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Monday
Posted by Hannah, Feb 20. 102 views. ID = 627
This post was written in 31 minutes.
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 | This post has been awarded 13 stars by 4 readers. |  | This post is Part 1 of a writing series titled Jaquelyn's story. |
Jack shoved her hand out of the warm enfolds of the heavy quilt surrounding her. She groaned as she shoved the snooze button on the screaming alarm clock. She shuffled deeper into her bed for five more minutes of sleep, or so she told herself. After a few seconds she jumped out of the bed, as though burned, and scrambled quikcly to her robe hanging on a hook next to her closet. She knew that she needed to get out quickly, get it over with, like ripping a bandaid off, or she would never get out. Jack rubbed her hands together and blew into them to try to warm them. It didn't work. She threw the fluffy robe around her and shuffled into the bathroom. She wondered why it always seemed to be freezing only in the morning.
After her shower, Jack threw clothes on and scrabbled makeup onto her face, then ran a brush through her short hair and shuffled slowly out of her room. Her small apartment greeted her and she smiled. She had just rented this apartment three months before and she loved it. Jack didn't think that she would ever move. She had decorated the apartment quickly and she thought it looked like her. Organised chaos. That's what her mother called it. The two brown couches were large and encircled a large wooden table complete with a polka-dotted table cloth and large pot of nuts. It was weird that Jack had nuts on her coffee table. She hated all nuts. A man in her church had given the nuts to her for Christmas, and since she was such a pack rat and hated wasting things, she stuck the nuts with the ugly-looking pot her mother had given her for her birthday as a joke. The couches and a small arm-chair were covered in throw pillows and blankets and faced towards a medium-sized TV that was on top of a small entertainment center. Surrounding the entertainment center were two bookshelves full of movies. Next to the living room was a smaller than small kitchen that looked messy at first glance, but on second glance you could see that it was just "organized chaos," like everything else in her little house.
Jack stumbled into her kitchen and shoved the button that turned on the coffee machine. Her bread and butter. She hated to even think about not having coffee. A world void of coffee would be a world void of life and conciousness. Jack's favorite belief was that conciousness was just the annoying time between naps. Jack checked her watch and frowned as she mentally rushed herself. She flipped the TV on with her remote to check the traffic, and seeing that it would be terrible, like always, she imagined that she probably should have left an hour or more before. Jack fancied taking the subway, and then psycologically kicked herself. She hated the subways. There was something psycotic to her about going under ground. She wasn't a rabbit. Humans were meant to be on land.
Jack took another look at her watch as she poured herself a cup of coffee into her portable cup and grabbed her keys, coat and cell phone and ran out the door, half tripping over her heels. She hated Monday's.
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Jack leaned over her desk and stuck the newly-written post-it that read, "change red flowers to white," along with a phone number that was obviously to a flower shop, into the composition notebook that lay in front of her. Three post-its were stuck onto the two pages in front of her that looked as if a madman had written them. Small sketches and little notes cross and criss-crossed the page. She only had one unwritten page left in the notebook that she had titled "Davis' wedding". She liked the Davis'. They were sensible and conservative and listened to her. Unlike the Reese's, now they were quite the opposite. The soon-to-be then, but the now Mrs. Reese almost completely took over and the only thing she left up to Jack was the food. She just used Jack's contacts, and then paid her.
Word of Jack's skill at planning had reached far. She got people from Maine, Connecticut, and even Boston. If the people wanted to have their weddings, or whatever event they wanted Jack to plan where they lived, they had to pay her fare. She loved these events. She got to go out of town for a few days.
Jack worked in a small office in the middle of New York. The office building had a small sign with listings of the businesses that resided in the building. Just below "Henry's Paint and Stuff" was a little sign that read "Jay's Plans". Jack was a professional life planner, and thus she wanted to buy her own office and run her own business, but seeing as how she had only been a planner for five years, she didn't quite have enough money, or credentials, to buy and run a business. She was quite happy where she was for the time.
Jack reached past her ripped, scratched, and desecrated notebook up to her small box full of business cards. In the time she had worked at Jay's Plans, Jack had aquired favorite businesses for flowers, linens, dresses, tuxes, cakes, food, and everything else that was needed at a wedding. Her organized chaos rule followed these contacts. The ones she truly loved had smiley-face stickers. The only way she didn't use these businesses was if the person she was planning for already had a preference, or they didn't like the business, or the business was too busy. She had the extra cards for those occasions.
Jack flipped through the small box and found exactly what she wanted. "Love's Flower's." It was a small flower shop that she had found in only her first month on the job. She loved the little store because they were cheap, they had a wide selection of beautiful bouquets, and the couple that owned it were very kind. Jack picked the phone up and dialed the number listed on the post-it and the card.
"Hello, Love's Flowers, this is Betty." A woman's voice rang cheerily through the phone.
"Betty, this is Jack." A small shriek sounded through Jack's ears and she pulled the phone away quickly.
"Jacky, darling, do you have another order for us? Why don't you come in? You could stay for dinner; I have the son of a friend coming over so it would be perfect." Jack rolled her eyes. She knew that she was probably, in most cases, too old to be single, but she didn't want to be set up with a man that she didn't even know. Anyways, she didn't think that twenty-seven was that old anyways.
"No thanks, Betty; but I'd like to order thirty white rose centerpieces."
"Oh, that's great; what style?" Jack could hear a pen scratching across paper on the other end of the line.
Jack flipped through her notebook, just to confirm, and then said, "No particular style." She knew that Betty would be happy that she didn't have to follow a guide for the flowers.
"Good, I'll have them ready in...three weeks." Jack frowned.
"See, that's the problem. My last order was messed up and I ended up with red roses that were half-dead. I need these flowers on Friday." Betty paused for a minute.
"That's really short notice, darling..." She answered hesitantly.
"I know." Jack prayed that Betty would have a solution, because she was completely out of ideas.
"All right, but you'll have to pay double. I'll have to not plan anything else to get that done."
"That's fine." Jack felt weights lift from her shoulders as she crossed the writing on the post-it off. "That's great actually."
"Now, about dinner..."
Jack cut her off. "I'll see you on Friday." Jack laughed as she hung up the phone. She checked her watch and stretched across her chair. It was almost six. She needed her coffee fix. Now. She got up and shoved her cell phone and keys into her pocket and grabbed her coat with her wallet in it and turned off her computer. The monitor hummed as it shut down. Jack locked the door to her office and ran outside. Her black, 1997 Dodge Ram sat waiting for her outside and she jumped gratefully into it and headed to her coffee shop. After a short drive, she parked her truck illegally and ran into the store. There were no customers and a large man stood at the cash register, reading a magazine.
"Adam, I need coffee and a blueberry muffin please." Jack said quickly as she stepped in the door. The man looked up quickly and then entered something in the cash register. Before he could tell the woman how much her order was, she was handing him $2.32 in exact change.
The man called Adam took the change and dumped it into the register and then turned to the coffee machine. He was large, but Jack couldn't detect that he was over-weight. His full head of hair ruffled across his head and his chin was constantly scruffed with small hairs. On first look, he had the sense of a lumberjack.
"So, how are you today Adam?" Jack asked warily. The man was usually out of humor, but he seemed to like Jack enough to talk to her.
"Good, I guess. What about you?"
"I'm fine. I'm almost done with the Davis' wedding." Jack said elatedly. No matter how many events she planned, it was always exciting to finish months' worth of work.
"That's great."
Jack frowned. "Oh, come on, cheer up, everything's great. The sun is shining, the bees are being swatted, the birds are being choked by pollution." She joked. The large man smiled reluctantly and handed her a coffee cup and a bag. She looked into the bag and found two muffins.
"Adam, I ordered one."
"Yeah well, if the day's as good as you say it is, I don't want you to go hungry. I know you can't cook and this will probably be the only thing you eat all day."
"No actually, I was planning to order chinese food later." After a moments pause, Jack said, "Hey, I usually order too much food and I'm going to be all alone tonight, you want to come hang out? I've got all three Godfathers."
Adam looked up at Jack quickly and then answered, "All right. What time?"
"I'll probably order the food at six." She answered. Jack was surprised, she had asked hime to dinner before, but he had only accepted five or six times in the five years she had known him.
"I'll be there."
Jack smiled and walked out the door, yelling goodbye behind her. Adam stared at her back as it faded across and then down the street. He knew that he shouldn't be staring and thinking about her so much, but he almost couldn't help it. He tried, he knew he tried.
Copyright 2008 Hannah. All rights reserved. FifteenMinutesOfFiction.com has been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work. For permission to reprint this item, please contact the author.
| This post has been awarded 13 stars by 4 readers. | | This post is Part 1 of a writing series titled Jaquelyn's story. The next part of this series can be found here: Tuesday. |  | This is a revised version of a post. Click here to view the original version
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Comments
Katie
Feb 22 | I enjoyed this! Nice job! :-)
~Posted by Katie, Feb 22 |
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