Jodee

Chapter 53 - Coding

"I haven't. But from what I've heard the guys have beat 'em pretty bad" — Caleb laughed slightly, picturing the image in his head before getting back to what we were previously speaking about — "I've kinda been here, Ace, looking after your little sister." He shot me an incredulous look.

I looked down, kissing my sister's head — or really her hair since there were so many of those damned curls! "About that..."

"Here we go." Caleb whispered under his breath, his hands coming up to hold his head and he rolled and his eyes.

"Fucking what?!"

"Fucking you!" My best friend retorted. "I knew you were going to have some fucking problem about that way I took care of her. It's insane! I did a very good job, Ace, a very good one." Caleb tried to assure me.

"I—" I tripped over my words a little bit, trying to figure out the nicest way to say that I don't believe him.

"Okay." Caleb laughed when he saw my grimace and attempted to be nice. "Just lay it on me, giving me the fucking lecture because I know you can't fucking help yourself."

My lips turned up in a smile. "She's too tired. Shouldn't be at the hospital. Probably malnourished" — Caleb tried to butt in but I stopped him — "And she's been crying! You know I fucking hate that."

For the most part, I'm a pretty reasonable and calm guy. I don't get super angry and blow up like Caleb does sometimes, and can always keep my cool.

That is until it comes to my baby sister, she either holds me together or breaks me apart.

When I'm about to get super pissed off and probably start yelling, it only takes one little look at my sister's cute and innocent face for me to take a deep breath and collect myself — so she doesn't have to see her big brother go ballistic. 

But at the same time, if I see my sister in tears or I see her hurt, it will not take that much out of me to go ballistic. Seeing my little sister in any kind of pain kills me, it rips through me harder than that bullet did.

When we were younger, Jodee knew that if she started crying I would always cave and give her what she wanted or whatever it was I was saying no to. It's probably my biggest failure at "parenting" and it happened a lot. But every time I just couldn't say no.

My biggest weakness is her tears.

"I've been making her go home every night to sleep, which she was not happy about, by the way. Oh, and she's been sleeping in your bed, which freaked me the fuck out the first night, so thanks for that. So she should be getting enough sleep" — he shook his head in stress — "and I have been feeding Jodee! So don't even go there with me. Also, what do you expect? Of course she's been crying, we weren't sure if you were going to fucking wake up!"

I lifted one of the sides of my lips, with a childhood expression on my face. "I was going to wake up." I mumbled annoyed.

"It's just been a little stressful around here."

"I know." I sympathized, taking a deep breath before adding in: "Thank you."

Throughout our entire lives Caleb and I have been a team. You never had to ask the other one to help you out with anything because you already knew they were going to help you. No matter what the situation or what we had to do we always did it for each other. If Caleb told me I had to lie, I'd lie, if he said he need to me to look out for someone I would watch them with my life. 

But, with this whole motto that we have, I realize that we never really say thank you.

It's always just assume that the other will do it, so there's not need to ask or to thank for doing the task because you already assumed they did it. But I know what it's like to work a thank-less job or have to do thank-less things so I am pretty sensitive to making sure people feel appreciated.