Complacent

7

It was Friday evening; Ricardo was walking me home seeing as Claudette couldn’t pick me up due to her late shift at work. Raine; Ricardo’s mum, offered to drop me, but she had to take Antonio to his piano lesson and Nicky to his karate lesson, so I politely declined. The past few days I had gone to Ricardo’s house after college hadn’t been successful in terms of us making our visual presentation. I had bought cardboard to his house one evening and in the midst of play fighting with Nicky, Ricardo managed to spill tomato soup over the white cardboard and then to add insult to injury, whilst we were trying our hardest to clean it off – which didn’t work, Nicky then used all the glitter and dried out the pens by using them for his homework and leaving the tops off the pens overnight. All in all it had been a disaster.

‘Come round on Saturday and we can try again’ he suggested as we walked side by side,

‘What will be different?’

‘Mum usually takes them shopping and then to my Aunts, so we have a few hours to do it without the terrible two’

‘You know you encourage them right?’

‘Sssh’ he said nudging me a little,

‘I’ll let you know, I’m meant to be going to Renee’s’

‘Renee’s?’

‘Yeah, she’s taking her breakup really badly’. I don’t know why but for some reason, I didn’t want to expose the real reason why I would be at Renee’s. Tyrese.

‘Hmm, okay’ he said, nibbling on his bottom lip. I looked at him confused but decided to ignore it, as we turned onto my road.

‘Just come on Sunday then, after 12 when we’re back from church’ he suggested. I turned around and stood in front of him, stopping him from walking, his face confused.

‘YOU go CHURCH?’ I said making him smirk as he rolled his eyes,

‘Yes man, it’s not that deep’

‘But you’re the devil’ I said, making him push me lightly in my shoulder as we carried on walking, laughing next to him. We came up to my house, Ricardo looking up.

‘It’s just you two in this house?’ he asked, leaning on the wall outside. I nodded my head and he ‘mm’ a response before looking back down at me.

‘Doesn’t it get lonely, when it’s just you?’ I looked down and played with the curve of metal on my white gate and shrugged,

‘Yeah sometimes; I usually have Renee come over, but not recently’

‘That’s messed up’ he muttered, which I agreed to by nodding my head.

‘Don’t you miss Amy?’

‘It’s not the same as you and Renee’ he said with a small smile, ‘Amy’s my friend, but I have others that I can chill with, whereas you –‘

‘Don’t’ I finished for him, nodding and understanding what he was saying. That was one thing I had grown to appreciate about Ricardo; he was extremely straight forward.

‘So what are you gonna do now?’ he asked,

‘Dunno most probably watch some tv then go bed’ I replied, the cold air hitting my cheeks making them feel frozen.  It was silent for a while, as I watched my hands.

‘Do you miss them?’ he asked quietly.

‘All the time’ I responded barely above  a whisper,

‘I know how you feel’ he responded and I looked up to him. He was staring up at the sky, his arms crossed and fists clenched by his side.

‘Most don’t know this, like only Amy and my boys, but I had a twin brother’ he continued, I didn’t say anything and let there be silence, hoping he would continue when he started laughing nervously,