fragments of my life [MERDER]

SEVENTEEN

Meredith rolled over and audibly groaned, bringing her pillow and smashing it into her face to conceal her scream. Why in the hell did she agree to this, she pondered. She lay in the bed, grunting, looking up at her ceiling and whinging. Today was the day of Jade's gender reveal party, two days before they would travel to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania for the surgical board oral exams. 

It would suffice to say Meredith was more worried for the gender reveal than her boards at this point. 

She forced herself out of bed and into the shower, before throwing on some semi-respectable clothes and a touch of make-up so she didn't look so dead inside. She could already hear the few people they had ended up inviting as she was walking downstairs, where Jade had been up since 6am that morning. When Meredith reached the bottom of her stairs, she looked around at how Jade had transformed the house, looking like a unicorn had thrown up in there. Banners were plastered over the walls, pink and blue streamers made the floor a complete mess, rainbow coloured balloons made the entire room look like a huge ball pit, and they had enough food and cupcakes to feed a small village. 

Meredith really wanted to be gracious, she really did, but this all seemed a little too much. So she put on her best surprised face and walked into the room where the people had gathered. The second they saw her, Meredith was greeted with a cacophony of party blower sounds and excited giggles.

"Here she is!" Jade rushed over to Meredith, putting a 'mom to be' sash around her shoulder, and stuck a crown donning blue and pink diamonds around it in her blonde hair. Meredith forced a grin as Jade clapped her hands, her feet excitedly jumping up and down on the spot.

"Yay!" Meredith feigned enthusiasm and eagerness as Jade ushered her to a seat on the sofa. The reveal didn't have too many people - Jade and Kieran, a few more residents that they didn't detest, Dr. Knight and a few other attendings that had been nice or accommodating to Meredith, and Dr. Summers.

Kieran walked up to Meredith, sitting on the end of the sofa, leaning in to whisper to Meredith.

"You hate this, don't you", Kieran laughed as he spoke, putting special emphasis on the word 'hate'. 

"What do you mean? I love it!" Meredith responded sarcastically, holding her mouth in an uncharacteristic and quite frankly scary looking grin for a couple of seconds.

"That smile is terrifying. Please, stop that", Kieran continued to laugh at Meredith's misfortune.

"It's just-" Meredith sighed, as Kieran intervened, finishing her sentence for her.

"They're not here." Meredith nodded. It wasn't that Meredith wasn't thrilled to learn her babies genders, although she couldn't really care less as long as they were healthy, it was more that the whole party vibe was a bit much for her, considering mostly everyone in Seattle was still in the dark. Derek was still in the dark. She promised herself that a week after her boards was all the time she was giving herself. She wouldn't let it get past seven months before telling him. She was forcing herself to tell him, even if she didn't entirely trust him yet. It was unfair on him for her to be concealing information like this, even though her hormones made her feel otherwise, the opposite.

Meredith quickly snapped out of her thoughts when she caught a glimpse of Jade running towards her with a cake, topped with white icing and blue and pink drops, the words 'twins?' piped in the middle in black icing, another resident they had invited following with a knife. They placed the cake on the table, and let Meredith do the honours.

"So, each half of the cake represents one of the babies. Agh, I'm so excited, would you just cut it already?" Jade encouraged Meredith, who sat forward, barely able to lean over her huge stomach, picking up the knife and cutting the cake longways.