighs, glancing at her friend in the mirror over her mess of tangled hair from being held in pins for several hours on end. Looking for the rest of the words that she couldn't think of. 

The wedding had been disastrous, first her speech that had gotten a glare from her mother, then the food that had nearly given her an allergic reaction because of mushrooms with her chicken that she then couldn't eat, and had been starving until cake. She had also been forced to take the second dance with her new step-father, Mr. Delmont, to show how she was just sooo happy with the new arrangements to be made. During the dance he had told her that a few things would start to change in her life, in fact, they had changed that very evening.

Emilia was trying very hard not to think about that. Slipping a large t-shirt over her head, the comfortable cotton a free shirt she had gotten from some volunteer service that had happened years ago and that she could hardly remember. 

Emilia winced as she struggled to put a brush through the dark golden locks, struggling as it gets stuck in tangle after tangle until it is yanked from her skull and is left in a bushy mess that she flips into a messy bun atop her head, determined to deal with it in the morning.

"So, what types of restrictions is he putting on you anyway? You didn't give me the details." Jasmine asks as Emilia leads the way to the bedroom with a frustrated huff. Jaz just wouldn't drop the damned conversation.

"I'm not even sure what all of them are quite yet, I know that he had some sort of bodyguard drop me off though, and they're picking me up in the morning too. So I guess I don't get to drive myself anymore, which means no freedom. There was also something about behaving for the cameras, but before he could finish my mom took him away for more dancing and I didn't want to stick around." Emilia flops back onto the bed and gazing up at the web of lights hanging from hooks in the ceiling. She had helped Jasmine put those up barely a month ago, strings of tiny twinkle lights hanging above the bed and lighting it in a soft way that didn't hurt the eyes. She turns on her side so that she doesn't have to look at the beautiful lights anymore, they reminded her too much of the fairy globes that had been at the wedding a few hours ago.