The common theme in last update's reviews was the love for the April and Lexie friendship, and let me tell you something right now, my loves: if I was Shonda, the two of them would have gotten so much more, like they rightfully deserved. I'll never stop petitioning for justice for my babies. Anyways, I'm really happy to see that you guys are enjoying this overall, I was a little bit worried that this wasn't really any good because it feels like a twist from my usual style. But your reviews were so kind, I hope you know how appreciated they are. Also, I hope you're starting to catch on some of the things that I'm purposefully throwing in here, like the Divide lyrics and some specific plot points and whatnot! Just because this is a fluffy story doesn't mean it isn't gonna be chock-full of my little Em-isms. Wink wink. I love love love you all, and get ready for the Japril craziness.


Chapter Two

"And when the world's against me, is when I really come alive." — Eraser, Ed Sheeran

April had only ever been at an airport one other time in her life, and that was when she'd flown from Chicago to Boston. Her acceptance into Boston University had been one of her greatest accomplishments, and while it wasn't anywhere in her home state of Illinois where her parents would have preferred she stayed, Boston University was a new adventure that had a relatively cheaper med-school program than her dream school. Harvard was only ten minutes away as it was, which meant even if she couldn't attend classes there, she was close enough to catch a ride there and admire the campus beyond what Google Images could provide.

It had been an emotional endeavor, with her parents tearfully sending her off with her brand new luggage and starry gaze clouding her vision as she embarked on what she believed was going to be the journey of a lifetime, trying to take in as much of it as she could. It was like she'd seen it in all the movies when people were at the airport, boarding their planes for whatever next great adventure awaited them.

This time, however, was the deleted, rough-cut airport scene from the movies that most people would have just skipped over anyways since it exuded disaster.

She had grown about as accustomed to Mark tagging along with them as one possibly could; it still wasn't her favorite thing in the world and she was still carrying the last few sparks of a grudge towards Lexie for putting her in that situation to start, and he of course was tickled strawberry pink that he was joining them. Mark, unfortunately, was the component that garnered up most of the disaster. Punctuality was his latest kick, and he'd insisted that they be at the airport at least three hours in advance. Their flight was at nine in the morning, and she and Lexie had already set in their plans to take a nap late in the day on Friday so they'd wake up during the early hours of the morning, be on the go, and fall somewhere within the lines of the London timezone by the time jet lag kicked them in the ass. They had it mapped out.

Mark didn't like the mapping ordeal all too much. He'd actually backpacked through Europe before (of course he had) the traditional way he claimed, and insisted that jet lag was simply a part of the experience. He'd hardly let April squeeze in any room for a nap on Friday and resulted in her crashing around midnight because she needed sleep after warding him off all day. Needless to say, she'd gotten thrown off of her plans and was moving through the airport with steam threatening to start blowing out of her ears at any minute.

Lexie was the only person who seemed even remotely glad to be threading her way through the security lines, taking the lead with Mark in one hand and and one side of the waist tie on April's jacket in the other. She was like their mother, pulling the two of them along behind her. April's only excuse for laziness was Mark and his ridiculous request to watch every single Jason Bourne movie in one sitting only hours before. Lexie had been the one to check their luggage, push them through all the lines, and now she had them on a leash just trying to get them to their gate so she herself could collapse.

April really didn't blame her, either.

"April, pick up your feet—"

"Is that a Cinnabon?" Mark interrupted his girlfriend, stopping dead in his tracks.

Lexie sighed impatiently. Woman on a mission, she certainly was; she seemed to be the only person who was still right in step with the plan at this point despite its already being shot to hell. "Mark, this isn't even our concourse. Keep moving."

"I haven't seen a Cinnabon in years," April groaned, shaking loose from Lexie's grip. Mark dropped Lexie's hand at roughly the same time, the two of them veering off course and following their stomachs straight into the Cinnabon line. There were few things that Mark and April had been able to bond over throughout the three years that he and Lexie had been together, and food was the strongest of them.

"You guys," Lexie whined, only to no avail. Ignored entirely and realizing it was a lost cause, Lexie swore under her breath and trudged along behind them.

April had one hand wrapped around the strap of her backpack, the other hanging down freely as she used that shoulder to lean up against Mark as they waited in line. "So, Red, what are you looking forward to most across the Great Divide?" Mark asked, using the top of her head as a mock armrest.

Normally she would have swatted his arm away, but her tiredness held the urge at bay. "All of it," she replied, eyes fixed ahead on the restaurant sign and absentmindedly flickering over the prices. "Although the hopeless romantic in me is screaming Paris."

Mark laughed quietly. "Now how did I know that? Was it the endless amount of shitty romance novels on your bookshelf or the constant pushing for A Walk to Remember on movie nights? I don't remember." He feigned his surprise poorly, April's reply the simple nudge of his arm. Mark might have been Lexie's annoying, constantly-present boyfriend, but he'd spent enough time around April for the two of them to have developed their own relationship. He was the aggravating big brother, who occasionally made his efforts of looking out for her visible but masked the rest of them behind his vexing guise.

They finally made it up to the front of the line, April only ordering the classic and Mark doing serious damage to their current stock by buying what seemed like one of everything on the menu. Off to the side, she spotted Lexie checking down at her phone, glancing up only to see Mark with an obscenely large Cinnabon bag and rolling her eyes.

As April went to pay, Mark lifted up his hand and rested it on her wrist. "C'mon, Kep, let me get it."

"Only Lexie is allowed to call me Kep," April clarified. Mark shook his head defiantly.

"Fine, Kep-ner. Seriously. Don't worry about it." With that, he pushed her credit card out of the way, body-blocking her from the cashier in order to pay. April sighed, grabbing her significantly smaller bag littered in 'thank yous' and retreating off to where Lexie was standing.

"Is he going to insist on paying for everything while we're here?" she asked Lexie, folding her arms over her chest.

She shrugged in response, stuffing her phone back in the pocket of her sweatpants. "Probably."

"Part of the plan was to actually blow through all our own money."

"Mark doesn't like plans," was Lexie's nonchalant reasoning. "You know this. All I know is that he better be planning on giving me one of those five hundred cinnamon rolls or else we're making him swim to Europe."

After Lexie was able to yank Mark away from the Cinnabon counter (and the poor woman who had emerged from the back with a platter of samples to hand out) they'd gotten back on track to their concourse. JFK was significantly larger than O'Hare was, and it was a lucky thing Lexie knew her way around well enough with that photographic memory of hers, otherwise April would have been lost and Mark would have still been back perusing through all the food stands. April was letting herself be pulled along willingly at this point, her focus more so on getting into the Cinnabon bag than getting to their gate two hours early on the dot.

Lexie moved like a hurricane, April almost dropping her fork on two occasions and Mark muttering under his breath all of his plans to hog-tie his girlfriend and toss her over his shoulder like she was luggage to keep her from running all these marathons with them in tow as they strategically weaved in and out of other crowds of people and kiosks in their way. If anyone was a morning person out of the three of them, it was Lexie, and she was showing her true colors a little more than April or Mark would have liked.

They finally reached their gate, which happened to be entirely abandoned, Mark collapsing down into the first seat he saw. "Thank god," he sighed. "Lexie, I love you, but for someone with such little legs you move fuckin' fast."

"I second this," April said, lifting her hand in agreement before putting her plastic fork in between her teeth to balance out her cinnamon roll box in her lap.

"The two of you are just snails. I can't help it you're both about as athletic as a stick," Lexie reasoned. "Also, Mark, you owe me a large roll, hand it over."

Mark made a face as he resentfully handed her one of the blue boxes and a plastic fork. "Stingy ass girlfriend."

"Manwhore."

"Window seat," April interrupted as she wiped her mouth, glancing down at her boarding pass that she'd sat over in the seat next to her. "Who's got it? It's mine."

Mark frowned. "I always get the window seat on trips, Kepner. I pay extra to make sure I get a window seat." April looked over at him, one of her eyebrows lifting in question. "I paid for your Cinnabon. I didn't have to do that, but I did," he insisted.

"And I believe the terms for your accompaniment on this trip was that I got the window seat everywhere we went. All forms of transportation." The smile on April's face was smug, almost sinful, and really, she couldn't have been enjoying this exchange any more even if she'd tried. She held out her boarding pass to him, the other hand beckoning for him to pony up. "Unless, of course, you'd like to leave."

Under his breath, April could hear him let out a string of colorful swears in between his exaggerated groan, begrudgingly pulling his boarding pass from his back pocket and handing it over to her. April snatched it from him gleefully, laughing.

"She's evil," Mark grumbled, glancing over at Lexie as he bit off another chunk of his cinnamon roll forcefully. She rolled her eyes, patting him on the shoulder in a half-hearted gesture of comfort.

They spent the next hour and a half clearing through the rest of Mark's purchases at Cinnabon, Mark sliding a few seats down from them so he could stretch out over a few chairs and attempt to cat nap. That lasted for about eleven minutes (Lexie was timing him) until someone else joined them at their gate and he had to sit up and at least attempt to be a decent person and not that asshole. April and Lexie spent their time talking quietly, nestled up together and listening through Lexie's music while they went through their former college classmates' social media accounts and looking up pictures of all the places they had on their itineraries for the trip.

Boarding the plane was an event at least; Mark wasn't thrilled that they'd forbidden him from buying them first class tickets—"It's a long ass flight, if we have to drop extra money to be comfortable on the seven hour plane ride then I'll do it" had been his excuse, to which Lexie had merely smiled and sent him away from where they'd been making their reservations—and was even less thrilled when he saw April joyfully slide all the way through to the window seat when they'd reached their row.

"Pinch me," Lexie requested quietly as she sat down next to April, Mark hovering over them as he loaded their bags into the overhead compartment strategically. "I still don't feel like we're actually doing this."

"None of this feels real," April confessed, exhaling.

She could see the light hitting Lexie's eyes, sparkling as they looked at April. The look in her eyes was inexplicable happiness, an excitement April had never seen in Lexie before. "Wouldn't wanna do it with anybody else, though," Lexie pointed out. "Besides, you're my best friend. My sister from another mister, my—"

April winced, interrupting her. "Oh god, please don't start saying stuff like that. It makes it sound like you're planning on us crashing over the Atlantic or something and you're just getting all your goodbyes out early." Lexie rolled her eyes, shoving April playfully.

"Oh, shut up. You're my good luck charm, Kep," she reassured, looping one of her arms around April's and tugging her closer. "Nothing bad can happen as long as it's you and me. Us against the world, and all that other shit."

April could only laugh as Lexie squeezed her closer in something that she was sure resembled a hug, her sights drifting off to outside the window where the runway was. It was requiring a decent amount of self control (and the reminder that Mark was a hawk, always watching) to keep from pressing her nose up against the glass of the window like a child. This is happening, she thought to herself, biting back the growing smile curling along her lips.

Europe, here we come.

. . .

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London City Airport. Local time is 22:43, and the temperature is 10 degrees Celcius. For your safety and comfort, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the Captain turns off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. This will indicate that we have parked at the gate and that it is safe for you to move about. At this time, you may use your cellular phones if you wish. Please check around your seat for any personal belongings you may have brought on board with you and please use caution when opening the overhead bins. On behalf of American Airlines and the entire crew, I'd like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to seeing you on board again in the near future. Have a nice evening!"

Mark was dead asleep, Lexie tucked underneath his dead weight arm despite her being wide awake and watching a movie on her phone, attempting to be careful in waking him up, and April was finishing the last few words still on her fingers when the announcement wen off. She folded the cover on her iPad, reaching underneath her seat for her backpack to stuff it back in the pouch. A nearly seven hour flight meant that she could do one of two things: be relatively productive, or be like Mark. She'd chosen the former, working through articles she wanted to draft for her blog and then occasionally opening up her coloring book app whenever the words stopped coming.

Outside, the sun had already set, black tickling along the edges of tou he horizon. The lights along the runway and further out into the city were smeared, blurred from the post-rain mist and erasing any and all stars from the sky. April felt as though she'd stepped right into the middle of a dream, even though she was as wide awake as she was ever going to get.

April felt someone grab onto her wrists, turning to see Lexie facing her with a grin a mile wide stretched over her face as Mark stretched behind her. "Kep," she said softly. "We're in Europe."

"We're in Europe," April repeated, the words that had been a prayer for so long now a fact. They were here.

A blank page. A new adventure.

After exiting the plane, the three of them moved through the airport at a languid pace; Mark was still half asleep, despite having slept through what had equated into an entire day, as he lead them through. Lexie and April had left him in charge, seeing as how he was going to make himself useful whether he decided that on his own or the outside forces willed it, the two of them too busy immersed in their quiet, excited whispers at the fact they were in London.

April had made sure to take meticulous pictures of her vision board before they'd left, seeing as how even the idea of stuffing the actual thing into her bag and dragging it along the Atlantic Ocean was cumbersome. Life was now breathing into the printed out pictures she'd had hanging over her bed for so long, the excitement building in her chest with every step they took towards the exit.

"April, this is your bag," Mark told her as he heaved the bag off the luggage conveyor belt and set it on the ground for April. They'd assigned him the duty of fetching their bags while they flipped through April's pictures of her vision board just for kicks, and despite his having a few comments to slip out under his breath, he'd done as they'd asked. She snapped the handle up, rolling it back over to where she and Lexie had stationed themselves so they were out of his way while he worked. "What did you pack, bricks?"

"Hey, you haven't picked up Lexie's suitcase yet, she's way worse than I am when it comes to packing light," April called out in reminder, and Mark groaned.

"Jesus, I need caffeine."

Lexie stared at him, her eyebrows furrowed and the bewilderment slapped over her features. "Mark, you slept for five and a half hours. On me. I counted. There's no way in hell you can be tired."

After hauling another suitcase off the conveyor belt, he paused to glare over at her pointedly. "And yet, here we are."

"It's the back," April muttered quietly into Lexie's shoulder as he went back to work. "That's what happens when you're old and you take a five hour nap in a tiny airplane seat."

"I heard that, Kepner!" Mark snapped, as Lexie and April tried to bite back their laughter.

"You were kinda meant to!"

After they'd gotten their luggage things went a little smoother, especially after Mark had found a cheap coffee stand and nearly knocked Lexie over in the process to get to it. They managed to hail a cab with relative ease, April and Lexie sliding into the backseat while Mark climbed into the passenger seat whether it was welcome or not. April folded her legs up in the seat as they rolled through the exit of the airport and into the main flow of traffic, propping up her suitcase against the back of the seat to dig out her journal. Her iPad might have been a little more efficient than pen and paper while on the plane, but she would always hold a preference to the latter. There was something about moving a pen over paper and letting the ink flow out along with her words that she found oddly soothing, her security blanket of sorts. Wherever she went, so did the journal. She went to open the front compartment of her bag to retrieve it when her eyes wandered away and froze at the painstakingly out-of-place detail of this picture.

The yellow ribbon she always kept tied around her suitcase for distinguishing purposes was no longer around the handle.

Waves of panic shot through her, immediately subsiding as the voice of reason sounded in her head that it was entirely possible for a yellow ribbon to get loose and fall off a suitcase handle, even if she'd triple knotted it. April resumed moving forward as she unzipped the front compartment in one fluid movement, hand dipping inside to rummage around for the notebook. For whatever reason it wasn't bumping against her hand, stretching her fingers down in case it had wedged itself near the bottom of the pouch. Her lips pursed together as she reached in as far as she could before she finally felt something brushing against her hand and she latched on to pull it out. When her hand emerged from the bag, so did a box of condoms that most certainly did not belong to her.

"Lexie," April said quietly, horrified and scared that if she spoke any louder she would implode in an array in anxiety-induced emotion. "Lexie."

Lexie's eyes moved over to April, one of her eyebrows lifted in question. One look at April's face was all the give-away needed to know that something, whatever it was, wasn't right, and that April was about to die of either mortification or panic one. "What?" she asked. April didn't have to respond, since the minute the words fell out of Lexie's mouth her line of sight wandered down to where April's hands were. "Oh my god, April, what are you doing with those?"

The silent plea in April's eyes wasn't loud enough, apparently, because Lexie had gone and nearly yelled, grabbing Mark's attention almost instantly.

"Kepner," Mark whistled as he twisted around in his seat to see what the girls were talking about, ridiculous grin slapped over his face that only made April wish that much harder for the seat's most-likely pleather interior to absorb her all in one gulp. "I didn't realize you had so many adult activities included in your little plan."

April's face was red hot, one step away from actually setting itself on fire. "They're...not mine," she spat out as the words took their time forcing from her closing in throat, roughly the same time that Lexie had leaned forward and thwacked Mark on the exposed part of his neck that was within her reach. "None of this is mine."

"None of what is yours?" Lexie prompted, and that was when April allowed herself to slam down on the freak-out button.

"Lex, this isn't my stuff. We—Mark—must have grabbed the wrong bag, my journal isn't in there and Lexie this is not my stuff—"

"Okay, Kep, breathe." The most unhelpful statement of them all came falling from Lexie's mouth as April's breathing started to grow more and more shallow by the second. Lexie rested a hand on April's thigh, squeezing it lightly as a means of reassurance as she tried to coax April to look her in the eyes and mimic her breathing pattern. After a few exaggerated and guided deep breaths, Lexie nodded in the direction of the mystery suitcase April felt as though was going to burn her alive if she looked at it any longer. "Reach in there and see if there's something like a luggage tag, an ID, anything," she suggested.

April did as she was told, all but throwing the box of condoms over at Lexie just for the purpose of getting them out of her hands. She didn't want to look at them, think about them, acknowledge their existence; somewhere, her journal was with some stranger and that was freaking her out most of all, meanwhile she had their box of condoms. This couldn't be happening, but of course it was. Maybe this was just what she got for being best friends with the unofficial bad-luck magnet, or maybe it was punishment for something the universe had yet to reveal to her.

Carefully she felt her way around the already opened front pouch, feeling around for anything else—she was praying nothing else sex related, or else she'd have to open the car door and fling herself out while it was still moving. After a minute or so, she found something resting at the very bottom.

Pulling it out, she sighed mostly out of relief when she saw it was a luggage tag. "Oh thank god," she muttered under her breath, hands still shaking as she turned it over to scan it for some sort of information, to figure out who the hell had currently made off with her journal and the rest of her belongings.

Hazel eyes read the name once, twice, and then a third time.

Jackson Avery.


I told you Jackson would be showing up shortly, did I not? This feels a tad bit like a filler chapter, but now that all the formalities are out of the way, things are going to start snowballing. Big time. Reviews make my heart smile almost as much as Japril the Sequel. xo