***
Meredith scrunched her face before fluttering her eyes open. It took some deep rubbing of the eyelids and the familiar voices around her for Meredith to figure out her exact whereabouts. She lifted her head off of Payton’s shoulder and yawned long before she licked her lips and stared out the window, her memory still a fog. The Compton family was in Stockholm City, in a taxicab on their way to the hotel. Meredith pressed her forehead against the frosted window and stared at the view. There were Christmas lights hanging on every building and thick green garland draped across every street. There were enough lights wrapped around every tree and light post to light up the entire city, which the dark sky was unable to do. It was around and six o’clock in the morning and the sky was still of navy hue. Snow stuck permanently to the ground and left a leading trail all the way to the hotel. Meredith sluggishly dragged her suitcase up to her suite and crawled into bed. She lay on her back and stared at the weird painting that was framed to the right of her. After lugging her suitcases to the elevator and down the hall to the door, she had woken up and there was no going back to sleep. Meredith grunted and fetched for her phone in her left back pocket. She quickly sent out a text to Keliah telling her she just arrived and to have fun in Alberta, no needing to reply. After that, Meredith let her phone fall out of her hand onto bed and shut her eyes quickly when she heard the door click open. Roelle rolled her suitcase to the empty, made bed and called Meredith’s name.
“Meredith, you awake?”
Meredith did her best not to move and hoped her sister would buy that she was asleep and leave her alone. After not getting a response a second time, Roelle crawled into her own bed and was soon off to sleep. Meredith waited to hear her sister’s pattern breathing and soft snoring to open her eyes. She intertwined her hands with each other and rested them on her stomach, her thumbs pressing against each other. With only four hours of sleep, Meredith knew she should go to bed but she had spent most of the night trying to tame her racing thoughts and now that Meredith was in the same time zone as Gabrielle the anticipation of what the city of Stockholm would bring only caused more angst. Meredith told herself that there should be nothing to worry about and the likelihood of her running into Gabrielle was very slim but the moment she stepped off the plane, all rational went out the window and she swore she saw Gabrielle everywhere she looked. Meredith couldn’t decide whether she wanted to see Gabrielle or if she didn’t. She felt like a part of her. She would go on about her life, constantly having a feeling of hollowness within her soul. It was the fact that Gabrielle was living in another country that bothered her. In another country was another world to Meredith. If Meredith wasn’t underneath the same sun as her, she wasn’t a part of her world and that bothered her. Meredith just wanted to have Gabrielle to keep. She was hers and would never want to let go of her once she saw her again. That’s why she was afraid to run into her. Meredith wouldn’t know if she could control herself of the myriad of emotions that she would endure all at once. Especially in front her family.
***
Gabrielle dreamt of nothing but blackness and when the warmth exited her body and earthling sounds returned to her ears, she whimpered underneath her sheets. The patterned knock that Gabrielle detected was coming from outside her door made her curse. She pulled the pillow off of her head and rolled over to see what time it was. She had gotten two and half hours of sleep and whoever was standing behind her door wouldn’t live to see the following day. Gabrielle grabbed her pajama pants from the bottom of her bed and lazily slid them on. She stumbled downstairs to the door and the knock sounded again, this time harsher.
“I’m fucking coming!”
Gabrielle’s voice was croakier than usual and she opened the door with a huff. When she saw her manager standing in a Christmas sweater and a tall turtleneck with a furrowed brow and a hand on his hip, she couldn’t help the eye roll.
“Are you fucking kidding me!”
Brycen shouted.
“What’d I do now?”
Gabrielle slammed her door and headed in the kitchen and Brycen barely
