HIS FAVORITE GINGER ✓

TWENTY-ONE.

ALEJANDRO'S GAZE ON THE ROAD is tough and unyielding, especially when snow and everything slippery is starting to perch on the asphalt, painting it like a pokerdot canvas. The government hasn't even started to make preparations to salt the roads . This isn't street racing, this is called 'driving your brother to dead girlfriend's house'. Besides, it's his car so any shit and shit goes downhill, literally. Alejandro is too young to die — and will battle any diabetes to his last drop — but Ambrose doesn't seem to mind.

Alejandro manages to uproot his pinned eyes from the highway to assess his brother again. Ambrose is slumped in the passenger seat; he reminds Alejandro of the white blood cell diagram in class; static, white and ameboid. The black beenie on his head — that's making him look like a Q-tip — is drily complimenting his aubergine eyebags. Ambrose is tightly draped in a thick, black coat and blanket of apparent misery.

The death of Ambrose's girlfriend 'he truly loved' is really taking a toll on him. He has been extra lazy, grumpy, snappy. He is mostly in his room, watching sappy romance movies, eating inappropriate amounts of ice cream or doing both at the same time. Alejandro has to cook now for the family and if not for the intervention of Freya, they would've been tormented with his meals, a.k.a salty, watery, dry, tasteless and most especially incinerated failure.

Alejandro isn't wearing mittens though. He feels it is safer to keep his bare hands on the wheel than woolen gloves that, god forbid, will accidentally slip off the wheel. Call him a prig, a nerd, geek whatever, he actually values his life than chicken.

Bailey is also from a rich family according Ambrose's frustrating, neverending late night gists with Alejandro. Alejandro has insisted on going with his brother because it's going too much to face alone. Of course Ambrose is a full man of twenty but this is death, fucking death not a bullshit highschool breakup. Ambrose has already lost someone — their father — who was so close to him and he didn't take it quite well. And also with the roads getting more slippery than a fucking bar soap as wicked winter sets in and his current emotional dilemma, on wheels? Alejandro actually values his sibling's life than chicken.

Ambrose definitely wasn't kidding when he said her family is stinkingly rich. Her house is just as enormous as mine but slightly more vintage. Alejandro suddenly thinks he should neglect these medieval shitty castles from ancestors — that might even be haunted — and make good use of their money for a simple crib in Beverly Hills.

It is obvious that the residents are highly reserved and chill people. Flowers adorn every nook and cranny of the wide terrain, turning it to a kind of royal orchard. It can very much be mistaken for a greenhouse, if it has a glass covering and isn't so big of course. There is a spot where seven cars are parked under a ancient, vast acacia tree. Is he seeing a red Porsche?

"Are you done eye-fucking Father Nature so that we can get the hell inside now?" Ambrose's burly voice relieves him of the trance and he turns to see Ambrose with a scowl on his tired face.

"Oh, sorry sorry." Alejandro scurries to his side and they begin to walk together side by side. Alejandro blows warm hair into his palms together against the cold before stuffing them in pockets. The only sounds cracking the thick sheet of silence encumbering them are those of the cold air escaping their nostrils and their boots on the pavement. Nearing the door, Alejandro can hear him release a few sobs and sniffles. It really hurts him to see his brother like this, honestly. Alejandro can only imagine what he is going through. He isn't even 21 yet and two people he endears disappeared forever just like that — poof.