Holidays Bleeding (A Post Malone Fanfiction)

Chapter 12

At least that was until Austin turned to Gina and said, "I heard you got a promotion at work. Congrats on that."

I beamed over my friend. "She absolutely deserved it," I added. "And she already promised me and Gergana she'd take us on movie sets with her."

Gina looked at Austin graciously. "Thank you. It didn't come easy but all the hard work was worth it." She cleared her throat. "It's a big commitment." I didn't miss how her eyes shot to Jace. "Takes up a lot of my time, energy, and attention."

"Yeah, from what Sky was saying it sounds like it would be," Austin agreed.

Jace was smiling but for some reason, I got a bad feeling from it. "She works hard but it's nothing she can't handle," he supplied to the conversation. "Plus, it's not like those commitments will ever just go away," he added.

"I am aware of that," Gina replied tightly, swirling her wine around in her glass.

"So it goes without saying that if there are other new commitments that present themselves to you, you should feel confident you can handle them and be great at it. You've proven you can be. In the end, it's all about taking a leap, ya know?"

Oh shit. It was very clear in the way the air shifted around the circle that we knew Jace was veering off topic.

"My man's right," Dre said. Whatever he was about to say was not going to help. Nothing he said ever did. "You can't pass up opportunities in life. You've got to own them and make the most of them. Take each one as they come. You might never get the chance again."

I suddenly felt his words hit closer home than they did Gina, even though I knew Dre had no idea what we were talking about.

Gina's tongue ran across her teeth. Her face morphing into a subtle scowl.

"Exactly how I feel," Jace said. "You can't hold your life back because you're afraid. Nor does life wait for you to be ready for these particular opportunities."

Now I was feeling the need to interject. Shit, this was unfair, nor was it black and white. And I could tell Gina was barely keeping herself at bay from snapping at him. "That may be the case for some things but not all things," I interjected. I didn't want to get into the details and air out their personal business, so I tried to keep things neutral. "But certain choices should be made consciously, not hastily." It was odd how all of a sudden this felt as if it could be applied, yet again, to mine and Austin's case also.

"And maybe some of these new opportunities and commitments just scare the person," Gina argued. She peered at me and I knew she was silently thanking me. "Are people not allowed to be intimidated?"

We were getting far past the point of being subtle but no one spoke on it.

"You can feel intimidated," Jace said more compassionately towards her. "But you shouldn't when you know you have someone there who is going to be right beside you the whole time."

"Maybe it's harder for some people to trust someone like that," I tried to defend Gina again. Before Jace, she'd been just as independent as I was. She just got married and promoted within a year, and now with the pressure of kids. It's not easy moving so quickly. Trust me, I understood it too well. "It's easy to want to run off scared."

Jace glared at me a moment, no longer appreciating me backing up my friend. "Yeah, you'd know," he spat.

What... "Excuse me?"

"You preaching about running off scared," his tone turned light but condescending. "It's just nice coming from the person who turned down a proposal from my best friend and fled the damn country right after. Running scared seems like it's what you do best. And while it may be right to you, it isn't to everyone else."