Her Maid of Honor (gxg)

Day 44 - Lacey

I forced a sweet smile as Daniel kissed my cheek goodbye. I still felt horrible about leaving him in the dark, but I felt even worse about the consequences were he to ever find out the truth. How could I have let this happen? I drilled myself again for the millionth time this morning. The feel of Daniel's lips lingered against the side of my cheek as he walked out the door, bringing it to a gentle close behind him. Though it was a feeling I had become very much so accustom to, somehow, after... what happened... it somehow felt different from all the other times before... – strange, even... – to be kissed by him.

I shook the thought away as I lowered my head towards the laptop that sat upon my knees, staring relentlessly at the screen before me, yet retaining nothing but the glare. A minute passed, and then another, and another, until I could no longer just sit idly by while the thoughts of my betrayal ran wild inside my head. I closed my laptop and tossed it aside, jumping off the bed to find a pair of my jeans hanging neatly on the back of an armchair, and rummaged quickly through the closet in order to locate a matching shirt.

Throwing each of them on while hopping towards the bathroom, I brushed my teeth, threw my tangled hair into bun, and splashed my face with a handful of cool water to shock my nerves back into place. The cluttered bunch of keys sat upon the tabletop exactly where I had left them after having returned from a midnight ice cream run a couple of nights ago. Avoiding any type of thought process into what I was about to do, I jumped into the cold leather interior of my car and sped out from the parking lot, blasting the radio at the highest volume my eardrums could possibly handle without exploding inside my skull.

Pulling up to the building entrance in nothing short of record time, I parked the car and hopped out of the vehicle, convincing myself that I was only going to be here a minute to set the record straight. Fidgeting nervously in the tightly enclosed space around me, I listened to the evenly timed dining of each floor that I passed by on my way up to see her. Nearing the top of the building, my palms began to sweat and my heartbeat began to pulse so loudly that I was almost certain the neighbours were bound to hear it. Forcing in one deep breath after another, the elevator finally stopped and the heavy doors slid to an open revealing a narrow corridor before me.

I shut my eyes and began to move my feet against the hardwood flooring of the hallway. The sound echoed against the walls, making my presence unavoidable to miss. Standing before the door I had seen on but a few occasions prior, it now held a feeling much different to any other that I had ever felt before. I could feel the fear rising from the pit of my stomach as butterflies swarmed within. Tiny beads of sweat encased my entire body as each and every hair stood on edge, waiting for whatever catastrophe was bound to happen next. Holding my breath, I raised my trembling hand until I found the strength within myself to make an impact with the door.

3 knocks later, and my arm fell limp towards my side. It was done. There was no turning back now. No where to run, no where to hide. As the sound of a lock clicked from the other side of the frame, the face that stood before me was the last person I had ever expected to see.

"Can I help you?" The stranger said, looking me up and down as if I were nothing more than a lowlife peasant in her eyes.

"Um..." I began to formulate, but the words seemed caught inside my throat. "Is Jessica here?" I finally managed to croak out after a second or two of the most uncomfortable silence ever.

She grinned a sheepish sort of smile as she said – with great pleasure I might add, – "Jess is... incapacitated at the moment, may I take a message?"

I can't quite explain the wave of anger that rushed over me as I clenched my fists in order to refrain from punching her in her perfectly pearly whites, but then a familiarly groggy voice stopped me from doing something that I might have – not – regretted later.