Reconnecting

Chapter 2

Kaya Scodelario as Jade (Jade has red and black hair)

Jade P.O.V

Waking up the next morning I reached for my phone. Well, technically speaking I patted the bedside table until I found it... and accidentally hit the end of it causing it to flip and fall on the floor.

I was leaning over the edge of the bed, trying to keep as much of my body as possible under the covers, when I heard someone groaning from the room on the other side of the wall, at the head of my bed. I freeze, my tired, half-asleep brain struggling to make the gears turn enough to remember the reason someone would be here. My brother had been called out to a crime scene right after he'd dumped the woman into the guest bed, and I'm a light sleeper so I knew he hadn't come home since he snores really loud. Wait, that explained it, the woman, it was the woman groaning, probably from a hangover.

"Jade, I'm back" John's voice was accompanied by the sound of a door slamming. Another groan echoes through the apartment before I can even respond, and I can imagine John's own brain going through the same process as mine to try and identify it. There's a series of thuds and more groaning, although this time some of it comes from John as he slumps past my room.

I haul myself out of bed, grab the bathrobe I got for Christmas, and stagger out of my bedroom. The woman, Julie is slumped at the kitchen table an empty glass in front of her, one hand massaging her forehead. Hungover, no doubt. John leans against the counter on the other side of her, looking like he's about to fall asleep standing up. I drop into the chair opposite her, and clearly trusting me to look after the drunk woman, John disappears into his bedroom.

The apartment is more of a flat really, actually I'm not sure what you'd call it, but apartment sounds bigger so we'll go with that. It consists of one corridor stretching from the entrance, which is slightly larger to accommodate clothes hooks and a shoe shelf, to the kitchen. Along the corridor are four rooms, the bathroom, John's room, what is now my room, and the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom is usually the pet room, John's female husky puppy, his female golden retriever puppy, and his two kittens, one black with some white, and one what the vet calls cameo, and what I call golden blond.

The two dogs come charging in at that moment, John apparently having let them out as he staggered to his bedroom. Still half-asleep, I can't move quick enough and both dogs leap onto me, or at least try to, they're both young but I'm not quite wide enough, and the chair not quite long enough to accommodate them both, so they jump up only to fall straight back down in a literal 'doggy-pile'. The kittens follow behind winding around the chair legs and meowing softly. I lean down to stroke them as they pass, heading to Julie, no doubt to inspect the new presence on their territory. I watch Julie for a moment, and after a while of stroking the kittens, under the watchful eye of the two dogs, she looks up at me.

"Well? Go on, ask me."

I tilt my head to one side, "Ask you what?"

"Where I live, when I intend to leave you and your boyfriend alone. If I had known he was your boyfriend, I never would have tried, honestly."

The woman talks too quickly for me to correct her so I wait until she's finished to say, "Firstly he's my brother, secondly when are you leaving, and do you need a ride home?"

"Well, at least you're not just kicking me out, but honestly, you don't have to get me a ride, there's a bus like directly to my house from here."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, no need to worry, I got it... although, there is one thing..."

"What do you need"

"Do you have any clothes I can borrow, or that you don't mind giving away?"

Wordlessly I rise and head to my room. I don't have many clothes only having brought enough for a week, since my aunt wanted to buy me a whole load of things when I got there, but John assured me he had enough money to buy me some clothes one of the days he's actually awake, so I grabbed some of my oldest clothes, some jogging bottoms and a t-shirt I have a bigger version of, and return to the kitchen. Julie smiles her thanks, takes the clothes and disappears down the corridor to the bathroom. In the meantime I survey John's fridge and cupboard, deciding that clearly my brother was and is an instant dinner kind of guy.

I only got here yesterday, hence the pacing of a hole in the carpet incident. Now that I think about it I haven't unpacked yet. I digress. I wait until Julie appears from the bathroom and then leaves for the bus, staggering a little, before writing a note to brother dearest and slipping out the door, sticking the note to the fridge as I go.