Every thursday. Please review, comment and favorite. I hope you like it!
The funeral wasn't supposed to take that long, but Jafar's eulogy was beyond measure. He couldn't contain his happiness, and even though his words were poetically dreary; the corners of his eyes were ever so slightly crinkled. It had rained for three days and everyone had absorbed the sullen mood of the weather. Had they been paying attention, they would have noticed his particular inflection on the words accident and tragedy and future.
Jasmine noticed. It had been her father after all. The weather could no longer change her mood, as it was in a state of permanent fury. She nodded the condolences away, hoping the guests had passed her indifference for grief. Maybe her indifference was grief. She didn't think it mattered. Her father was gone.
Wet grass did not do well with heels, and she almost slipped a number of times. It seemed as if all her decisions were coming into question by her own conscience. You shouldn't have worn heels, she said to herself. You shouldn't have been away for three years. You shouldn't have argued with him as often. You shouldn't have bought an expensive coffin. Shouldn't. Shouldn't. Shouldn't.
"I know this is not the appropriate time or place," Jafar was saying somewhere far away, a plate of cold turkey in his hands. Somehow she had gotten to the reception. She didn't remember it happening. Where had he gotten the turkey, she wondered. Jasmine eyed his plate with an empty hunger that came from eating too much. Everyone had been giving her food since her father died. Somehow they thought it would make her feel better. She had lost weight instead.
"Jasmine?" She blinked to the present, and Jafar huffed with indignation. "Did you listen to a word I said?"
She frowned. "Obviously not."
"I'm offering to buy your father's business."
Alas, here it was. The reason the illustrious Mayor had deigned himself worthy enough to speak at her father's funeral. Jasmine had been waiting for this moment. Somehow it still came at a shock to hear him say the words aloud.
"I was thinking of taking over, actually," she said.
He raised his brows high into his forehead, as if his incredulous face would make her change her mind.
"That might not be wise," he said. "Sailing with your father does not make you an expert in his trade, it would serve you well to sell his business to someone more apt in those matters."
Someone like me. His eyebrows said.
Jasmine prepared herself to knock him square in the jaw. How dare he, she thought. At my father's funeral too. She heard his name called before she had a chance to follow though.
"Think about it," he said. "I'll stop by on Monday with the paperwork."
When he turned his back she felt herself relax, not knowing that she had tensed up her shoulders. She glanced forlornly at her plate of half eaten grapes.
Selling the business might actually be the best course of action. Who was she kidding? She didn't know anything about her father's business. Her memories were of the sea in her hair, and the wind in the sails. They were of her bare feet running about in the main deck of the ship, almost getting trampled by the seamen while her head buzzed with rum in her blood. Her father's bellowing laugh. His kind face. They were happy memories of a happy childhood. Nothing of business and finance and paperwork.
"Jas!" said a voice in her ear. "Come back to earth, Jas."
She turned, and for the first time in weeks she smiled. The face she met and the man she hugged was her best friend since forever, her only companion.
"Al," she said, her face bright. "I thought you were stuck in the house."
"I can get out for special occasions," he said, laughing. A few people looked over, as if he had broken the unspoken code of funerals, as if he had offended them, never mind to whom he was speaking. "Terrible party. We should bail."
"I'd love to," she said, but they both knew she wouldn't.
"You, allright?" he said, his dark hair falling over his eyes. She looked out to the crowd, staring at nothing.
"No. You?"
"Doc says I've got about a month," he said. He never stopped smiling, knowing that was what Jasmine needed, knowing the hushed whispers were annoying her, knowing that she wanted to scream. He knew. He always knew.
"Stupid influenza," she muttered, and threw a grape at the dog.
"Yeah." He picked up a grape from her plate and ate it, and she felt guilty for all the waste.
"You should do things you want," she said with sudden fervor. "Eat chocolate, explore the woods, swim in the sea, get married."
He raised a brow in question. "You wanna marry me?"
"You asking?"
He laughed. "I just did."
"Wouldn't that shock everyone, right after my father died."
"And then your husband. People might think you had a thing."
They would have, if she did. They would have said she was too young to have found happiness and lost it so quickly, never mind that her father had been her greatest joy. But she didn't. She was too busy thinking of ways she might somehow avoid Jafar's proposal. She was too worried that she lost her father, and would soon lose her best friend. She was stuck in knowing there was nothing left.
