Life After Claire

Breaking News

"Hey." Presley says to me and sits on the couch. He looks tired, like he hasn't slept in a while.

"You okay man?" I ask sitting on the opposite side of the couch watching Claire play.

"I was out last night, why?" He asks.

"You look awful." I say chuckling.

"I was with Nick, we took some beers and hung out at the cove."

The cove is the beach that couples go to make out at. It's famous for that and I use to go at least three times a week with other girls until I started dating Mia. Then it was her and I going all the time but we were doing a little more then just making out.

"So are you and Nick like, together? Or..." I ask him, but it's really awkward.

"Yeah actually, he asked me last night. So he's my boyfriend." He says like it isn't a big deal.

"Do the parents know?"

"I'm announcing it at dinner tonight." I nodded and he went back to watching football

We were watching the game and shouting and screaming at it until Brittany comes in the room telling me she needs to talk to me.

She leads me up into my room and closes the door, "What do you want." I say laying on my bed and putting my hands behind my head.

"Cole's high." She says sounding pissed.

"Um, actually he was. He isn't anymore."

"Shane! What hell were you thinking?" She screams at me. Before I can retaliate we hear a knock at the door. "Come in." I call out and Britt looks at me like I'm crazy. "It's my room." I shrug and stick my tongue at her. "Hey babe." I say and pull Hannah on my lap. She stands up and asks Britt," Was I interrupting something?" I say no while my sister says yes.

"I can come back, it's okay." Hannah says with a small smile, I grab her arm and pull her in my lap and kiss her.

"Last time that happened, you found out that you were going to be a father." I look up and Cole is standing in the door way with my sister, she pulls him into the room and then closes and locks the door.

Hannah stands up and sits on the desk on the other side of the room.

"Cole, we need to talk." Brittany starts off.

"Britt, I handled it alright? We don't need to do this." I say but she smacks me in the head

Cole looks over at me and then back to our sister, "What's going on?" He questions

"I know that you're high." She folds her arms over her chest. "You're high?" Hannah whisper yells at him.

"No of course not!" I'm going to just sit back and let his unfold.

"Shane already told me that you were." On a scale of one to ten on the mad-o-meter, Britt looks like she's on number eight about to boil over to number nine.

"Yeah, I was Britt. I don't know what I was thinking. Actually, I wanted to stop thinking about Noah and what she told me today." He pauses, " I don't want to talk about that either."

Brittany looks over at me but I'm looking at Cole. "Alright, well we better get back out there before someone notices we all just bailed." She says and we all walk back out of the room. I look around and notice that Cole isn't with us, so I go back to our old room.

I crack the door open and see him sitting on his old bed, looking at the ceiling. "You okay man?" I ask and sit on my bed across from his."

"Noah only slept with me because she felt bad for me." He says, I can hear the anger toward her in his voice.

"Who told you that? They couldn't have been lying." I say trying to lighten the mood.

"She told me herself." He says clenched through his teeth.

"Wow." Is all I can manage to mumble out at this point. I have no idea what to say or how to help him. I can't believe that Noah did something like that, her and my brother seemed to work really well together.

"I don't even care." He doesn't want to talk about it clearly.

"Let's go, come on" I say and we walk out of the room.

We walk out just as dinner is being served no one is talking, all you hear is the sound of forks hitting the plates and once and a while Claire will make a noise or two. Through out the whole thing no one said a word. I have no idea what's going on.

"Why is it so quiet?" I blurt out. Hannah squeezes my arm. Okay, something is up.

"You weren’t down stairs yet..." Brittany trails off.

I look over at Presley and he must have told everyone his news when Cole and I were upstairs. I look back over at Cole who's already looking in my direction.

"Presley announced that he is...um, well..-"

"Gay Dad, I'm gay, it isn't a big deal."

All eyes are focused on me. Every single person in the room is waiting for me to say something, truth is I'm not going to look at my step-brother any differently because he likes guys. It doesn't faze me. I don't think Robert and I have the same opinion though.

"I think it's awesome." I say and everyone's face is shocked or surprised, actually they are all different. Brittany has her hand over her mouth, my mom is smiling at me, Presley looks grateful, Cole looks pleased, Robert looks at me in disapproval, Courtney is starring at me like she doesn't understand what I just said, Hannah looks like she wants to kiss me, Sapphire isn't looking at me at all.

"You do?" My little sister, Courtney, asks me.

"Why wouldn't I?"

She shrugs and the conversations start to begin, everything seems more normal now. "Shane, can I talk to you after dinner please?" Robert says to me. "Actually Robert, Claire needs to get home." I say so I can get out of it. He nods.

"Are you sure I can't come home with you guys?" Courtney begs

"Court I told you, I have to work tomorrow, I'm sorry." I hate saying no to her since I don't live here anymore.

"Shane." Hannah helps her beg.

"Fine." I groan and she runs upstairs to grab her bag that was already packed.

"What am I suppose to do with you tomorrow?" I ask her.

"Take her to work and I'll pick her up after the gym and we can do girly stuff." Hannah says and Courtney agrees.

We drive home and It takes me almost an hour to put Claire down. I get myself ready for bed and Logan and Cole are watching a movie with Courtney in the living room, I join them but I fall asleep within ten minutes of sitting down.

I'm woken up by the sound of my cell phone going off, it's Robert. I have a bad feeling about this.

A/N

It's a filler chapter, hope you enjoyed it! Message me! I wanna hear new ideas! Please <3