Flowers

When Jenny finally finished her work and put in an additional ten minutes of overtime, she asked the doctor if there was anything she could help him with. He looked at the time and shook his head. He told her he would finish up shortly as well and that she could go home for the night. So, Jenny returned to her empty hotel room. When she unlocked the door, she walked straight to her bed and dropped herself on the fresh sheets of the made up bed. Today had been stressful and exhausting, waking up like that really seemed to suck up all the sleep you had gotten, no matter how much it had been. While still having her face pressed into the sheets, she searched for the landline on the nightstand and pressed '1' for the reception before bringing the receiver to her ear. With some difficulty she ordered room service and allowed herself some rest. After a few minutes of lying completely still she pushed herself up and prepared for the next day, so she wouldn't have such a stressful day like today. She had just set an alarm on her phone, when she heard a knock on the door and a soft "room service". After eating her dinner, she turned in early and caught up on some much needed sleep.

During the next few days, Jason continued to watch Jenny from the window and the rooftop while he kept his distance from her. After classes were over, he would go into the empty classroom across from hers and watched her till she was done preparing with Max, before he went home as well. With each day, this became more difficult to do. The closest he could be with her, was when he was watching her on his laptop screen. Though them being apart had only been a few days, it felt like an eternity. His sleep had been affected, his appetite and even his work. Just the other day there had been a cyber attack on his company's database. Normally he would notice these things almost immediately and he would work on the bugs of his firewall daily, these days because of his lack of sleep he didn't always feel like it. The one day he completely skipped out on checking in, the hackers had attacked. As if they could smell his defenses weakening. Luckily, he was able to stop them before any information was stolen and any real damage could be done, but it was a scary wake up call. He couldn't have any screw ups and scandals this close to the deadline.

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Soon it was already Friday and they had almost been living apart for a week. Today was a surprisingly sunny day and a lot of the students had decided to eat outside and even some classes were given outside. One of these classes had been art class. They were given a drawing assignment. In pairs they were asked to draw a flower from the garden. The garden at Mounthforth High was large and contained all sorts of flowers, rare and common and in all colours imaginable. The assignment was supposed to show you that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. By letting two people draw the same thing, it would result into two completely different drawings, showing how each individual saw that particular object. Though they could pick the flower among themselves, as long as no two couples had picked the same flower, but they couldn't pick their own partner. This was to avoid people from just hanging out with their friends instead of doing the given task. So, they had been assigned partners by the teacher.

As luck would have it, Max and Jenny had been paired up together for this assignment. After writing down which flower they had picked, they left to their assigned part of the garden. They had chosen to draw a beautiful rare blue flower that grew at the back of the school gardens. Jenny hadn't seen them yet, but Max, as a long time student of Mountforth High, had. He knew that blue was Jenny's favourite colour, so he had suggested that particular flower almost immediately. Not only would it give them time alone together as it was in the far back where no one else would go, as he knew she would like it and it would make her happy, it would also earn him points with Jenny. When they reached their drawing spot Max presented the flower he had picked. "Well, how is it? Is it all I promised it would be?" Jenny looked at the flower wide eyed. "It is all and more. This is beautiful. Such a deep colour." She replied excitedly.

She hurriedly tried to sit down on the ground, when Max grabbed her by her arm and lifted her back up before she touched the slightly damp grass. "Wait just a moment." He took off his jacket, that was part of the school uniform, and spread it out on the grass. "Now you can sit." Jenny was surprised and it showed on her face. "What are you doing? Won't your jacket get all dirty?" Max pressed Jenny down by her shoulders. "Don't worry about it. Better that it is my jacket than your skirt. It's not good for girls to sit on a cold surface and the grass seems somewhat damp as well." Seeing that resistance was futile, Jenny accepted his kind gesture and said, "In that case thank you. Join me, your jacket is big enough for the both of us." This being exactly the offer he had hoped for, Max gladly accepted and the two of them grabbed their drawing paper and got started.