Roller Skate || Alex Gaskarth a.u.

Bonus Chapter: The Long Walk Home

Alex

Alex was nervous.

Alex was really nervous.

Collecting Lexi from school was Kit's job, not his. He was the one who stayed at home baking cookies for everyone. He was the motherly figure in the family (well, he had stopped wearing the eyeliner a long time ago, so according to his mom, he would be considered the more fatherly figure).

But no matter how much he had protested that Lexi wouldn't want him to pick her up from school, Kit insisted (and when he said insisted, he meant: she was going to kick his ass if he didn't collect her). Apparently she was too busy getting the house for Lexi's surprise birthday party.

"It's not like you're collecting her from Mars, Alex." Kit had sighed as she stood up on their rickety stool, hanging up a princess banner of some sort.

Alex had sighed and held onto the stool, just in case she fell."But the last time I collected her, I embarrassed her."

"That's because you collected her in Stella."

"But whenever I collected you in Stella during High School, you loved it."

"I'm the exception."

"You're my exception."

"Flattery won't get you anywhere."

"Well, it depends--"

"Alexander William Gaskarth! Go and collect Lexi now!"

So here he was, being the awkward dad that waited outside the school for his kid (minus Stella, which kind of bummed him out).

What if he embarrassed her again? Oh God, Lexi wouldn't talk to him for a week if he did. Alex still had nightmares of the time he threw a frisbee at Lexi's crush, Dexter.

He shivered in remembrance.

Actually--come to think of it--Kit hadn't been impressed with him either for throwing that stupid, green frisbee at Dexter's head (but she hadn't stayed annoyed at him for too long. She never really could when it came to him anyway).

Alex checked his watch.

2:20pm.

Lexi would come running out through those double red door any minute now.

He leaned back against the rough bark of an old oak tree, his mind drifting to other places just as a bluebird flew past him. Upon seeing the bluebird, he shuddered, flashbacks of dirty shrouds of smoke from guns and the ear-splitting shrieks of Soldiers beginning to play inside his mind.

He never did quite forget the war.

It wasn't something you would tend to forget.

Artillery, rifles, smoke, blood, death, men begging for everything to end....Alex didn't like to think about it, but the bluebird in front of him was making it hard to do such a task.

Stan had loved bluebirds.

Stan.

Alex missed Stan. He had always been the brightest in the platoon, that one ray of hope that would cheer everyone up, even when many begged for everything to end. He had become Alex's friend, and had taken the blame for nearly every mistake Alex had made during training drills, earning them both punishment exercises.

"It could be worse," Stan would say when they were put on night patrol. "The bastards could have made us clean their cabins using only a toothbrush."