Settling Slowly

Chapter 11 - Carolyn Support System

Just before I knocked on Lexie's front door I got a thank you text from Dan. Whilst he slept – he slept like a dead person – I'd drawn Iron Man's hand all over his cast.

"Hey, Zoey," one of Lexie's younger brothers smiled. "She's in her room I think."

"Thanks, Rob."

I headed up there with out further invitation and knocked on the door. A beat later all was still perfectly silent even though it was almost noon. I knocked again and cautiously pushed the door open. It was only a moment later after there were no protests that I stuck my head around the door. A few weeks ago I'd barged in here without much thought and face planted what I thought was an empty bed. It wasn't empty and my face landed in Sergey's crotch. Thankfully he was under the covers. Lesson learned.

Fortunately this time the room was empty. Well, that wasn't exactly fortunate, but at least I hadn't interrupted anything. I went over to the window which looked directly into the bedroom of the next door neighbour who just so happened to be Sergey. Lexie's curtains were already open and so we're Sergey's. He was sat at his desk doing some work. I opened Lexie's window and reached out to knock on his.

He jumped out of his skin, yelled and fell off his chair. Lexie laughed loudly from the bed I guess, I couldn't see her, and didn't even try to help her boyfriend up. When he looked out the window he scowled a little. Then he looked surprised as I began to climb out of Lexie's room. He threw the sash open and helped me into his room and over the desk. Lexie stopped laughing.

"Zoey, are you crazy?! You've got a broken arm!" she scalded and jumped up to pull me further into the room even though I was already safely away from the window. "What if you fell?"

"I would have got a bit more injured probably. Relax. I'm fine."

"And if you weren't?"

"Then Dad would have more material to embarrass me with," I said with a roll of my eyes. "We have more important things to talk about like how Grigory and I got together last night."

She stopped thinking up another rant and grinned at me. Then she squealed a little and threw her arms around me, grinning from ear to ear. "This is great! We can double date now! Oooh, what happened? Was it really romantic?"

In the background Sergey had only muttered 'finally' and began straightening the papers on his desk out.

"What happened?" Lexie asked again and squeezed my hands a little too much in her excitement.

"We were talking and he said that one of his third years was in McDonald's the other night and she joked about what Luke yelled down the phone and I asked if he was in trouble and said 'not as much as I'm about to be' and then he kissed me," I gabbled out in one excited breath.

Lexie squealed.

Sergey grumbled something in Russian about us being loud and him trying to do some homework. Lexie rolled her eyes at him and headed for the window.

"You're not seriously about to climb through the window?" Sergey asked incredulously. "It won't take long to get there like a normal person."

"Special case," she said.

"Hardly. All she did was snog my cousin."

"I didn't snog him," I said. "And Lexie needs to live a little."

Lexie climbed through the window and Sergey hovered around her sure that she was going to fall at any minute. Then he tried even harder to stop me doing it because of my broken wrist. I climbed through anyway letting Lexie grab a hold of my bad arm to steady me. As soon as I was in the room she shut the window and closed the curtains. We sat on the bed, legs crossed facing one another.