g i a d a (shelovesyou) wrote in valesco,
@ 2008-05-11 18:53:00

Entry tags:

Rachel!
She felt like she hadn't done anything outside of work and sleep for the past month. Giada couldn't believe---a month and a day, Alexandria had been dead a month and a day. Her friend had been gone for one month and one full day and she still couldn't find the strength to start...start moving on as people liked to say. How--how was she supposed to do that? It wouldn't make things better, it wouldn't bring one of her best friends back, so--so--what was the point?

If there was one, Giada couldn't see it. She felt terribly guilty for having to put Graeme through all of this, just as they'd moved in together, but all her attempts at being happy were short-lived and...ugh. She wouldn't be surprised if he broke up with her, with how she was so closely resembling a dementor, the way she sucked the fun out of everything she did.

The knock on their flat's door surprised her, and Giada slipped off the couch, keeping her warm blanket over her shoulders. Graeme was out somewhere (ugh, horrible girlfriend, he'd told her too but she hadn't exactly been listening---) and she wasn't expecting anyone, but it was probably Sam or Ally, checking in and making sure she wasn't drowning away her sorrows. They'd be sorely disappointed.

"Rachel!" she squeaked after peeking through the peep hole. Giada opened the door and smiled as warmly as she could (which wasn't much) at her friend. "Hi, hi--come in." Oh, she probably looked a wreck.

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malengled
2008-05-12 12:18 am UTC (link)

It had been too long since Rachel had seen Giada. In fact, it had to have been around the same time Alexandria had died.

The thought still troubled Rachel. More than losing a girl she was close to in school, it was the horror that she had been the same age. Not only the same age, but a girl in her dorm, someone she saw and spoke to every day she had been at Hogwarts.

It still troubled her because she couldn't shake the feeling it might have been her.

But Rachel had moved on and put the troubling feeling behind her. The point is, it wasn't her, and she planned on living a long, happy, and successful life, so it wouldn't do her any good to be in a funk.

An idea she wished to impart on her best friend.

The door opened and she looked at Giada with an eyebrow raised. "You look pallid," she replied, pushing past her and walking into the flat. "What have you been eating?"

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shelovesyou
2008-05-12 12:42 am UTC (link)

Giada stood in the doorway for a moment before shaking her head lightly and shutting the door. She shuffled behind Rachel and toward the kitchen (their tiny kitchen, but it was a tiny flat, so--she loved it, anyway). What had she been eating? To be honest, she hadn't had much of an appetite. Giada knew it was bad, but when she was in a bad mood, she'd always just---not. Eaten. It's how she'd always been. When her mother scolded her for not fitting properly into a dress, she stopped eating it just--was how she dealt with things.

Except she knew it wasn't the right thing to do, so when Graeme ate, she ate. But they did have different schedules, so things were...well, she'd probably lost half a stone, if she wanted to realistically look at it.

"Er---I haven't gotten around to going to the grocer." Giada scratched the side of her head, "And pallid's a bit harsh--I think."

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malengled
2008-05-12 12:50 am UTC (link)

She looked over the rim of her dark glasses disbelievingly. "Pallid was me not being harsh enough."

Looking around the apartment with a small shake of her head, she dropped her bag on the couch. "Sit," she said, pointing a finger at the couch in an almost accusatory manner.

"Luckily for you and your frail self, I took the liberty of bringing food," she remarked, twisting her hair up and securing it before rolling up her sleeves. She may not know how took cook, but she did know how to assemble food rather deftly. Well, some foods.

Thankfully ice cream needed only bowls and spoons.

Which she had forgotten.

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shelovesyou
2008-05-12 01:12 am UTC (link)

Giada pulled a face, but draped her blanket over the back of a chair and went over to the cabinets over the stove. Graeme and Giada didn't have a lot, but they did have the best looking utensils in all of the United Kingdom. A rainbow of colors, which separately didn't match, but together created a nice burst of flavor and creativity. Or at least, that's what Giada said they did. She pulled out a pink and yellow bowl, and then scrounged around a drawer for spoons.

"You didn't have to doooo this," Giada teased gently, though she was very grateful. Graeme was good at comforting her, Sam and Ally were good at comforting her, but your best friend was just different. Plus--no one else knew Alexandria like Rachel did. There was Audrey, but she was busy with the baby and...it was just different. Giada didn't really want to talk about Alexandria, but the fact that she could made her feel a pinch better.

She moved to stand by Rachel, probably a bit closer than she should've, and put the bowls down. "But..what flavor?"

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malengled
2008-05-12 01:21 am UTC (link)

"Nonsense. I did have to do it. You have to eat something, and you might as well start with the things that will help you look like your normal self," Rachel said, taking the bowls and the spoons Giada had produced and pulling out the container. It had taken only a small amount of convincing at Fortescue's to stop him from giving her all three flavors of the day (each slightly more suspect than the other) with her purchase.

She waited to answer the second question before lifting off the lid and looking at it in amusement. "Strawberry, naturally."

Lifting the spoon to the carton she started spooning it out while shaking her head. "No matter how many spells you cast on ices, you still can't keep it from melting."

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shelovesyou
2008-05-12 01:50 am UTC (link)

"Ooh," Giada let out with a soft laugh, picking up her bowl. She turned to press her back into the counter as she lifted the bowl and spoon up high. It was really hard to be sad when you were eating such a good treat, and Giada wondered that maybe starving herself had helped deepen her horrid mood. Oh--she was so very dumb, but it was just how she dealt with things! All her life, that's what she'd done, so--Giada supposed that it was time to start changing things.

"How--how are you?" she asked after swallowing her first few spoonfuls, watching Rachel carefully for a reaction. She knew that her friend was much tougher than she was, but Rachel had seemed just as shaken up when the news had first broke. If she was okay now, then maybe she'd have some advice to help Giada get through this.

She lowered her hands; she should've put a warming spell on the bowls, her hands were freezing--or would that have melted the ice cream?

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malengled
2008-05-12 04:14 am UTC (link)

Rachel swallowed, the icy mass suddenly burning a trail down her throat. Licking her lips, she looked thoughtfully at Giada for a few moments before gazing at the floor.

She could lie and say she was over it, and she could lie and say it hadn't affected her. The truth was, she wasn't really sure how she was. In terms of Alexandria, she wasn't okay, not at all. But in terms of life? She doubted that one ever really stopped mourning the loss of a friend, but it was painfully obvious life hadn't stopped either. In that one month and day so many other things had happened, so many other deaths, even, that she didn't know if that gave her more perspective or skewed what she already had.

"I'm different," she said at last. "A lot of it has to do with Alexandria, but some of it doesn't. I'm different. I'm okay. How are you, G?"

Though the answer looked painfully obvious from where she was sitting.

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shelovesyou
2008-05-14 07:08 am UTC (link)

Different. That was a good answer. It let people think what they want, it let them try and put it together themselves, and it put Rachel off the hook from answering any kind of personal questions that might spew from her lips.

But, Giada knew that she wasn't going to be the one to pry and make Rachel crack and divulge her deepest and darkest feelings. No, Giada could barely speak aloud any of her feelings, good or bad. Especially the bad, of course---she bottled it up, let it drive her absolutely mad and up the wall before she finally burst and let everything explode and shatter around her. Part of her thought it was because she didn't want to worry other people, but she was coming to realize, after all the bad that had been going on the past few months, that she simply wasn't strong enough to face things by herself.

So, she looked down into the bowl of ice cream at Rachel's question, trying very hard to come up with something to say, but her lips stayed glued shut. Her eyes, however, were a good indicator to how she was really feeling, as they immediately welled up with tears she'd so easily been able to produce this past month.

Giada shook her head quickly and turned to Rachel, looking almost fearful as she bit her lip and tried to hold her cries back. But her hands had started to shake, and she dropped the bowl to the floor and nearly threw herself at her friend, letting out loud sobs and not carrying if she had ice cream all over her front.

"She's dead!"

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malengled
2008-05-15 03:29 am UTC (link)

Rachel wrapped her arms around the shaking Giada firmly and hugged her as tightly as she could. "I know, darling, I know. It's been hard on all of us." She stroked her hair and thought about what an understatement that was. It was like the first person Rachel had grown up with, had known closely, had been friends with, gone. She didn't know how often of an occurrence in life this was, but she didn't like it. It was such a reminder of mortality that it made her cringe, shrivel up, lie awake at night shaking because death was such a constant.

"But you have to move past it. I know it's difficult-- I haven't even managed it myself. But you can't let it rule you. You have to live your life too, you know."

She hugged her even tighter and squeezed her own eyes, afraid tears might flow too. On the counter, the ice cream started to melt, but she found she couldn't much care about warm ice cream.

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