Anti Cupids

Three

03.

I lowered my eyes to the cup of coffee in my hand in order to avoid eye contact with either of my parents or my brother, all of whom were sitting across from me on the dining table.

The said brother was constantly glaring at me and making weird faces, probably to keep me from opening my mouth in front of our parents. In all honesty, I really wanted to tell Mom and Dad about everything that had happened yesterday, but it just didn't feel right to do that.

Our whole family looked no better than zombies. Jace, as you can guess, had baggy eyes because he had a really bad hangover. His insomnia made it a lot harder for him to get any sleep.

My Dad looked like he had run a marathon. His eyes were droopy as well, and his shoulders were slumped. Speaking of myself, I was sure I looked like I had been punched in the face several times.

Kudos to Julian for that!  (Please note the sarcasm.)

That boy had gone back home at about three in the morning. The only reason I hadn't kicked him out after all his obnoxious comments was because he did tell me about the happenings at the infamous 'party'.

My mother was the only person in the kitchen who didn't look like she was seconds away from fainting. Of course, she was exhausted too, but I knew my Mom. She was undoubtedly the most energetic person I'd ever seen in my life, and she never let exhaustion get to her head. Both her and Dad must have stayed up all night yesterday to take care of Grandma.

When everyone was so drained, I didn't think it would be a good idea to fill them in on the 'chronicles-of-an-ugly-wasted-twin'.

If I did that, Jace would get grounded for at least a month, which shouldn't be surprising because my Mom is totally against underage drinking. And if I told them about how he got home extraordinarily late and left me alone at home, he'll plausibly be banned from leaving the house for an entire two weeks or maybe even a month and he won't be allowed to drive his truck either.

The latter part of the punishment seemed pretty inviting to me, but I'd settled on not being the tell-tale-annoying-sibling. I didn't even want to think about how Jace would retaliate if I actually told on him.

Fortunately for him, I hadn't found any injuries on my body this morning. Or else I wouldn't have hesitated in going ahead with my 'making a mountain out of a mole-hill' plan.

"How did you spend your evening yesterday, kids?" Dad suddenly asked, looking up from the paperwork spread all around him on the table.

Trust him to be engrossed in ridiculous amounts of paperwork on a Sunday. Such a workaholic.

"Erm... yeah, Dad. We had a lot of fun watching football reruns, right Jace?" I said, waving my hands enthusiastically and mustered the best fake smile that I could, before transferring the attention to Jace.

Ha ha! That irresponsible bastard earned it!

"Oh yeah. We did. We had a nice evening," Jace answered in a croaked voice, without looking up from his cup to not let Dad see his eyes.

"I see. You guys watched football, correct? Then why do you two look so exhausted, huh?" Mom inquired suspiciously, leaning against the counter, while her eyes focused on both us and the scrambled eggs that she was cooking for breakfast.

"Uh... yes, Mom. We're exhausted because we were fighting over who would win the game... and we... got tired." My explanation sounded way too fake and all I wanted to do at that moment was to curl up in a ball and disappear.