Cops & Robbers

Chapter Nine (Revised)

Indecision was my middle name for almost a week. Finally I decided to tell Alaina, my kid sister, about Ben's offer. She advised me without solicitation that if I accepted an offer like that from practically a stranger, she'd disown me.

"You barely reconnected with the guy." She huffed."You're better off staying with Danny. You've been on again off again with the guy for how long?"

I shrugged though I knew there was no one on my end of the phone to appreciate it. "Yeah, but Danny has expectations. Ben seems okay with being friend zoned."

"You and Alex could always, I don't know, get over yourselves! Kiss and make up over whatever silly argument you're having this time."

She made it sound so simple, but it didn't feel simple to me. Of course she was also under the assumption that it was one of our petty little arguments and had no clue regarding the real reason for our fall out. She also mentioned something about me being blind and how she thought that was remarkably ironic since there was only supposed to be one blind person in the family and she'd already been casted for that role. She wasn't one to mince words, my sister. It was a habit she'd gotten from me. We didn't get a chance to say much more. She conveniently got called away and had to cut our conversation short.

The logic of my teenaged sister who was clearly more mature than me, had me thinking about our conversation into the wee hours of the morning. I thought about her advice over and over, but ended up trting to rationalize my own actions. I was getting nowhere real fast, so turned my mind toward Alex instead. Though he was still either unwilling or unable to call me by the nickname I'd grown accustomed to, he was slowly coming around.

Eventually I decided that however appealing the idea of moving in with Ben appeared, I just couldn't end what Alex and I had. Our friendship meant more to me than anything I could readily think of and moving out would just cause more complications than it would avoid. Plus, it helped that my sister was right. It only felt like I knew Ben. We were adults now, complete with adult problems.

The next morning I laid in bed, comotose. The downside to handling my own problems was that they made for a shitty night's sleep. The bright side was that now that I'd made a decision I felt ten times better. Good enough to realize that over the past few days, Alex and I had made enough progress that we were able to sit next to each other on the couch without it being completely and totally awkward. Granted that wasn't exactly brag worthy, but it was progress. And I couldn't argue with progress.

That wasn't to say that I was by any means content with our snail's pace. I wanted us to be better yesterday and knew he was always on his best behavior in front of other people, particularly Natasha.

Naturally it was on those days, when he was on his best behavior that I was on my worst, because as far as I was concerned that was when it was easiest to speed up the process. Today was one of those days. Alex had invited Natasha to hang out thereby allowing me to use her presence to my advantage.

"Hey Alex!" I exclaimed, draping my arms around his neck for an awkward over the back of the couch hug. It hurt me when he tensed at my touch, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

"Hey Adrienne," he replied glancing up at me. His eyes quickly assessed my holey jeans, black and white striped long sleeve shirt, but his eyes gave nothing away.

"Tasha!" I said leaning over the back of the couch and kissing her cheek.

"Hey girl," she returned with a smile. Natasha gave me a very pointed look when she announced, "I'm going to get something to drink from the kitchen do you want anything?"

"Nah, I'm good," I shrugged.

"Are. You. Sure?" She dragged out each of the words as much as possible, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows in expectation.