I laughed at Isaac’s clear negativity about my capabilities.
“I think I can handle one human woman all by myself.”
“I don’t know, Jackson. She seemed quite fiery.”
“Oh please, if I tell her she needs to leave then she will.”
“If you say so.” Isaac’s smirk pissed me off, but I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him. I let all thoughts of Laura leave my brain when my phone chimed alerting us to trouble in the town centre. Just a normal day, then.
LAURA
Okay, so when I woke the next morning, I honestly had every intention of making the most of the day and figuring out where I was going to head to next. When I woke however, all my positive energy had deserted me. Totally. Relaxing had - it seemed - allowed my facade to dim, and the brutal emotion of all my ex's betrayal was hitting me full force. Questions circulated endlessly in my mind; "Why me?" "What did I do?" "What do I do now?" And my personal favourite "What else did I miss?” I relived every second of what I had perceived to be a happy relationship and found in hindsight signs of trouble everywhere. I didn't know if the signs really existed, or my memory had altered somehow to put them there - taunting me. Perhaps I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment and heartache if I'd paid more attention? Perhaps love really was blind, either way I was feeling all kinds of shitty. I tried to shake it off and give myself a hypothetical kick up the ass - but the effort was too great so I decided to indulge myself and allow myself to grieve for all I had lost. I called down to reception and said I was feeling under the weather, before continuing my pity party for one.
It was around midday when I was pulled from my thoughts by a knock on the door. I called out to whoever it was to come in, and felt oddly lifted when I saw Jasmine walking through with a warm smile on her face and a tray piled high with food. I hadn’t even realised I was hungry until I saw the tray full of food, at which point my belly let out the biggest rumble, making Jasmine giggle as she heard it.
“I thought you might like something to eat,” she said. She popped the tray down on my lap, and sat down on the bed next to me.
“Jackson tells me the guys were a bit hostile towards you yesterday, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Oh, please,” I said, whilst tucking in to the delicious soup Jasmine had bought. “It was a bit weird, but I understand. In close-knit towns like this, any stranger is a novelty, I guess.”
“Well, just don’t take it personally. Do you know where you want to head once you leave?”
“Oh, shit!” I said, and Jasmine moved back slightly startled. “God, I’m sorry. I totally forgot this is a B&B, have I missed the check-out time? Does someone else need the room?”
Jasmine laughed, and relaxed again. “No, no! Honestly, we don’t get many guests this far out of town. I’m just curious as to where you were heading? We’d be really happy for you to stay a couple of days while you decide?”
“Thanks, I’m really not sure where I’m heading to be honest. I was kind of running away from crap at home, so just got in my car and drove. Stupid car gave up on me though, and I ended up here.”
“Jackson called, and your car is ready whenever you are.”
“Wow, that was quick.”
“Yeah, if you ever need anything done quickly, Jackson’s your man. He has a lot of sway around here.”
“Right, well I’ll keep that in mind.” I smiled, and moved on to the fruit that Jasmine had popped on to the tray. She regarded me with a delighted look, as if ecstatic that I was enjoying the food she had prepared and clearly intended to scoff the lot.
“That soup was amazing, thank you so much.” Seriously, the way her eyes lit up, it was like I’d given her the best compliment in the world or something.
“It’s no problem! I understand you want to spend some time alone, but if you do fancy eating with us later we have dinner about 7pm. You are more than welcome to join us.”
As she left, she turned to me and said simply "the behaviour of others does not define our worth, nor is it evidence of it" before softly closing the door and leaving me to disappear back into my world of personal self-torture.
I didn’t end up joining anyone for dinner, which I did feel quite bad about afterwards. Jasmine popped up again with another tray of food, and by the end of the night I was getting bored of my own moping. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how much my life had changed in such a short period of time. I thought I had had everything figured out, and that I knew exactly where I would be in five years’ time. Turns out that sometimes when you think everything is going perfectly, that’s when fate decides to kick you really hard in the balls. I had managed to stay pretty positive recently, but it seemed like the events of the previous couple of days had hit me pretty hard, and all I could think about was how shit everything was. By nine o’clock, I was already getting ready to go back to sleep, and just hoped that I felt more like myself in the morning. The parting words from Jasmine floated into my mind, and feeling like I had been hugged by a sister, I switched off the bedside light.