Afraid | Shawn Mendes

seventy - three

On the car ride home, I couldn't help but feel annoyed at Angela constantly nagging me in secret to talk to Selma. Her heart was in a good place, no doubt about that, but I just could not handle any more of her voice in my ear. I simply stared at the back of the driver's headrest and tried my hardest to bite my tongue. If I had to hear about cold damn feet one more time, so help me it honestly was not about to be pretty. Each time she leaned over to whisper, I would simply stare out the car window as if I were on The Office. Angela is honestly a wonderful person who means well, but the conversation was honestly just annoying. I didn't want to talk about the damn wedding anymore because that's all anyone ever wants to talk about. I was so happy when the car stopped that I honestly jumped out of the backseat.

"I'll see you guys at the rehearsal dinner!" I said, waving as I walked up the steps of my house. The car drove off and I unlocked the door, stepping side and hanging my bag up on the coatrack.

Shawn was in the kitchen leaning against the counter with a drink in his hand as he was talking to my dad about law things. I sighed, walking straight for Shawn.

"Hey, how was the day at the...?" I cut him off by grabbing the drink from his hand and tossing it back down my throat. I handed the empty glass to him in his hand before he finished his sentence, "spa?"

"I take it you're not relaxed at all, huh?" My dad asks me as he grips his glass tightly.

"Not one bit." I said. "Daddy, if I hear the words wedding, or cold feet come out of anyone's mouths for the next three days, I am honestly, completely going to rip my head off."

"Don't do that!" Shawn replied.

"Tell you what, we'll all go out on the boat tonight. Got it?" My dad says to me.

"You don't have to tell me twice." I say, walking out the kitchen and heading upstairs and into my room. To my surprise, my mother was in there with a box and rummaging through some things of mine.

"Are you planning a garage sale anytime soon?" I ask her.

She looks at me and holds a photograph of me and her on my dad's boat. In the picture I wear small oval pink sunglasses with a white bathing suit. My hair is curly in the photo just like my mothers. "I thought you'd want to take it with you in Chicago."

I look on the box and see that she has written in black marker Chicago on the side. My eyes go wide and I quickly shut the door. "Mom!"

"What's wrong?" She asks me.

"Mom, you're gonna hate me." I say. "Shawn doesn't know about Chicago."

Her brows furrow and she looks at me. "I thought you already told him."

"I told him about going away to college, but I didn't say which college, or where it was. He thinks I'm going to a university in the state."

"Oh, mija. How could you not have told him? You're leaving at the end of the month! That's in three weeks!" She reminds me.

"I know, I know. I'm terrible. But I don't know how to tell him. It's too late."

"Better late than never." She closes up the box and hides it in my closet. "Jasmine, tell him now before he finds out."