Running Towards the Light

Chapter 21 - Arguments

"Beatrice?!"

I sighed a sigh of relief at someone — anyone pulling me from the work that I was doing. My pen dropped onto the table and I turned around.

Brady?!

Right behind me was none other than Brady Adams, the guy I was warned to stay away from like ... 2 hours ago.

Yeah, that was going REAL great for me.

"Brady?" I questioned, scrunching up my eyebrows.

"That's right, sweetcakes!" He took a seat next to me, flashing me a huge grin.

"Ugh! You're just as annoying as I remembered you — and don't call me that,"

"Okay... so what'cha doing?" He ignored my previous question, reaching his hand across my body to bring my paper to him and started reading it.

"I was a little distracted in English today so I'm making up the assignment."

"Gotcha. I don't even think I did this..." Brady scratched the top of his head in thought while continuing to look at my paper in the hopes that he would recognize the assignment.

Although Brady and I had not known each other for that long at all it just came to me that not doing the assignment would be such a Brady thing to do. And this caused me to laugh out loud.

There was a silence between the boy next to me and I as he set down the paper and slid it across the fake wood table to give it back to me.

I bit my lip, trying to think of something else to say but the only thing I could come up with was the question that had been burning my head since this morning: "Do you have a brother?"

Brady's head went back in surprise as he looked at me, his blue eyes going big. "Oh! Ummm, well, yeah? Yeah, I do have a brother. An older one." He stuttered across his words, clearly thrown for a loop by my question. "Do you have a brother?"

This made me believe that there was a very good chance his brother's name was Lucas and the same Lucas my brothers, Spencer and West were talking about this morning. It wasn't Brady's reaction that led me to believe that because given the circumstances Brady reaction was totally normal. But it was the fact that he had a brother and all of the other clues that I had figured out or gained this morning.

I nodded my head: "I have a lot of brothers."

Brady grinned, he was up for the challenge. "Just how many brothers are we talking about?"

"Guess." I responded, wiggling my eyebrows in anticipation like I had seen Cam do numerous times before.

I wasn't trying to give away who my family was to Brady right now right here, but I feel like if I wanted to know anything about his brother and my brothers then I had to. And I did really like Brady — as a friend! — so if I had any hopes of furthering that relationship I had to be honest and not try to hide stuff from him.

"I dunno. Like 3, maybe 4."

I shook my head almost automatically.

Sometimes I forgot how weird it was to be the youngest eight with seven older brothers. To me, whenever someone said "lots" I really did think of five, six, maybe seven. But to most people they thought two, three, or four was a lot of siblings to have. 

"I have seven." I gave my hand away.

"Seven?" He pulled a face. "Fuck, that's a lot. All older?"

"Mhmm." I nodded, twisted my pen absentmindedly between three of my fingers.

"Seven?" Brady repeated to himself. "Seven... Like seven brothers?"