You, Me & Everything After

Prologue

Everything has a before, a singular action that sets it in motion. Before the world, there was the Big Bang; before humans, there were the dinosaurs. The calm before the storm, the wind that sets off a hurricane, and the single flutter of a butterfly's wings that sets everything else in motion and tilts the world against its axis

For Carmen before him, there was chaos. A euphoria of pain and uncertainty unfolded against her skin as her body was jolted awake from the waking sleep she found herself in. The Before then, she had assumed that life was perfect. She was happy, and nothing could go wrong. Oh, how wrong she was. The world would hand her life on a platter and then drown her in it.

Like all epic love stories, theirs started with a funeral. She didn't know it then, but that day, as she wore a lace black dress and stood at the foot of his grave, she had lost one love and broken her ties with one soul, but the universe had entangled her heartstrings with the soul of someone.

She had always hated the rain. It had rained the day he came to pick her up from the party, and it had rained at the funeral. It was as though the universe was mocking her. She would usually shield herself from the rain, and she watched as everyone else ran to their cars for shelter. But she didn't move. She stayed frozen in her spot as the droplets beat her skin. She did not move until she felt her mother's trembling hand pull her away.

She hates Chris for leaving, and she told herself that she would never move on. Yet, Chris brought Carmen—the man who was in a sense her salvation and unknowingly her damnation—all at once.

*************

After the funeral, nothing was the same at home again. She smiled and thanked people for coming. She pretended to listen to people's advice on how to grieve, but she was barely there. Likewise, she was like a ghost, barely present in her own skin.

Her parents tried to keep up a front for everyone. They were always very good at playing pretend, but Carmen saw right through it. Her dad threw himself into work, as he thought of it as the best way to grieve his only son. And when he wasn't working, he was drowning himself in alcohol.

The dad that she once knew was no longer there. What was left behind was only a shell of his former self. Her mother had never been good at showing her emotions, and when Chris died, she became even colder. She locked herself in her room and only came out to eat. Carmen's aunt, Lucille, had to force her back to work.

And then there was Carmen. Stuck in the middle of it all. No one remembered her pain. She had lost her brother too, but she was almost certain that her parents blamed her for the accident. They just didn't say it out loud.

She was forced to grow up too fast. Her parents had a million-dollar company to run and had little to no time to worry about their introverted daughter. Chris was always a people person. He was the life of all parties, and it allowed Carmen to blend into the background.

But now she was the one in the spotlight, and she didn't know how to handle all the attention. She wasn't used to the kind of pressure that they tried to put on her. They seemed to forget that she was only fourteen.

A year after Chris died, they began to hint at the possibility of passing down the company to Carmen and grooming her for the role. She tried to avoid the conversation as much as possible, but it was inevitable.

Carmen was always closed off at school. She did well in her studies, but she lacked motivation almost all the time.

**********

The day started off like any other. She had another dream of rain, and she slowly sat up on her bed as she tried to shake off the memories from her mind. After swiftly taking the duvet off her body and ignoring the large scar on her calf, she made her way towards her bathroom and began getting ready for the day.